Though Ann Bordetsky’s life started in Chelyabinsk, located in Russia’s Ural Mountains, by 11, her family had moved to Columbia, S.C.
“When you grow up in an immigrant family, your entire life is kind of a startup,” she said.
So it perhaps was natural that after spending the first part of her career in policy in Washington, D.C., she gravitated to startups. Bordetsky held business development leadership roles at both Twitter and Uber during each company’s rise. She ultimately joined NEA as a partner in 2021, where she now focuses on consumer AI investments.
“For me, the through line has always been that I’m already in the best place in the world, so why do something safe? I should work on things that truly matter, that move the world forward in a meaningful way,” Bordetsky told Fortune. “Who are the individuals that truly have a different take on the world? It’s not just backing them as an investor, but asking who the remarkable individuals I want to spend my time with are. Time is more limited than capital.”
Key companies Bordetsky has backed include Perplexity (last valued at $9 billion), ElevenLabs (last valued at $3.3 billion), and Ceramic AI (started by Google AI legend Anna Patterson). She has always been drawn to companies expressly chasing global audiences.
“I think this is sort of related to my immigrant upbringing—I implicitly value things that create economic empowerment,” Bordetsky said. “I think Perplexity, in a way, is an example of that. They’re all about connecting you with information, access to knowledge. And access to intelligence and information is a form of economic empowerment. That was the original economic catalyst of the internet and the open web, and I think AI has the potential to allow us to really learn new skills, learn new languages, and learn very quickly in a way that creates opportunity.” (Fortune has a partnership with Perplexity.)
Bordetsky believes we’re in the midst of an AI consumer renaissance, and that consumers are now curious, willing to try new things in a way they may not have been in the past. Gen Z, in particular, is illustrative of where things are heading.
“I’m still shocked at how quickly consumer behavior is changing right now, in shifting toward AI-first products, and specifically AI answer engines,” she said. “I’ll name two statistics that blew me away. One, basically 95% of Gen Z already uses AI tools at work every single day. So Gen Z is the tip of the spear for adoption, as every new generation is. But that shift is pretty remarkable. Second, today, over 60% of Gen Z and millennials actually start search on AI tools, not Google. And that’s two years into that AI transition.”
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