AI developer infrastructure
Braintrust
Tools for evaluating AI outputs, tracing agents, and turning real-world behavior into tests that help teams improve their products.
Investing & independent development
A long view.
A builder’s mindset.
The MWK Revocable Trust is a private organization focused on technology investing and the development of useful software, apps, and tools.
Private organizationTechnology investing · Software development
Capital and craft,
under one roof.
Invest with curiosity
Our investment interests center on artificial intelligence, developer infrastructure, and tools that expand what people can do with technology.
Stay close to the work
We build software ourselves. Developing apps, exploring new ideas, and solving practical problems keeps our perspective grounded in the work of making products.
01 / Investing
Selected investments
Our interests are reflected in Mike Knoop’s published investment history: companies advancing AI, building new software infrastructure, and putting powerful tools into people’s hands.
Software engineering
Cognition
The team behind Devin, an AI software engineering agent that works with existing codebases to plan, write, and test code.
Speech & voice AI
Cartesia
Speech generation and transcription models, with infrastructure for developers to build responsive, conversational voice experiences.
Data & productivity
Julius
AI tools that help people analyze data and spreadsheets, understand results, and turn their findings into reports and presentations.
Foundation models
Inception Labs
Developers of Mercury language models, using diffusion to generate and refine multiple pieces of text in parallel.
AI automation
Agemo
An AI research and development company behind CodeWords, which helps people create workflow automations by describing what they need.
Embodied intelligence
New Theory
New AI architectures informed by neuroscience and geometric deep learning, with applications in robotics and embodied intelligence.
AI research
After Thought
A private research lab exploring approaches to artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science.
Physics & causal AI
Causal Labs
Physics foundation models that use weather as a setting for learning cause and effect, prediction, and decision-making.
Listed in Mike’s portfolio as ClimatixAI interpretability
CTGT
Research and tools for understanding model behavior and helping organizations align AI outputs with their policies.
Personal AI
Limitless
Developed AI tools and the Pendant wearable to record, transcribe, and retrieve conversations.
Acquired by Meta · 2025AI data & evaluation
Sepal
Built training datasets, evaluation benchmarks, and reinforcement learning environments to help improve AI models.
Acquired by Mercor · 2026Selected current and historical investments publicly listed by Mike Knoop. Company names link to their websites or acquisition information.
02 / Software & products
Useful things,
built with care.
Independent development is part of the office’s work. Our interests span mobile apps, focused utilities, and experiments with new technology, informed by Mike Knoop’s history of building software.
Featured app · iPhone & iPad
Techmemer
A native reader for Techmeme that brings the technology news cycle to iPhone and iPad. Catch up on stories, keep the ones that matter, and return to the news on your own terms.
Built by Mike Knoop.
View on the App Store- Read the day’s technology news
Explore Techmeme’s stories and related coverage in a native app.
- Save your favorites
Bookmark stories and sync favorites across devices with iCloud.
- Go back. Or listen in.
Browse news from earlier dates and listen with integrated podcast playback.
From the development archive
Earlier projects by Mike Knoop
Pioneer DVR recovery tools
Python utilities for recovering video from DVR hard-drive images, including extracting MPEG data and combining or splitting the recovered files.
Read the project notesKnoop vs. Zombies
An open-source game engine for Humans vs. Zombies, with player registration, game management, moderator tools, and community forums.
Explore the source code03 / Perspective
An investor’s curiosity.
An operator’s experience.
The office’s investing and development interests are informed by Mike Knoop’s work as a software builder and co-founder of Zapier, Ndea, and ARC Prize Foundation.
That experience spans automation, product design, AI research, and hands-on engineering. It provides context for the technologies we follow and the practical products we choose to build.
More about Mike Knoop- Zapier Co-founder
Software for connecting apps and automating workflows.
- Ndea Co-founder
An AI research lab combining deep learning and program synthesis.
- ARC Prize Foundation Co-founder
A nonprofit advancing open AI research through benchmarks and prizes.