Mark Weber

Director's Fellow

2024 - Current

Conducting applied AI research, mentoring students, and supporting lab-to-market impact with member companies.

Investor

2023

We join teams from the first spark of a new idea. We seek out mission-oriented entrepreneurs who are determined to solve meaningful problems in the business world. We provide the crucial initial capital to ignite new ideas and relentlessly invest our time, resources and additional capital along your side. We not only provide the capital needed to fuel your vision but also become strategic partners in your success. Financial backing is just the beginning – we go the extra mile to help you thrive. Our experienced team provides unwavering support at every stage of your entrepreneurial journey, fostering deep and valuable long-term relationships. With a proven track record and expansive relationships, our investment and mentoring act as catalysts, propelling our portfolio companies forward. We create unique opportunities for partnerships, collaborations, and market access that might otherwise remain elusive. Together, we amplify success and drive lasting impact.

Investor

2024

At Guide labs, we build interpretable foundation models that can reliably explain their reasoning, and are easy to align. We provide access to these models via an API. Over the past 6 years, our team has built and deployed interpretable models at Meta, and Google. Our models provide explanations that: 1) provide human-understandable explanations, for each output token, 2) which parts of the input (prompt) is most important for each part of the generated output, and 3) which inputs, in the training data, directly led to the model's generated output. Because our models can explain their outputs, they are easier to debug, steer, and align.

Investor

2023

Investor

2023

Senior Lead of Business Innovation, IBM Research

2021 - 2023

Strategy & Operations Lead, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab

2019 - 2021

The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab is a 10-year, $240 million joint-research commitment to the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence. Founded in 2017, currently constitutes over 150 researchers on 49 active projects organized across 4 pillars – AI algorithms, physics of AI, industry applications, and shared prosperity – with many projects hitting multiple pillars. We fund researchers through an annual Request for Proposals and provide internship opportunities for PhD students to work on MIT-IBM projects. We are co-located at MIT and IBM Research Cambridge (75 Binney St.). We are a founding member of the MIT Quest for Intelligence, through which we provide undergraduate research opportunities for academic credit. We provide co-working space, sponsor and organize community events for intellectual collisions and collaboration, and partner with member companies who bring funding, data, or domain expertise. We convene stakeholders and leaders within and across key sectors. We publish at the world’s leading conferences and make much of our work open-source.

Research Scientist, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab

2018 - 2021

The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab is a 10-year, $240 million joint-research commitment to the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence. Founded in 2017, currently constitutes over 150 researchers on 49 active projects organized across 4 pillars – AI algorithms, physics of AI, industry applications, and shared prosperity – with many projects hitting multiple pillars. We fund researchers through an annual Request for Proposals and provide internship opportunities for PhD students to work on MIT-IBM projects. We are co-located at MIT and IBM Research Cambridge (75 Binney St.). We are a founding member of the MIT Quest for Intelligence, through which we provide undergraduate research opportunities for academic credit. We provide co-working space, sponsor and organize community events for intellectual collisions and collaboration, and partner with member companies who bring funding, data, or domain expertise. We convene stakeholders and leaders within and across key sectors. We publish at the world’s leading conferences and make much of our work open-source.

Investor

2021 - 2023

Graduate Researcher, Digital Currency Initiative

2016 - 2018

The Digital Currency Initiative is a group at MIT focusing on cryptocurrency and its underlying technologies. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin enable open, trustless digital payments and contracts. In the spirit of the Internet's wide reach, this technology, and the people behind it, have the potential to impact billions of people and become a crucial part of daily life. We seek to push the envelope on the development of this technology with fundamental research, while shedding light on the associated benefits, risks, and ethical quandaries. Beyond research centered at MIT, we also help support open-source cryptocurrency communities and diversity, and hope to foster a broader academic community in this space.

Documentary Film Producer

2007 - 2016

When I was a junior in college, I convinced a film professor to form an LLC with me so we could raise some money and make a documentary about Bangladesh (Strong Bodies Fight, 2011). After successfully completing the film and playing on the international film festival circuit, I teamed up with Acton Media to co-produce the PovertyCure DVD Series and a feature documentary called Poverty, Inc. Premiering in 2015, Poverty, Inc. earned critical acclaim across the political spectrum and won the $100K Templeton Freedom Award along with over 50 international film festival honors. We landed broad international rights deals (including Netflix) and I toured the country doing hundreds of screenings while living out of a van. Documentary films are basically mini ventures that don’t make any money, but they can have a profound impact on people and society. It was a foundational experience for me and, perhaps surprisingly, the skills I developed transferred seamlessly to my next adventure in technology research and investing.

Intern, Beijing Olympic Games

2008 - 2008