Profile of Ashton Kutcher

Hollywood heart-throb Ashton Kutcher has been labeled Silicon Valley's savviest investor. The US sit-com star and husband of Demi Moore manages his own fund of internet start-ups - but is it all just noise?

Life often imitates art, but perhaps never as strangely as in the case of Ashton Kutcher, the heart-throb US actor better known in Britain as Mr Demi Moore, says The Observer. This week Kutcher, 33, replaced Charlie Sheen in the cult TV show Two And A Half Men: he will play an internet billionaire. How apt for the actor described by some as one of the "savviest" investors in Silicon Valley.

"Kutcher has carved out a reputation as a master of the highly complex and ultra-competitive start-up scene", investing in some 40 different technology projects either through his Katalyst fund or as an individual. They include some of the biggest names in internet technology, such as the phone service Skype, alongside much smaller start-ups, "some of which are a closely guarded secret". There's a lot of buzz in particular around a German project called Amen, which claims to be "strangely addictive", says The Washington Post. Kutcher has invested alongside Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary. But what is it? Nobody else seems to know. Anyone who has studied the history of bubbles will find troubling echoes in that (see below).

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