VC Firm Spacecadet Ventures Launches Creative Company Led by Former Johannes Leonardo CMO

Marketing-focused venture capital firm Spacecadet Ventures has launched Spacecadet Studio, a new AI-native creative company led by John McCarthy, most recently CMO at Johannes Leonardo.

The Studio is designed to work exclusively with emerging technology businesses across sectors including gene therapy, robotics, native AI and space infrastructure, marking an expansion of Spacecadet Ventures’ activity beyond investment into creative and brand-building services.

Spacecadet Ventures has invested in more than 100 frontier technology companies and is backed by founders from companies including a16z, Reddit, Slack and YouTube. The firm says Spacecadet Studio is intended to offer a new operating model for brand building, built specifically for companies developing new technologies at pace.

“Every breakthrough brand is science fiction that learned to speak the language of the present. At Spacecadet, we work with founders building impossible things – gene therapies, embodied intelligence, space infrastructure – because that's where the future of brand building is being written,” said John. “Traditional models weren't built for this pace of change, and you can't rewire them fast enough. The future is at the frontier, where science fiction becomes reality. That's not where we visit. That's where we live.”

John previously served as Johannes Leonardo’s first-ever CMO, president of DDB West and SVP of strategy at Y Media Labs. He is joined by creative leaders who have held senior positions at agencies including R/GA and Anomaly, bringing together traditional agency experience with a venture-backed, AI-first mandate.

Spacecadet Studio’s inaugural clients include Autograph, an AI-powered biographer designed to preserve personal stories in an individual’s own voice; Cytronic, a robotics fulfilment company automating warehouse workflows; K2 Space, a company focused on space infrastructure; and Lir Therapeutics, which is developing AI-driven gene therapies.

The Studio says it treats artificial intelligence as a creative canvas rather than a cost-cutting tool – an approach it refers to internally as ‘Bias AI for everything' – using AI to explore new forms of expression for synthetic beings, AI companions and, synthetic brand systems and personalised storytelling.

According to the company, Spacecadet Studio combines senior creative leadership with access to Spacecadet Ventures’ investment activity and network of frontier technology companies.

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