Mark Sears, a 2014 Praxis Fellow with CloudFactory, a large digital and artificial intelligence (AI) services venture, has been working on the leading edge of technology all his life. Over the past several years, he has observed—with awe and concern—the meteoric takeup of using powerful new AI tools such as Large Language Models (LLMs) to replace, rather than facilitate, human relationships.
In response, he launched Sprout AI Studio, a venture that starts ventures, partnering with visionary founders to build AI that amplifies genuine relationships and human flourishing in the digital age.
Sprout’s design, thesis, and launch have resulted from collaboration between Mark and the Praxis Studio team from the start. As a Praxis board member, he joined in early strategic conversations as we re-imagined our venture studio model. Our new approach is to concentrate capital, convene redemptive entrepreneurs with domain expertise, and launch ventures targeted at each of our Opportunities for Redemptive Imagination (ORIs). This ORI list is an evolving menu of major issues where we believe the Church is called to offer creative and prophetic leadership; and AI rose immediately to the top of our priority opportunities.
Mark stepped into a role with Praxis in which he wears many hats: in addition to his board responsibilities, he is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) in the Studio, working with our team to build Sprout AI Studio as a new venture. (Yes, a venture-building studio launching a venture-building studio is admittedly a bit “meta”; but it’s a collaboration that we pray will bear much fruit.)
Mark also serves as the lead Praxis Venture Partner for the AI working group across the Praxis community. In this capacity he helped us convene and lead our first AI Forum in April 2024—a gathering of roughly a dozen founders and funders building AI-powered ventures and tools, along with several redemptive-minded technology thinkers.
This multi-day Forum yielded insights for Sprout itself, many of which have been captured in their Relational Renaissance Manifesto: Reclaiming Humanity in the Age of AI. This roadmap for Sprout’s future ventures begins with the most important questions relative to the redemptive edge of artificial intelligence: What does it mean to be human? What is real? From there, they contextualize our Redemptive Frame into an elegant paradigm for evaluating and building AI—contrasting the world’s prevailing “HARM” model with the radically person-honoring “CARE” model.
More broadly, the Forum is also shaping how the ventures in our portfolio (and beyond) can build and implement AI at the redemptive edge. Mark and Praxis Partner Andy Crouch co-authored A Redemptive Thesis for Artificial Intelligence, which captures the key risks of AI and suggests several opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation. Its primary audience is founders, funders, and builders in the Praxis community and beyond; and the Praxis Studio will explore some of these opportunities as new venture ideas with future EIRs.