Yesterday evening I reported that the University of Michigan wrote a $75 million check to a new fund from Sam Altman’s venture capital firm earlier this year—the second check the university has written to funds managed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s venture firm, Hydrazine Capital.
This new fund, his venture firm Hydrazine Capital’s fourth fund, was disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in March, and sometime before the end of June got a check from one of Silicon Valley’s more noteworthy limited partners, the University of Michigan’s $17.9 billion endowment, which has also invested directly in OpenAI and in OpenAI’s corporate venture fund, according to public filings and documents obtained by Fortune via a Freedom of Information Act request.
From the story:
“We have a longstanding relationship with Sam and Hydrazine IV. Hydrazine IV is a small fund in which the University of Michigan is the only outside investor, and this is an extension of our ongoing investment strategies,” Dan Feder, senior managing director of investments at the University of Michigan’s endowment, told Fortune. It’s unclear the fund’s exact size or focus. Feder, OpenAI, Altman, and Hydrazine declined to share more details of the fund or didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to Fortune, an OpenAI spokeswoman said that Altman “is fully focused on his role as CEO of OpenAI and spends only a small fraction of his time investing. He maintains transparency with the board about his occasional investments and adheres to a process for managing potential conflicts of interest.”
A list of all the endowment’s venture capital fund investments that was provided to Fortune show that the University of Michigan has written two of its largest-ever venture capital fund checks into Hydrazine funds: A $105 million check to Hydrazine’s second fund and, most recently, the $75 million into Hydrazine’s fourth fund. The endowment has also invested $18.7 million in an investment vehicle called Apollo Projects that Altman and his brothers set up a few years ago, records show. Altman is listed as director on all of the Hydrazine funds’ disclosure documents.
You can read the full story here, and you can send me a note below if you like.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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