Two Google alumni raise $11.3M to back AI startups that enterprises will actually pay for

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Disrupt ticket savings of up to $200 + 50% off a second ends Sept 25, 11:59 p.m. PT. REGISTER HERE. Two Google alumni have closed an $11.3 million fund to back early-stage AI startups, betting that the era of enterprise AI experimentation is ending and that customers will increasingly pay only for products that prove their worth. BAG Ventures, founded by Bontia Stewart, a former Google vice president, and Jackson Georges Jr., a former CapitalG partner, closed the fund after about two years of investing from it as it came together. The firm has already backed 10 companies, including the software company SXD, the AI travel agent BizTrip, and the agentic reasoning platform Nomadic. It invests in startups in areas like AI infrastructure, compute, physical and edge AI, security, governance, and vertical SaaS. Check sizes range from $100,000 to $500,000, and the team hopes to invest the rest of the fund over the next two years. Stewart spent 17 years at Google, including nearly a decade as a vice president. During that time, she also served on the board of Gradient Ventures, Google’s early-stage AI fund. She is a limited partner in the Female Founders Fund and the Operator Collective. With Georges, she also co-led the angel syndicate BAG Collective, which has more than 450 members. Georges worked at GE Healthcare and at Google, where he met Stewart. He later became a partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth fund. He and Stewart were in the first cohort of the Black Venture Institute at Berkeley.