U2 AI Studio venture arm · own capital
We invest our own capital.
U2 AI Invest is the venture arm of U2 AI Studio. We take equity in privately held companies with our own capital. We manage no outside money, run no fund and sell no investment advice. If you are building something, this page is one thing: the door where you apply.
U2 AI Invest is a brand of U2 AI Studio Teknoloji A.S. Nothing on this page is investment advice. We hold no CMB (SPK) licence and carry out no activity that requires one. Past investments do not indicate future results.
Where this starts
The most expensive part of raising is the process that never ends.
A founder can spend months inside somebody else's decision process without ever being told what the criteria were. The meetings repeat, the questions change, the answer never arrives in writing, and the real cost is not the rejection but the calendar spent waiting for it. Time is the one line on a young company's balance sheet that cannot be raised again. We make no claim to be better at picking companies than anyone else, and we publish nothing about how the companies we have backed have performed. What we can control is the process: what we look at, in what order, how long each step takes, and how quickly you hear no. Fourteen brands inside U2 were built through this route, and the portfolio also holds companies that were not built by us. We do not name them on this page, because we do not publish a company's name without its written permission.
Written criteria, a written timeline, and a no that arrives early enough to still be useful to you.
What this is
Our own capital, our own decisions, written boundaries
U2 AI Invest is the venture arm of U2 AI Studio Teknoloji A.S. We invest our own equity in privately held companies. We do not manage other people's money, we do not sell investment advice, and we do not raise funds from investors or the public. This page is an application gate: if you are building something, apply and we will evaluate it.
What we back
Field, stage and quality
- Software and applied AI companies that are already building. A running product or a live pilot tells us more than a deck does.
- Early stage, privately held companies whose shares are not offered to the public. Share issues of non-public joint stock companies that are not offered to the public fall outside Capital Markets Law No. 6362 under Article 2(1). That scope rule is what places this kind of investment outside the Law; the limits below are stated separately and on their own footing.
- We look for a team that owns its technical decisions, a problem someone already pays to have solved, and depth in data or workflow that is not copied over a weekend.
- We do not publish a ticket size here. Numbers without a signed document are noise. If we proceed, terms are discussed directly and put in writing.
- Where we sit on the cap table. We take minority stakes. We do not ask for control, we do not require a board seat as a condition of investing, and we do not take veto rights over ordinary operating decisions. Anything beyond that is negotiated and written down, never assumed.
- Regulated sectors are welcome, on the understanding that legal and financial conclusions belong to your own advisers and never to us.
How we decide
Axes and process
- Five axes, applied in the same order every time: team, evidence that the product works, technical depth, real demand, and how far a lira goes in your hands.
- The first pass is a written read of what you sent. Nobody gets a meeting before somebody has actually read the application.
- If we continue, we look at the build itself: architecture, data handling, dependency risk, and what breaks at ten times the load. This is a technical review. It is not an audit, not an assurance engagement, and no audit or assurance opinion is issued.
- A no arrives early and in writing, with the axis that failed named. We would rather disappoint you while the answer is still useful to you than keep an application open.
- Past investments are not an indication of future results, for you or for us. Nothing on this page is investment advice.
Beyond the capital
Group engineering
- The group has built and shipped production software across carbon accounting, regulated data platforms, mobile products and internal AI tooling. That experience is available to companies we invest in.
- Practical help looks like architecture review, hiring calibration for engineering roles, and the corporate scaffolding a young company usually lacks: process, documentation discipline, release hygiene.
- Disclosed openly: other companies in the group sell services, including u2aipoc.com and u2aiconsulting.com. A company we invest in may end up buying services from one of them.
- How we manage that: any such engagement is a separate commercial contract at arm's length, it is never a condition of investment, and the decision belongs to the company's own board and shareholders, not to us alone.
- If you would rather buy nothing from the group, that has no bearing on our investment decision. Say so and it is recorded.
- What this costs. Time from our own people, given as an investor, is not invoiced. Anything that amounts to a delivery project is a separate commercial engagement with its own contract and its own price, decided by the company and never a condition of the investment.
Portfolio
In house and outside
- Fourteen brands have been built inside the group: Carbon, Legal, Portal, FinTech, HR, Agro, Energy, Audit, Innovation, Readiness, Defence, Quantum, Robotics and Visibility.
- Beyond those, the portfolio also includes companies from outside U2.
- We do not print the names or logos of outside portfolio companies here. Written permission is what makes that acceptable, and we do not have it on file for every company, so the list stays unnamed.
- We publish no growth multiples, no valuations and no exit figures. Claims like that carry a burden of proof, and a marketing page is the wrong place to carry it.
- The figure of forty plus completed projects belongs to U2 AI Studio as a whole. It is not a U2 AI Invest number and should not be read as one.
Where we stop
Limits we do not cross
- We invest our own capital. We do not manage anyone else's portfolio and we do not accept money to invest on someone's behalf.
- We do not provide investment advice or portfolio management within the meaning of Capital Markets Law No. 6362, Article 37, and we do not provide the ancillary services listed in Article 38, including wealth management, financial planning and capital markets consultancy.
- We hold no Capital Markets Board licence and carry out no activity that requires one. We do not raise funds, we do not operate a crowdfunding platform, and there is no fund here to join.
- We do not describe ourselves as a licensed angel investor or as a venture capital fund or company, because we hold none of those licences.
- We give no legal opinion, no tax or accountancy opinion, and no audit or assurance service. Instruments such as term sheets or convertible notes may come up in conversation; verify every one of them with your own lawyer.
Applying in the open
Disclosure and conflicts
- Material you send is not treated as confidential unless a separate written confidentiality agreement has been signed. We say this before you send anything, not after.
- We may already be working on something similar, inside the group or with another company. Sending us your plan does not stop that work and does not create a claim over it.
- If you have something you cannot afford to disclose on those terms, hold it back and tell us it exists. A first application rarely needs your deepest technical detail.
- Conflicts are recorded rather than hidden. If we already hold a position in a company close to yours, we say so before the conversation goes further.
- Applications go through the form. Personal data in the form is handled under the privacy notice linked with it, and there is no purchase or subscription step anywhere on this page.
- The other direction, which founders actually worry about. If we say no, your application is not passed to the commercial side of the group as a sales lead, and no U2 brand approaches you off the back of it. If you want to be contacted about paid services, you have to ask.
How it works
From application to a written answer
You apply
One form. What you are building, who is using it, what has been shipped so far, and what you would do with capital. No introduction is needed and none is worth more than the answers. Send only what you are willing to share before a confidentiality agreement exists, because until one is signed the material is not treated as confidential.
We read it
Somebody reads the application before any meeting is scheduled. At this stage we are checking three things: whether the company is privately held and fits our scope, whether something real has been built, and whether we hold a position that would put us in conflict with you. If a conflict exists, you hear about it here rather than later.
We look at the build
A working session with the founders and a review of the product itself: architecture, data handling, dependency risk, and what fails under load. We also ask what the group could realistically contribute beyond capital, and where it could not. This is our own review for our own decision. It is not an audit, no assurance is given, and no opinion is issued to anyone.
You get an answer
A decision, in writing, either way. If it is no, you are told why in plain terms and whether a later stage would change the answer. If it is yes, terms are discussed directly with you and put on paper, and you take that paper to your own lawyer before signing anything. Past investments are not an indication of future results.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Four groups, four conversations
There is one action on this page and it is an application. What changes is who is writing and what we can usefully do about it. We invest our own capital in companies that are not publicly held. We do not manage money for anyone else, we do not raise it, and we do not sell advice about where to put it.
Founders raising capital
Write to us in plain language: what the company does, who is behind it, what already exists, and what the money would be spent on. One person reads every application and answers either way. If it fits, we ask for a call, and after that for the material we need to form our own view of the product, the technical risk, the team and the numbers you have. That review is made for our own decision. It is not an audit, not an assurance engagement and not a valuation. We give no legal or tax opinion, and anything of that kind belongs with your own lawyer and your own advisers.
Corporate venture arms
Corporate venture units and innovation teams that invest from their own balance sheet. Two conversations are usually worth having. The first is a company both sides have already looked at, where each invests on its own account, on its own decision and on its own terms. The second is how a corporate venturing programme runs in practice: how applications arrive, how they are screened, how a no is written, how a minority stake is held and reported. We can tell you how ours works. We do not run yours, we do not manage anyone else's money, and we take no fee for an introduction.
Funds and angel investors
Funds and licensed individual participation investors are here as co-investors and nothing else. Where a company we have decided to back is raising more than we are putting in, that company runs its own conversations with whoever it chooses; we do not introduce, match, refer or place companies with investors, we receive no fee, commission or other benefit for any such thing, and we make no recommendation to you about any company. We are not raising a fund and we collect money from no one. Nothing on this page is sold to you and nothing here is investment advice. One boundary is worth stating plainly: where we hold or are about to hold shares in a company, no U2 brand sells you a technical opinion on that company. A review bought from a party with a stake in the answer is not worth buying.
Technoparks and accelerators
Technoparks, incubation centres and accelerators with a cohort to place. We will read a batch, sit on a selection panel, tell a cohort what a first investor actually reads in an application, and look at companies coming out of a programme. What we cannot do is promise anything about public support: whether a company qualifies for a grant, an incentive or a tax measure is decided by the institution that runs the scheme, and we neither obtain nor guarantee it. We charge nothing for programme work and we ask for no exclusivity over a cohort.
WHY US
Four things we say before you apply
The money at risk is ours
We invest our own equity in companies that are not publicly held. There is no fund behind us, no outside money in the decision, and no one whose capital we answer for. If an investment goes badly the loss sits on our own balance sheet. That is why this page can be short: we are not selling a product, not managing anyone's portfolio and not raising money, so the only thing we need from you is an application. Past investments are not an indication of any future result.
We built fourteen of these ourselves
Fourteen sub-brands were built inside the group: Carbon, Legal, Portal, FinTech, HR, Agro, Energy, Audit, Innovation, Readiness, Defence, Quantum, Robotics and Visibility. We wrote the code, hired the people, shipped, and got a number of things wrong on the way. The portfolio also holds companies from outside the group; their names are not on this page and will not be, because we publish no company name without its written consent. We are an operator that invests, not only an investor, and that mostly shows up in the questions we ask.
The conflict of interest is written down
The same group invests here and sells services elsewhere, through u2aipoc.com and u2aiconsulting.com. A company we invest in may therefore be offered work by another part of the group. We handle that by writing it on the page: such work is a separate contract, priced as for any other client, never a condition of an investment and never set off against it, decided by different people, and disclosed to the company's other shareholders. If you would rather buy nothing from the group, that changes nothing about the investment.
A no arrives early and says why
You get a written answer either way, and you get it while it is still useful to you. Where the answer is no we say what drove it: outside what we understand, too early or too late for us, a market we cannot judge, or a subject we are already committed elsewhere on. A no is a statement about where we can be useful, not a verdict on your company.
APPLY
Tell us what the company does
A paragraph or two is enough to begin: what the company does, who is behind it, what exists today, and what the money would be used for. Plain language is better than a polished deck. We read every application ourselves and we answer either way.
Thanks. We'll get back to you within one business day.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Whose money do you invest?
Our own. U2 AI Invest is the venture arm of U2 AI Studio Teknoloji A.S., and every investment is made from the company's own equity. We do not manage money for anyone else, we do not pool capital, and we do not raise funds from the public or from investors. Under Article 2(1) of Capital Markets Law No. 6362, share issues by joint stock companies that are not publicly held and are not offered to the public fall outside the scope of that Law. That scope rule is about share issues that are not offered to the public, which is the setting we invest in: our own capital, into companies that are not publicly held. It is not a blanket exemption for everything a company might do, which is why the rest of these boundaries are set out separately. The ground is the scope rule, not the absence of outside money: taking equity in a company whose shares are not offered to the public sits outside the Law to begin with. Separately, we carry out none of the investment services and activities listed in Article 37 and none of the ancillary services in Article 38, and Article 39(1) reserves those to authorised investment institutions.
Is anything on this site investment advice?
No. Nothing on this site is investment advice, and no sentence here should be read as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Portfolio management under Article 37(1)(ç) and investment advice under Article 37(1)(d) of Law No. 6362 may only be carried out by authorised investment firms that hold permission from the Capital Markets Board. We hold no such authorisation and we carry out no activity that requires one. We also do not provide the ancillary services listed in Article 38 of the same Law, including capital markets consultancy, wealth management and financial planning. Past investments are not an indication of any future result.
How much do you invest?
We do not publish a ticket size. Any range we printed would be wrong for most of the companies that read it, and a number on a web page tends to be treated as a promise. The amount, the instrument and the terms are set case by case and only ever in a signed written agreement. What we can publish is what we look at, so that you can rule us out without spending a week on it: something that already runs rather than a deck; a named technical owner who stays; a problem with an identifiable buyer; a data or workflow position that survives the next model release; a team that understands the regulatory ground it is standing on; and a willingness to work alongside an operating technology group rather than only receive money.
If I send you my plan, is it confidential?
Not automatically, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise. What you send is kept within the review team and handled with care, but it does not become legally confidential unless a written non-disclosure agreement has been signed by both sides. We are also an operating group with fourteen brands of our own: we may already be working on, or may later work on, something that resembles your idea, whether we ever saw your application or not. So send enough to explain the problem, the team and the traction, and hold back anything you are not prepared to have read without an agreement in place. If a review goes further and you want one signed first, say so and we will look at it.
Who is in your portfolio?
Fourteen brands were built inside U2 itself, and they are visible under their own names: Carbon, Legal, Portal, FinTech, HR, Agro, Energy, Audit, Innovation, Readiness, Defence, Quantum, Robotics and Visibility. Beyond those, investments have also been made in companies outside the group. We do not name them here. A portfolio company name or logo goes on this page only where written consent for that use exists, and where it does not, the company stays unnamed. For the same reason we publish no growth figures, no exits and no company outcomes of any kind. If you are considering an application and want to speak to a founder we have backed, ask us and we will ask them first.
Will you sell us your group's services?
It is possible, and you should know that before you apply rather than after. The same group both invests here and sells services through u2aipoc.com and u2aiconsulting.com, which is a real conflict of interest. We manage it in the open. The investment decision and any service sale are taken by different people and recorded separately in writing. Buying anything from the group is never a condition of an investment, and refusing costs you nothing in the review. Where a portfolio company does buy, it does so on the same published terms as anyone else, at the decision of its own board, and it remains free to use any other supplier. If that arrangement makes you uncomfortable, say so early and we will keep the two apart.
We are a fund or an angel investor. How would we work with you?
As co-investors, each of us with our own money and our own decision. We do not raise, pool or manage capital, we are not looking for investors, and nothing on this site is an offer, a solicitation or an invitation to put money anywhere. In practice that means we may look at the same company at the same time, each run our own review, and each decide alone. We do not pass our view of a company to you and we make no recommendation about any company: our review is made for our own decision, and yours is yours to make. We introduce, match and refer nobody, and we take no fee, commission or other benefit in connection with anyone's investment.
How long before we hear a no?
Early, and in writing. We do not publish a day count on this page, because a number we cannot hold in every case is worth less than the commitment behind it: applications are read in the order they arrive, a no is sent as soon as one axis clearly fails rather than at the end of the process, and no application is left open without an answer. If a decision is going to take longer because we want to see the product working, we tell you that instead of going quiet.