Why We Invested in Chipp

M25
M25 VC
Published in
3 min readMar 7, 2024

Announcing our second North Dakota investment: Chipp!

Chipp is based in Fargo, ND.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of technology, artificial intelligence — commonly referred to as AI — has emerged as a transformative force that is reshaping industries, influencing people’s daily lives and ushering in a new era of innovation. AI is rapidly transitioning from a niche technology to a mainstream phenomenon. It’s being integrated into applications like virtual assistants, personalized recommendations and predictive analytics. Because so much effort has been devoted to the development and training of large language models, we have now seen a dramatic increase in focus on the applications that can be built on top of them and we have only scratched the surface. Enter Chipp, an enablement tool that will allow a broader range of builders, even those with limited technical expertise in AI, to build and monetize AI applications.

“We are truly excited to partner with Scott and Hunter on the journey for Chipp. In a world where individuals and organizations seek to understand how AI can add value to their own lives or those in their community, network or business — we think Chipp can play a major role in unlocking that potential and making it easy for the future to unfold,” said Mike Asem, Founding Partner. “It’s also exciting to be doing our second investment in North Dakota in less than a year, as we’re starting to see some great opportunities emerge.”

Here’s the Chipp team! 👋

One of the compelling reasons for our investment in Chipp is the prospect of partnering with such an outstanding team. Scott Meyer, Co-Founder & CEO, and Hunter Hodnett, Co-Founder & CTO, both have impressive backgrounds and have been building adjacent products in this space for some time. Scott has dedicated a large portion of his career to entrepreneurial pursuits. In addition to starting and selling multiple companies in the past, he helped to launch the entrepreneurship center at North Dakota State University where he spent time teaching, hosting events and building the startup ecosystem in Fargo and the state of North Dakota. Hunter has extensive experience in software engineering and an entrepreneurial background as well. Throughout his career, he has worked at Home Depot, Amazon — where he worked on the launch of Amazon Music, Reddit and eventually at MetaCrafters — where he met Scott. These qualities are critical in going from zero to one; they’ve shown a tremendous amount of startup scrappiness and an ability to learn fast and iterate quickly. This is demonstrated and validated through Chipp’s rapid adoption by many builders, just months after launching, who were looking for something to fill in the gaps between the raw AI technology developed by OpenAI and the functional tools needed to repackage and productize that technology in a meaningful way. We’re excited to back this team as they learn and experiment in this massive white space.

About Chipp: Chipp makes it easy to build custom ChatGPTs for your business that anyone can use. Build, brand, share, and sell AI tools that easily integrate with your daily workflow. Interested in learning more about the pre-seed round? Check out the ‘Chipp Chat’ app. Ask away!

Learn more: Chipp Raises $800k to Help Businesses Use AI

About M25: M25 is an early-stage venture firm based in Chicago, investing solely in tech startups headquartered in the Midwest. Since launching in 2015, M25 has become the most active investor in the region, quickly becoming the preferred seed investor for the next generation of Midwest unicorns. Portfolio companies include Kin Insurance, Loop Returns, Astronomer, Summersalt, SteadyMD, Branch, Authenticx and more. For more information, please visit www.m25vc.com.

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M25
M25 VC
Editor for

VC focused on Midwest early-stage #startups. Objective and analytical investment process combined with a risk-mitigating portfolio theory.