Revolut CEO Raises $250 Million For AI-Powered VC Firm QuantumLight

Forbes

20-05-2025

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 06: Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky speaks onstage during Day 2 of ... More TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 6, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (Photo byfor TechCrunch)
Revolut founder Nik Storonsky's venture capital firm QuantumLight has secured $250 million in funding, marking a significant endorsement for its AI-driven investment strategy. In a venture capital landscape where artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a differentiator, QuantumLight stands out with its ambitious claim that all 17 of its investments to date have been identified by proprietary machine learning algorithms rather than traditional human-led deal sourcing.
Founded in 2022 by Storonsky and CEO Ilya Kondrashov, QuantumLight represents a bold experiment in reimagining how venture capital decisions are made. Unlike traditional VC firms that rely heavily on partner intuition, networks, and personal judgment, QuantumLight has developed an investment platform that analyzes over 10 billion data points and tracks more than 700 thousand venture-backed companies worldwide.
"Our ambition is to build the world's best systematic venture capital and growth equity firm, and support the new generation of founders by sharing some of the operating principles that we developed at Revolut," said Storonsky in a press release, whose fintech company Revolut achieved a $45 billion valuation last year, cementing its position as Europe's most valuable startup.
The fundraise signals growing investor confidence in data-driven approaches to venture capital. As AI models become more sophisticated, VCs are increasingly using the technology to outcompete rivals to the best deals, with industry reports indicating around a third of VCs find at least half their deals through such tools.
According to Kondrashov, QuantumLight's approach allows it to "almost eliminate human judgment from the investment process," which he argues leads to faster decision-making less susceptible to the subjectivity and bias that can influence traditional venture investing.
"Few, if any traditional VCs, have built a truly systematic and data-driven approach," Kondrashov stated. The firm's AI model evaluates startups across multiple dimensions, with specific parameters of the proprietary system remaining closely guarded.
QuantumLight's technology represents the cutting edge of algorithmic investing in private markets, though its long-term performance across different market conditions remains to be proven. The true measure of this approach will be its ability to identify successful companies consistently over time.
Unlike some sector-specific funds, QuantumLight maintains a generalist approach, backing startups across multiple industries including artificial intelligence, Web3, fintech, software-as-a-service, and digital marketplaces. The firm focuses on Series B and C rounds, typically investing when companies have established product-market fit and are seeking capital for expansion.
Geographically, 70 percent of QuantumLight's portfolio companies are based in the United States, though the fund maintains no formal geographic restrictions. The fund will back startups in any sector anywhere in the world, at Series B and C stages.
The fund's limited partner composition reflects Storonsky's substantial personal commitment—he and Kondrashov contributed approximately 25 percent of the total funding, with Storonsky providing the majority of that portion. While QuantumLight declined to name other investors, the firm indicated they include fellow billionaire tech founders, VCs, and institutional investors.
Beyond capital investment, QuantumLight offers portfolio companies access to operational expertise derived from Revolut's extraordinary growth trajectory. The firm has developed detailed "playbooks" based on Storonsky's management philosophies, which it shares with founders in its portfolio.
Hiring Playbook example, source: https://quantumlightcapital.com/playbooks/hiring
"One thing we did at the beginning is we sat down with Nik to understand how Revolut was able to grow so fast and beat well-funded competition by such a margin," Kondrashov said. "We found that the success of Revolut is to a large extent predicated on Nik's highly systematic approach to company management that we were able to summarize in a suite of detailed operating manuals—we call them 'playbooks'—which we believe other founders can adapt to their own businesses."
Founded in 2015, neobank Revolut is now Europe's most valuable startup, with 50 million users and more than one billion dollars in pre-tax profit in 2024.
These playbooks cover critical aspects of high-growth company building, from performance management to recruiting strategies. A previously released manual on team performance emphasized frequent reviews and encouraged senior leaders to "act on low performance early"—approaches that have proven successful at Revolut.
Today, QuantumLight is releasing another playbook focused on talent acquisition strategies amidst Europe's ongoing tech hiring challenges. The manual details systematic approaches to identifying, evaluating, and securing top talent in competitive markets.
The ultimate measure of any investment strategy is returns, and here QuantumLight faces the same challenge as any relatively young fund: limited track record. While the firm reports promising early results across its 17 investments, venture capital performance is typically evaluated over longer time horizons.
Kondrashov acknowledges the importance of long-term performance validation but remains confident in the firm's methodology. The firm plans to return to fundraising markets next year, suggesting confidence in its ability to demonstrate compelling early results to investors.
Storonsky's presence looms large over QuantumLight's identity and strategy. The founder's success with Revolut—which now boasts 50 million users and generated over one billion dollars in pre-tax profit in 2024—lends credibility to his investment theses.
This synthesis of human experience and machine learning capability may represent the most realistic future for venture capital. While pure algorithmic investing offers efficiency and potential bias reduction, entrepreneurship remains deeply human, with success factors that can be difficult to quantify.
As QuantumLight deploys its new capital, the venture capital industry will be watching closely. If the firm can demonstrate superior returns through its AI-first approach, it could accelerate similar transformations across the industry.
QuantumLight plans to continue refining its AI models with each investment, creating a feedback loop that theoretically improves decision quality over time. For Storonsky, QuantumLight represents both a financial opportunity and a chance to further validate his systematic approach to business building.
Whether algorithms can consistently outperform human investors in picking tomorrow's winners remains an open question—one that QuantumLight's $250 million experiment aims to answer definitively.