Key Takeaways
- • Jeff Herbst, co-founder of GFT Ventures and a 20-year NVIDIA veteran, told Chosun Ilbo that AI investing is a "market where speed determines victory," and that backing a company that fails to scale quickly is "likely a wrong investment."
- • GFT Ventures, founded in 2021 by Herbst and Representative Eum Jae-hoon, manages approximately $160 million (214 billion Korean won) and has invested in more than 20 companies, with Korean backing from Mirae Asset and SK Hynix.
- • Herbst says resilience, meaning the ability to recover after failure, is a core founder-evaluation criterion, shaped by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's emphasis on learning from failure.
- • Herbst identifies agentic AI, physical AI, and personalized AI as next-generation investment themes, and argues that AI supply shortages, not a bubble, are the bigger risk.
- • Herbst estimates demand for high-performance computing exceeds supply by 10 to 100 times, and says bottlenecks in data center siting, power, and memory could take up to 10 years to resolve.
Summary
Jeff Herbst, co-founder of GFT Ventures and a 20-year veteran of NVIDIA, described the current AI investment market as one where speed determines victory, according to an interview with Chosun Ilbo. Herbst, who was involved in more than 40 venture investments and more than 20 mergers and acquisitions while serving as vice president of business development at NVIDIA, said that choosing a company that fails to scale quickly is likely a wrong investment. He added that current generative AI companies are generating large-scale revenue faster than anything he has seen in his career in technology.
GFT Ventures was established in 2021 by Herbst and Representative Eum Jae-hoon, who previously worked at Translink Capital. The firm, launched with Korean capital from Mirae Asset and SK Hynix among others, manages approximately $160 million (214 billion Korean won) and has invested in over 20 companies. Expectations for valuations have risen with the AI boom. Herbst noted that exits at $1 billion (1.34 trillion Korean won) were once considered successes, but early-stage AI companies are now expected to grow to valuations of hundreds of billions of dollars. He said the current structure allows a fund to be recovered in full even at higher prices and larger check sizes.
Herbst rejected the AI bubble thesis, arguing that supply constraints are the larger issue. Despite concerns that investment capital would flow back into GPUs and data centers, he said demand for high-performance computing exceeds supply by at least 10 to 100 times. He suggested that resolving bottlenecks in data center site preparation, power supply, and memory supply could take up to 10 years.
Herbst's NVIDIA experience shapes his investment approach. He described CEO Jensen Huang as someone who "sees 10, 20, or 30 steps ahead of anyone else in the industry," and said he learned from Huang the discipline of getting to the essence of problems and a constructive approach to failure. He recalled that at NVIDIA, failing to learn from failure and not improving afterward was viewed as a bigger problem than the failure itself. On that basis, he said resilience, the ability to recover and rise after failure, is central to evaluating founders.
Herbst identified agentic AI, in which AI performs tasks autonomously, and physical AI, including robotics, as next-generation investment themes. In South Korea, he favored AI applications built on existing models in areas such as video, healthcare, and security over developing proprietary foundation models, saying "now is the time for genuine AI app companies to emerge." Looking roughly a decade out, he pointed to personalized AI that understands individuals' memories, experiences, and tendencies, and said the key question will be whether platforms or individuals hold sovereignty over that personalized data.
GFT Ventures was established in 2021 by Herbst and Representative Eum Jae-hoon, who previously worked at Translink Capital. The firm, launched with Korean capital from Mirae Asset and SK Hynix among others, manages approximately $160 million (214 billion Korean won) and has invested in over 20 companies. Expectations for valuations have risen with the AI boom. Herbst noted that exits at $1 billion (1.34 trillion Korean won) were once considered successes, but early-stage AI companies are now expected to grow to valuations of hundreds of billions of dollars. He said the current structure allows a fund to be recovered in full even at higher prices and larger check sizes.
Herbst rejected the AI bubble thesis, arguing that supply constraints are the larger issue. Despite concerns that investment capital would flow back into GPUs and data centers, he said demand for high-performance computing exceeds supply by at least 10 to 100 times. He suggested that resolving bottlenecks in data center site preparation, power supply, and memory supply could take up to 10 years.
Herbst's NVIDIA experience shapes his investment approach. He described CEO Jensen Huang as someone who "sees 10, 20, or 30 steps ahead of anyone else in the industry," and said he learned from Huang the discipline of getting to the essence of problems and a constructive approach to failure. He recalled that at NVIDIA, failing to learn from failure and not improving afterward was viewed as a bigger problem than the failure itself. On that basis, he said resilience, the ability to recover and rise after failure, is central to evaluating founders.
Herbst identified agentic AI, in which AI performs tasks autonomously, and physical AI, including robotics, as next-generation investment themes. In South Korea, he favored AI applications built on existing models in areas such as video, healthcare, and security over developing proprietary foundation models, saying "now is the time for genuine AI app companies to emerge." Looking roughly a decade out, he pointed to personalized AI that understands individuals' memories, experiences, and tendencies, and said the key question will be whether platforms or individuals hold sovereignty over that personalized data.
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