Schmidt-Backed Pro-America Fund Has Started Placing Its Bets

America’s Frontier Fund, an unusual endeavor to support technology breakthroughs that it deems to be in the national interest, has made its first startup investments through a new venture capital firm.

Backed by marquee tech names like Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt and Sam Palmisano, the organization bills itself as the first nonprofit investment platform dedicated to boosting US innovation and manufacturing. The group will focus on science at the edge of what’s currently possible — a category sometimes called “deep tech” — with a focus on fields like artificial intelligence, chips and quantum science. The group, AFF for short, aims to boost technologies that will solidify America’s geopolitical position both economically and militarily.