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☆ A popular YouTuber's negative video of Humane's AI Pin raises questions about critical reviews in the age of innovation
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-16 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In today's big story, we're looking at a critical tech review that caused a bit of a stir on social media . AdvertisementIn a 25-minute video , Brownlee details all the issues he encountered using the AI device. Earlier this year, a negative video of Fisker's Ocean SUV by Brownlee also made waves on social media . Mario Tama/Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BICritical reviews in the age of innovation raise some interesting questions. Last week's drop among tech stocks shouldn't scare away investors , according to Wedbush.

Persons: —, Michael Pollan, Roy Rochlin, Marques Brownlee, Brownlee, X, Mario Tama, Chelsea Jia Feng, It's, Insider's Peter Kafka, Peter, Katie Notopolous, Goldman, David Solomon, Kevin Winter, Eric Newcomer, Rebecca Zisser, Caitlin Clark, Morgan Stanley, Dan DeFrancesco, Jordan Parker Erb, Hallam Bullock, George Glover Organizations: Business, Service, YouTube, Apple, Apple Vision, Humane, America, JPMorgan, National Bureau, Statistics, Amazon Prime, Street Journal, Justice Department, Ticketmaster, United Airlines, Bank of America, The Locations: San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, London, Dublin

☆ Eric Newcomer is bringing his Cerebral Valley AI Summit to New York
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-15 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Cerebral Valley New York will be Newcomer's first east coast event. AdvertisementThe Cerebral Valley AI Summit, the generative AI conference created by tech journalist Eric Newcomer and AI startup Volley, will be hosting its first New York event on June 27th. The original Cerebral Valley Summit, held in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco in 2023, made headlines for producing one of the largest generative AI acquisitions ever and effectively firing the starting gun on the AI arms race. At the last Cerebral Valley Summit in November, 2023, it was a given that OpenAI had already won the AI battle. At the very first Cerebral Valley AI Summit, Newcomer half-jokingly challenged someone to raise $100 million at the conference.

Persons: —, Eric Newcomer, Mistral, OpenAI, Sam Altman, Altman, Ali Ghodsi, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Anthropic, Daniela Amodei Organizations: Service, New, Google Locations: San Francisco, York, New York, Hayes, Francisco, Europe, MosaicML

☆ AI could mean free doctors and lawyers for everybody in 10 years, OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla believes
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-03 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Investor Vinod Khosla predicts AI will result in free lawyers, doctors, and tutors in 10 years. The 68-year-old billionaire said given AI's impressive capabilities, "I do think in 10 years we'll have free doctors, free tutors for everybody, and free lawyers so they can access the legal system." "This large transformation is the opportunity to free humanity from the need to work," Khosla told Semafor in an interview. Still, Khosla told Business Insider in October he doesn't want to place too big of a bet on AI at the moment. Given the hype around the technology, Khosla thinks that AI startups are overvalued, and that only a few will survive.

Persons: Vinod Khosla, Khosla, —, Eric Newcomer's, we'll, Semafor, doesn't Organizations: Service, Khosla Ventures Locations: OpenAI

☆ OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla, who's 68, says he still works 80 hours a week and plans to keep investing for the next 25 years
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-01 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla said he still works 80 hours a week during an episode of "The Cerebral Valley Podcast." AdvertisementVinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley investor for almost 40 years, said in the past that he works 80-hour weeks. In 2004, he started his own VC firm he called Khosla Ventures, which backed companies like Instacart, Impossible Foods, and DoorDash. Over the last three months, Khosla Ventures has made multi-million dollar bets on startups in the beverage, insurance, and climate tech space, according to Pitchbook. AdvertisementKhosla didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment made through Khosla Ventures.

Persons: Vinod Khosla, —, Eric Newcomer, Khosla, Peter Thiel, I've, Warren, he's, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, Byers, toils, Elon Musk, Steve Squeri Organizations: Service, Khosla Ventures, Foods, Tesla, American Express, Financial Times Locations: Silicon, OpenAI

☆ AI startups struggle to not become OpenAI's 'roadkill:' 'When you step on the court with Jordan, you don't try to beat him at his game'
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

More than 300 AI founders and investors gathered earlier this week in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood for the 2nd Cerebral Valley AI Summit, co-hosted by the independent journalist Eric Newcomer and AI gaming startup Volley. Some called it an " extinction event for other AI startups ." "OpenAI can bully everyone, they can bully the talent, they can bully the competition, they can bully the term sheets. "When you step on the court with Jordan, you don't try to beat him at his game. During his panel, Warner was asked about those who took to social network X, formerly Twitter, to proclaim the death of nascent AI startups.

Persons: Eric Newcomer, —, OpenAI, Alex Pall, That's, they're, Andrew Hoh, Reid Hoffman, Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Khosla, Jason Warner, Warner, it's, He's, he's, Poolside, Jordan Organizations: Summit, Business, Mantis Venture Capital, Microsoft Locations: San Francisco's Hayes, Paris

☆ There's a new theory that Adam Neumann will buy back WeWork
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Katie Notopoulos | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Ousted CEO Adam Neumann issued a statement saying it has been "hard to watch from the sidelines." Sources told Newcomer that they believe he will try to buy back or return to the company he founded. AdvertisementAdvertisementImprobable as it might seem, there's a theory floating around that WeWork founder Adam Neumann might buy the company, which filed for bankruptcy this week. Now, on Eric Newcomer's Substack, people who are familiar with Neumann and WeWork are speculating that the founder may be planning to take the company back. Neumann's own statement this week about the bankruptcy filing.

Persons: WeWork, Adam Neumann, —, Neumann, Eric Newcomer's Substack, texted, Jared Leto, it's Organizations: Service, Forbes

☆ Meta made its Llama 2 AI model open-source because 'Zuck has balls,' a former top Facebook engineer says
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-13 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Meta released Llama 2 as a mostly open-source AI model in July. Replit CEO Amjad Masad said Mark Zuckerberg took a big risk making the model open-source. AdvertisementAdvertisementSince Meta released Llama 2 as a (mostly) open-source project in July, the AI model has become a huge hit. The AI community has embraced the opportunity, giving Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg his next potentially huge platform. There's the latest Falcon open-source AI model.

Persons: Meta, Amjad Masad, Mark Zuckerberg, —, Zuckerberg, Eric Newcomer, Clem Delangue, Eric Newcomer Masad, Masad, he's, Zuck, didn't Organizations: Service, Google, Facebook, Meta, United Arab Emirates

☆ Cerebral Valley, the AI conference that spawned a $1.3 billion deal, is coming back to San Francisco this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Cerebral Valley, an AI conference run by Eric Newcomer's eponymous publication, just announced its second gathering of 2023. CVAI2 (Cerebral Valley AI Summit version 2.0) will take place on November 15 at the SFJAZZ Center in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. The neighborhood is nicknamed Cerebral Valley these days, due to the plethora of AI startups that have sprouted there. Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, and Naveen Rao, CEO of MosaicML, met for the first time at the initial Cerebral Valley AI Summit. That's the biggest generative AI startup deal so far, by my counting.

Persons: Vinod Khosla, Reid Hoffman, Adam D'Angelo, Eric Newcomer's, Mustafa Suleyman, Ali Ghodsi, Kanjun Qiu, Chris Lattner, May Habib, Naveen Rao, Jason Warner, Max Child, James Wilsterman, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue, Emad, Daniela Amodei, Cristobal Valenzuela, Shane Orlick, MosaicML, it's Organizations: SFJAZZ, Service, Industry Locations: Hayes Valley, San Francisco, Wall, Silicon, Jasper

☆ Big tech companies continue cost cutting
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tech companies have chased short-term fads in a desperate attempt to win the favor of Wall Street investors — and it's making the online experience worse. As tech companies continue to focus on efficiency, it's clear that one metric is the most important: revenue per employee. After years of over-hiring, tech companies are now looking to squeeze the most efficient performance from each worker, my colleague Hasan Chowdhury reports. But it's another sign that tech companies are drifting away from pro-remote work policies. Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all failed to make their AR and VR devices into mainstream successes.

☆ Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco's Cerebral Valley for a summit on Thursday. Here are the top 3 takeaways from the event.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in SF's Cerebral Valley on Thursday for Eric Newcomer's AI summit. The handful of streets between San Francisco's Fillmore and Mission neighborhoods have been called a variety of names in recent times — Cerebral Valley, Bayes Valley, Hayes Valley — but on a Thursday morning in March, they were the home for dozens of AI enthusiasts, founders, and VCs looking to learn more about the space at independent journalist Eric Newcomer's Cerebral Valley AI Summit. The model to rule them allWith representation from several OpenAI competitors, including Anthropic, Adept, and Stability AI, a common question during panels was how the landscape of AI model providers would shake out. Others, like Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque, claimed that the question of AI models went beyond performance or cost to issues around transparency and accessibility. The future of codingWith the recent AI boom, a flock of startups have emerged to help developers build AI and non-AI applications.

☆ NYPD called to Silicon Valley Bank branch to respond to 'disorderly group' after SVB's shocking collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

The NYPD responded to a Silicon Valley Bank branch in after a complaint about a "disorderly group." An NYPD spokesman told Insider that police responding didn't witness any crimes from those gathered. People had apparently gathered at the bank's New York branch to try to withdraw their money from the collapsing financial institution. When the NYPD responded, officers didn't witness any criminal acts, a spokesman for the New York Police Department told Insider. A representative for Silicon Valley Bank did not immediately respond to Insider's emailed request for comment on Friday.

☆ Exclusive: Buzzy generative AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI taps NEA to lead funding round at a $150 million valuation
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

AI search engine startup Perplexity AI is raising a funding round led by NEA, Insider has learned. The deal aims to raise between $20 and $25 million at a $150 million post-money valuation, according to sources. The fundraise continues the trend of large rounds and valuations in the buzzy generative AI space. AI search engine startup Perplexity AI is in talks to raise a funding round led by NEA, according to three people with knowledge of the financing who were not authorized to speak publicly. Perplexity AI cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas declined to comment.

☆ Substack is having a moment, again. But can the startup live up to its massive $650 million valuation?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Steven Perlberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

He provided a place where readers could find him "in case the bird app spirals into oblivion": his Substack newsletter. The epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding began promoting his Substack newsletter to his 722,000 Twitter followers in early November. They have been a welcome addition, Substack writers say. Substack has also recently rolled out mentions and cross-reporting functions, where writers can mention other Substack writers and share existing posts with their audiences. The irony, of course, is that many Substack writers rely on their Twitter audiences to promote their posts.

☆ Elon Musk has divided Silicon Valley friendships in the same way Donald Trump divided American families, according to former Facebook executive
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Tom Dotan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Musk's fans and critics in Silicon Valley find it increasingly hard to get along, according to Alex Stamos, Facebook's former CISO. Stamos, who helped oversee content moderation at Facebook during the turbulent post-2016 election period, compared the situation to Donald Trump's divisiveness. "There's a scary impulse in the valley right now [to defend Musk]," Stamos said. "The fact that he has become this pied piper for otherwise serious people...it feels in Silicon Valley like after Trump was elected and families got a little riven." Stamos also predicted that as the Musk-Twitter experiment continues to unravel, Musk's Silicon Valley supporters will recant their position if his free-for-all approach results in real-world consequences.

☆ Andreessen Horowitz's buzzy tech publication Future is shutting down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Rob Price | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

A source familiar with Andreessen Horowitz's content strategy confirmed to Insider that Future is shutting down. An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson declined to comment on the record. Joe LonsdaleIn this new climate, many tech and venture firms' media strategy has shifted from glorified marketing to a more full-fledged editorial operation. In 2021, an army of more than two dozen marketers at Andreessen Horowitz doubled down on this approach. Disclosure: Melia Russell's husband is a former employee of Andreessen Horowitz.

☆ Sequoia Capital took a $213 million bath on FTX after the crypto exchange imploded. That's not that bad, VCs say.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

FTX investor Sequoia Capital has marked down its position to $0 as the crypto exchange crumbles. Sequoia Capital now views its $213.5 million investment in FTX as worthless as the crypto exchange teeters on the brink of collapse after an eleventh-hour deal to salvage the business fell apart. "Somehow Sequoia capital turned a FTX write down to zero into a humblebrag. It invested $150 million into FTX through its third growth fund, which Sequoia said totaled less than 3% of that fund's capital commitments. In its letter to investors, Sequoia said it does "extensive research and thorough diligence" on every investment it makes.

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