So great openings at the most exciting AI companies around.. @RobertNWeber has the details!
Michael King retweeted
1/ Exciting news to share! 🚀 We're thrilled to double down on our partnership with @burkaygur, @gorkem and the @fal team, together with friends @KindredVentures and @firstround. xitter.cf/FAL/status/18364808791…
We've raised $23M from Kindred Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Perplexity CEO @AravSrinivas, Vercel’s @rauchg , @balajis and Huggingface CTO @julien_c.
Michael King retweeted
Thrilled to share that a16z is leading the Series A of @usepylon - the customer support platform purposefully built for B2B companies. This problem space is near and dear to my heart given my personal experience, see blog & a 🧵 a16z.com/announcement/invest…
cc @zeyalater @jeffreysilv
Michael King retweeted
AI is insecure by default.
The open secret is that most AI apps launch with serious flaws. It takes MORE time to secure these apps than it does to build them.
I learned this firsthand from shipping LLM agents to 200M users at Discord and supporting LLM evals for hundreds of companies.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Today, we’re launching @Promptfoo, an open-source company that helps find and fix vulnerabilities in AI powered apps before they ship, and announcing a $5M seed round led by @a16z.
Michael King retweeted
1/ 🤓🚀🇺🇸 Builders can make great investors. We know this well @a16z — we were founded by technical founders (@pmarca and @bhorowitz) and we're a firm run by founders and technologists. And we want more technologists on the team...
Michael King retweeted
Proud to announce that @CapeWireless has raised $61M led by @A_StarVC and @a16z to build the privacy-focused mobile service.
This is a big step for Cape — here’s how we got here, why privacy matters, and how the cellular network is key to regaining control of our personal data:
Michael King retweeted
We've raised a $1.25B infrastructure fund! We love all infra, compute, network, storage, databases, data science, gen AI, dev tools ... from silicon to UIs.
Infra is the true root of value in tech. And we're deepening our commitment to it.
a16z.com/new-funds-new-era/
Michael King retweeted
We’ve raised $7.2b to continue investing in the future. You can read more here:
a16z.com/new-funds-new-era/
@a16z
This is huge, if you are building or thinking about building in Games, there's no better team to work with.
BIG NEWS:
i'm investing $30M in the next 45 days via the a16z SPEEDRUN program 😎
Yes, $750k per startup that joins the SPEEDRUN program plus obv it'll be a great way to work together on something. So come work with me at a16z's SPEEDRUN program -- we'll invest, work with you, expose you to the world's top investors/mentors, etc.
here's the best place to apply:
sr.a16z.com
Important dates and program details
Deadline: May 19, 2024
Notified of Selection: End of June at the latest!
Program Dates: July 29 - Oct 20 in Los Angeles ☀️
Our intensive 12-week program is highly selective, with ~ 1% of applicants accepted in our last cohort. Participants are supported not just with capital, but also by a highly curated set of industry coaches, mentors, and a community of ambitious founders. 80% of companies from SPEEDRUN’s first cohort secured funding from investors following Demo Day.
for example, in the most recent program, we had an amazing set of speakers:
- Mark Pincus, cofounder of Zynga
- Emily Greer, cofounder of Kongregate
- Eros Resmini, cofounder of Discord
- Kevin Lin, cofounder of Twitch
- ... and dozens more
What kinds of startups are we looking for?
tbh -- we are very open-minded! Great teams with ideas, before a product is built, is totally fine. But we also have startups with real revenue, a great product out there already, etc.
We are investing at the intersection of TECH x GAMES which means AI/infra, 3D tools, VR/AR, web3 games, gamified consumer apps, and much more. For AI and B2B startups, there's a huge advantage in being able to meet startups in your space as potential customers, and when you are working out product/market fit.
Infrastructure= making AI awesome (by making it work)
Michael King retweeted
Insurance is a $7 trillion global data and risk business. Yet large parts of the insurance industry struggle to take advantage of modern data infrastructure. @joeschmidtiv & I are excited to announce our investment in hx! 🧵👇a16z.com/announcement/invest…
Some of you all know my very first career was in music and sound system engineering. Timing-wise this was the start of general purpose computers replacing specific hardware in music production. AI is a even bigger shift and @venturetwins and @illscience wrote a great piece on it
Introducing our thesis on AI x music 🎶
Just as synthesizers and samplers revolutionized the music industry, generative tools will power the next creative leap for consumers, artists, and producers.
More from me + @illscience 👇
Thanks for sharing this story!
The dream of becoming a park ranger has not died for the record 🙂
Thanks @mercury for sharing my/Vantage's story a bit more in detail!
I've worked with public safety systems in the past, this is a huge upgrade and its exciting to see: The Superhero Stack: Upgrading Our First-Responder and Public Safety Systems a16z.com/the-superhero-stack…
Michael King retweeted
1/ Software easily crosses borders-often just requiring language translation. Money also crosses borders- but w/ opaque FX rates & costly delays. We dive into who is solving these problems & opps for future. See #a16z global payment hub for a map & more! a16z.com/global-payments/
I've been using @ideogram_ai for a little while now, the mix of community and creativity is amazing, thank you for building this!
We're excited to announce the formation of Ideogram AI today! Our mission is to help people become more creative through Generative AI. ideogram.ai/launch
This was a great event, so much learning.
The inaugural @a16zGames' AI Roundtable was a huge success 💪
Goal was to bring together top builders and thinkers in AI to help shine a light for gaming industry leaders
250+ founders, research and industry execs attended
A few highlights 👇
