Emerging VC benchmarks

Interesting new data being shared by Carta measuring emerging VC benchmarks (report attached and a video of Sapphire Partners and Carta discussing this data is also available online)...    With the rise in interest rates, funding has slowed, coupled with a slowdown in M&A as well as IPOs. Funds have struggled to attract LP (Limited Partner) investments.   The outcome of the presidential election, as well as the Fed’s rate-cutting policies/timings, is expected to have a positive impact...

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Is Google in trouble??

Google has been in the news quite a bit over the last 1-2 months. ❌Google lost its antitrust search monopoly case against the DOJ in early August. A federal U.S. judge ruled that Google has illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising. The court focused on Google’s exclusive search arrangements on Android and Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices. This week, Google lost its appeal in the European Union’s top court for violating antitrust rules...

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Came across this LLM 3D visualisation tool that shows the decoder-only architecture used in GPT models.

Came across this LLM 3D visualisation tool that shows the decoder-only architecture used in GPT models. https://bbycroft.net/llm It's very interesting to see the processes broken down step by step in this nano example. Using ChatGPT daily, the initial wow factors have worn off, and we've taken this tool for granted. Reading and clicking through this visual guide really does make you appreciate what is going on under the hood. Sam Altman from OpenAI stated that ChatGPT now has...

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The Oasis ticket sale debacle over the last few days has brought “dynamic pricing” and the company Live Nation into the spotlight once again.  

The Oasis ticket sale debacle over the last few days has brought "dynamic pricing" and the company Live Nation into the spotlight once again.   https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/what-is-dynamic-pricing-that-has-angered-oasis-fans-2024-09-02/   The UK government was already reviewing ticket sale practices and issued a statement saying they “will investigate how ticket prices fluctuate whilst being sold on official sites.”   Ticketmaster first introduced dynamic pricing in 2022 to combat ticket touts/resellers scalping tickets for profit.   ️Oasis released a statement:...

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Interesting article on Nvidia work culture has been circulating this last week. 

Interesting article on Nvidia work culture has been circulating this last week.    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-employees-often-seven-days-193653866.html   ‍Employees work extremely long hours but have one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry. Nvidia had a turnover rate of 2.7% in 2023 compared to Meta (17.5%) Amazon (15.7%) (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/decoding-staff-turnover-deep-dive-tech-sector-aura-ceo-6strc/)   Nvidia have a work from home policy unlike big tech, but also has had a 3000% appreciation in share price since 2019!!    Are...

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Nvidia Q2 ’24 results

Apologies for another Nvidia post but couldn't help but put Bloomberg on yesterday and this morning, fascinating to see the impact one company is having on technology, financial markets, and industry in general.. Some talking points that grabbed my attention- Nvidia is valued @ $3T- circa 6% of S&P, 11% of Nasdaq, 14% of Philadelphia semiconductor index Nvidia has posted 6 consecutive quarters of triple digit revenue growth.. Nvidia has a circa 92% market share in data centre GPUs 50% of Nvidia’s revenue come from...

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Will this California bill to regulate AI protect consumers or gut tech?

Interesting article on Sb 1047, is this law harming California's competitiveness or needed to ensure consumer protection and public safety??
#sb1047 #AISafety or #Overregulation
Original article: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-08/california-artificial-intelligence-regulation-bill-wiener?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8ZL8SVemNonof6LKUCEKdCLlbyf4d0C2PzIV_eFptM5Xll35373zadiInWax2Gy90IDwufFiNx2rKLkkA_YdGYUbxB7Xmb_1r_3Eg3BbjqN1Hp5X4&_hsmi=319765830&utm_content=319766813&utm_source=hs_email California is a world leader in artificial intelligence — which means we’re expected to help figure out how to regulate it. The state is considering multiple bills to those ends, none attracting more attention than Senate Bill 1047. The measure, introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would require companies producing the largest AI models to...

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Cognition emerges from stealth to launch AI software engineer Devin

Original article: https://venturebeat.com/ai/cognition-emerges-from-stealth-to-launch-ai-software-engineer-devin/ Today, Cognition, a recently formed AI startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and tech industry leaders including former Twitter executive Elad Gil and Doordash co-founder Tony Xu, announced a fully autonomous AI software engineer called “Devin”. While there are multiple coding assistants out there, including the famous Github Copilot, Devin is said to stand out from the crowd with its ability to handle entire development projects end-to-end, right from writing the code and fixing the bugs...

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AI boss Sam Altman ousted after board loses confidence

Original article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67458603  

Sam Altman has been ousted as the head of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI by the company's board, which said it had lost confidence in his ability to lead the company.

The board said Mr Altman had not been "consistently candid with his communications", hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.

The 38-year-old helped launch OpenAI, which is behind the ChatGPT bot.

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