# A-Grade Investments

> A-Grade Investments is a VC fund in Los Angeles backing Apps and Mobile. See 37 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Los Angeles, United States
- Total investments: 37
- Last investment: Feb 2017
- Lead investor: 5%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a-grade-investments/about/
- Website: http://www.agradeinvestments.com/

A-Grade Investments is a venture capital fund founded by long-time friends Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Ron Burkle to opportunistically invest in technology start-up companies.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for A-Grade Investments. Shizune tracks 1 team members at A-Grade Investments. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/a-grade-investments?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $700k–$4M |
| Series A | $5.5M–$8.6M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Apps | 6 | 16% |
| Mobile | 6 | 16% |
| Software | 6 | 16% |
| Internet | 5 | 14% |
| Artificial Intelligence | 5 | 14% |

89 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 10 | 27% |
| Seed | 8 | 22% |
| Funding Round | 6 | 16% |
| Series D | 4 | 11% |
| Series B | 3 | 8% |

8 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 30 | 81% |
| Canada | 1 | 3% |
| Germany | 1 | 3% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 3% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ron Burkle | Founder | 17 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ron-burkle |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ResearchGate | ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 20 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all. | $52.6M | Series D | Feb 28, 2017 |  |
| Kopari Beauty | Inspired by a healthy, mindful lifestyle, Kopari beauty products embrace and enhance the natural splendor and beauty within each of us with 100% pure organic coconut oil. Authentic, simple, and pure, Kopari beauty products promote natural radiance, celebrate vitality, and encourage balance while regenerating hair and skin with one of MotherNature’s greatest gifts, the coconut. |  |  | Jan 25, 2017 |  |
| Willing | Willing makes quality end of life planning easy and affordable for everyone. | $7M | Series A | Nov 03, 2016 |  |
| IfOnly | IfOnly is a marketplace for incredible experiences. From unique everyday offerings with local experts to once-in-a-lifetime connections with lauded luminaries, IfOnly provides access to a curated selection of extraordinary experiences that benefit worthy causes around the world.Members enjoy amazing experiences that help them do somethingincredible every weekend. Engage with athletes, epicureans, artists, musicians, designers, and others who inspire shared interests, foster lasting memories, and benefit impactful causes.Luminaries can share their talent and build their business on the IfOnly marketplace. From meeting premium clientele to promoting their experiences in a curated, safe environment, top luminaries trust IfOnly to help them build their brand while benefiting important causes.At IfOnly, we believe that life is not about buying things, it's about the extraordinary experiences we remember and share.So, what’s your IfOnly? | $10.3M | Series B | Feb 08, 2016 |  |
| Angel.ai | Founded in February 2015, GoButler is a messaging-based, on-demand service that operates as a digital personal assistant, using Human Assisted Artificial Intelligence (HAAI) to fulfill requests 24/7, 365 days a year. GoButler takes the time and inconvenience out of everyday tasks, fulfilling on-demand requests, from food delivery and travelbookings to restaurant reservations and more. GoButler searches the web, compares prices, reads reviews and orders, using the best services at the most reasonable costs. The service saves users valuable time, getting them the things they need, when they want them, all conveniently via text message.In September 2016, there were rumors that Angel.ai had been acquired by Amazon. An Amazon spokesperson however stated on 21 September 2016: “Amazon did not acquire Angel.ai. We made an individual hire of [former Angel.ai CEO] Navid Hadzaad. His title is Product Lead, New Initiatives.” | $8M | Series A | Jul 30, 2015 |  |
| Airtable | Airtable is a cloud-based software company that offers an easy-to-use online platform for creating and sharing relational databases.It brings the database out of the realm of power users and into the mainstream, creating a new type of flexible but sophisticated productivity tool that anyone can use. Airtable gives end-users the ability to createand share their own workflows for everything from managing an editorial calendar to planning a major event. The platform helps create flexible checklists, organize collections or ideas, and manage customers or contacts as well as offers a variety of templates ranging from home improvement to store inventory, enabling users to build custom applications without any prior coding experience.The company was founded by Andrew Ofstad, Emmett Nicholas, and Howie Liu in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. | $7.6M | Series A | Jun 29, 2015 |  |
| Duolingo | Duolingo is a language-learning education platform that offers 98 total courses across nearly 40 distinct languages. The platform enables anyone to learn languages for free, though they can also pay $7 each month for a premium service that removes ads, delivers offline access, and more. It also claims 30 million users are actively learninglanguages on its platform, and it has emerged as one of the most downloaded educational apps globally.Duolingo provides "Duolingo for Schools" with features designed to allow teachers to track their students. It uses many services in the Amazon Web Services suite of products, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, nearly 200 virtual instances in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). The company uses the freemium model; the app and the website are accessible without charge, although Duolingo also offers a premium service for a fee. | $45M | Series D | Jun 10, 2015 |  |
| Relationship Science | Relationship Science (RelSci) is a technology solutions company that helps individuals and organizations leverage their relationships for a competitive business advantage. The RelSci platform provides deep information about over 6 million influential decision makers - who they are and who they know, what you have in common with them, and how youcan gain access to them and their organizations. Our relationship mapping tool empowers you to discover new relationships, advance existing ones, and maximize every opportunity. | $31M | Series D | Apr 16, 2015 |  |
| Change.org | Change.org is the world’s largest social change platform with over 150 million users in 196 countries. Change.org empowers anyone, anywhere, to create the change they want to see. On Change.org, people everywhere are starting campaigns, mobilizing supporters, and working with decision-makers to drive solutions. Change.org is a certifiedB-corporation, a new class of companies dedicated to positive impact. Investors include Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Ev Williams, Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman, and the Omidyar Network, started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. | $25M | Series C | Dec 09, 2014 |  |
| Vicarious | Vicarious is an artificial intelligence company that uses the computational principles of the brain to develop general intelligence for robots. The company was founded in 2010 by Dr. Dileep George and D. Scott Phoenix. | $12M | Series B | Nov 06, 2014 |  |

10 of 37 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [SV Angel](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sv-angel) — VC Fund, 11 deals together
- [Tuesday Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tuesday-capital) — VC Fund, 6 deals together
- [Y Combinator](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/y-combinator) — VC Fund, 6 deals together
- [First Round Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/first-round-capital) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [AFSquare](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/afsquare) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Atom Factory](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/atom-factory) — VC Fund, 4 deals together

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## FAQ

### What does A-Grade Investments invest in?

A-Grade Investments invests primarily in Apps, Mobile and Software startups, most often at Series A and Seed stage. Most of the 37 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is A-Grade Investments's check size?

A-Grade Investments typically joins rounds of $700k–$4M at Seed and $5.5M–$8.6M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds A-Grade Investments participates in.

### How do I contact A-Grade Investments?

Public channels for A-Grade Investments include LinkedIn and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### Who are the partners at A-Grade Investments?

The team at A-Grade Investments includes Ron Burkle (Founder). The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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