Andrew Ng, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher and onetime founder of Alphabet Inc.’s Google Brain project, has launched a $175 million fund to back AI startups.

Ng shared the news in a Medium post today. The capital for the AI Fund comes courtesy of New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese carrier turned technology investor.

Ng wrote that he will head the AI Fund in the role of general partner. He also announced the hiring of two Partners: Eva Wang, a veteran of technology law firm Fenwick & West LLP who will act as chief operating officer, and former Coursera Inc. executive Steven Syverud. Ng co-founded Coursera in 2012 with fellow Stanford professor Daphne Koller.

The AI Fund will pursue a fairly unconventional investment strategy. Instead of backing existing teams as traditional venture capital firms do, the fund plans to develop new product ideas and form startups to commercialize them in-house.

That sounds a lot like the model implemented by Team8, an Israeli incubator backed by major tech firms such as Microsoft Corp. that focuses on cybersecurity. But the inspiration for the AI Fund apparently comes from Ng’s own work during his time as the chief scientist at Baidu Inc., a position he left early last year.

“When I was leading Baidu’s AI Group, part of my job was serially building teams to explore new directions, and then systematically assessing their potential and deciding whether or not to go forward with specific AI businesses,” Ng said in his post. “In addition to being a lot of fun, it hammered home to me something that I’d felt since the early days of Google Brain: that we can develop systematic and repeatable processes to initiate and pursue new AI opportunities.”

He also noted that AI Fund’s approach frees up teams from having to court investors during the early stages of their work. This can free up a lot of time, which has the potential to translate into a valuable advantage in a fast-evolving segment such as the AI market.

AI Fund is currently pursuing three separate ventures. One of them is Landing.ai Inc., the startup that Ng launched in December to bring deep learning technology to the manufacturing sector. Its first major customer is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., which does business as Foxconn and is best known as Apple Inc.’s main assembly partner.

Image: Andrew Ng