Sequoia Capital

I’ve been fortunate enough to do AI shows with Sam Altman, Yann LeCun & Arthur Mensch. But this show today with David Cahn at Sequoia Capital is the best of all of them: 🧠 AI’s $600BN question 🏃 Why no one will never train a frontier model on the same data center twice 🏗️ Servers, steel & power: The 3 pillars of the future of AI Not one to be missed, my 8 key takeaways 👇 1. The Oligopoly That is Blowing Billions on AI - Microsoft, Azure, & Google now represent $7T market cap. - Of course they will spend billions to protect their oligopoly - What is most interesting is Meta is the only incumbent that is financing this not with cloud being their cash cow. 2. How Startups Could Win with the Cost of Compute Coming Down - Big tech companies are producers of compute & startups are consumers of compute. - Overproduction of compute = lower prices.  - This gives startups higher margins & makes them more valuable. 3. Is Compute the Currency of the Future or Do the Costs Come Down and It Is Commoditised? - We are forgetting “compute” is a euphemism for a $2BN data center in the middle of nowhere. - They have GPUs & liquid cooling systems that need to be constantly optimized & upgraded. - We cannot simply build 15 years worth of compute all at once.  No one's ever going to train a frontier model on the same data center twice. 4. Data Centre Teams and Model Teams Need to Be Coupled - You cannot have separate teams running data centers & building models. - Elon & Zuck control all their data centres. - It will not work as these models get better & better. 5. Why the Data Center Is the Most Important Asset - There is not much difference between these models today. - AI researchers are jumping from one lab to another. - Scaling laws will become more dominant as these models get bigger. 6. Servers Steel and Power: The Three Bottlenecks of AI Three things: 1. Servers: NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom… 2. Steel: Construction & real estate developers for data centers. 3. Power: All the energy required for AI. - More factories will be built in 12 months for AI and we will see another industrial revolution. 7. You Have to Have a Cash Machine to Play the Big Model Game - Amazon has AWS - Meta has Instagram - Microsoft has Azure - You need a cash machine to compete and it CANNOT be the AI business. 8. There is One Definition of Success in Venture: Are you a Slugger? - If you are generating billion dollar gains, you are a slugger. - Doug Leone, Pat Grady, Andrew Reed are all sluggers. - You cannot be good at this business without being a slugger. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding #sequoia

The team that created GitHub Copilot has spun out and created an AI hacker that performs as well as a 20-year veteran penetration tester — and at superhuman speeds. We backed them from day zero.  Why did Oege de Moor and his team at XBOW create an AI hacker? Because they knew at some point, someone would, and it is imperative that the capabilities of that AI are in the hands of a company that serves the good guys. We backed up the truck because we need to keep U.S. capabilities way ahead of nefarious AI hackers, and we are proud to support Oege and XBOW as they continue transforming offensive security.

There's still time to apply to partner with Sequoia and join our Arc Fall '24 cohort. Applications close tonight, Sunday, August 4th at 11:59 PM PT. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/g8eke_mj

Applications for Arc close Sunday, August 4th at 11:59 PM PT. Apply now to partner with Sequoia and join our Arc Fall '24 cohort. Companies headquartered in the Americas and Europe are welcome to apply. https://lnkd.in/g8eke_mj

Konstantine Buhler joins Andrew Greenstein, CEO of SF AppWorks, on ‘The Next Great Thing’ podcast to share his unique perspective on the evolution of AI, highlighting key milestones such as the deep learning revolution and the impact of groundbreaking algorithms like AlexNet. You’ll hear about Konstantine's vision for the future of AI, where multiple models collaborate and compete to deliver better outcomes. He also shares insights into Arc, our company building immersion designed for pre-seed and seed-stage companies 🙌 🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://bit.ly/3AbbQCo

“If I was a founder right now, I would absolutely adopt open source.” Hot off the heels of the release of Llama 3.1 405B, Meta's AI Product Director Joseph Spisak joined Stephanie Zhan and Sonya Huang to discuss the development of the latest model, the role of open source, why he thinks even frontier models will ultimately commoditize—and why that’s a good thing for the startup ecosystem.

❤️ New Sequoia Capital Training Data pod drop! Llama 3.1 405B officially puts OSS models at the SOTA frontier. 2 days post launch, Joseph Spisak leading Llama at Meta shares w me & Sonya Huang 405B's capabilities he's most excited about, whether this means commoditization of models at the frontier level, whether model development will start to look more like software development, and whether Llama will continue to OSS in the foreseeable future...

The rise of AI has ushered in an exponential rise in cyber attacks. AI is frequently the hacker. Now, for the first time, AI is being used to find the exploits other AIs might use. It has been a privilege to get to know the brilliant Oege de Moor and his team at XBOW since leading their seed round earlier this year, and we look forward to supporting them as they lead the transformation of offensive security. https://lnkd.in/gWs9Whiu

Need more time to get your Arc application in? We hear you. We are extending the application deadline to Sunday, August 4th at 11:59 PM PT. https://lnkd.in/g8eke_mj

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