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☆ Sam Altman suddenly looks less powerful. The panic caused by OpenAI's near-death experience is to blame.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

VCs threatened to sue OpenAI's board, and some jockeyed to get in on whatever new situation might replace the fizzled startup. And in OpenAI's case, Altman was brought back as CEO and all the employees stayed. AdvertisementUntil this moment, the consensus was that Altman came through this crisis looking even more powerful and crucial to OpenAI's future. 'The company will be totally fine without me'Silicon Valley just realized that the fate of the world's most important AI company rested in the hands of just one person. The startup's near-death experience unsettled the companies and developers that have come to rely on OpenAI's artificial intelligence platform.

Persons: OpenAI, Altman, —, Sam Altman, VCs, OpenAI's, Wesley Chan, Claude, Guillermo Rauch, Rauch, pinged Rauch, –, Bret Taylor, Madeline Renbarger Organizations: Service, Microsoft, FDIC, FPV Ventures, Google, Services Locations: Silicon Valley, It's

☆ VCs didn't care about OpenAI's weird board structure. It was all about investing in Sam Altman and its 'transformative' tech.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | Vishal Persaud | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

OpenAI's venture capital investors weren't thinking about its mission to serve "humanity" by developing artificial intelligence. After Altman's ouster, Vinod Khosla, an early investor in OpenAI, came to his defense despite the criticism. OpenAI's complex and unique corporate governance structure meant that VCs could invest in the capped profit entity, but never earn any influence over the nonprofit board of directors, all of whom were either cofounders or appointed outside AI experts. The board structure and its governance are all likely to change as part of the deal to bring Sam Altman back as CEO of OpenAI. The purpose of the newly formed OpenAI board – consisting of current board member D'Angelo, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor – is to vet and potentially appoint an expanded board of up to nine people, and that Microsoft and Altman want board seats, The Verge reported.

Persons: Sam Altman, OpenAI, Altman, VCs, Sam, Altman's, Vinod Khosla, Yunus, Khosla, Wesley Chan, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Tasha McCauley, who's, Joseph Gordon, Levitt, Helen Toner, Adam D'Angelo, Karthee Madasamy, it's, David Sacks, D'Angelo, Larry Summers, Bret Taylor – Organizations: Business, Tiger Global Management, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, FPV Ventures, Rand Corporation, Georgetown's Center for Security, Emerging Technology, MFV Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Ikea, Bosch, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Bertelsmann Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation, Craft Ventures Locations: OpenAI, Silicon Valley, Hollywood

☆ Aibidia, a fintech helping multinational giants pay their taxes, just raised $14.2 million using this 10-slide pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The Helsinki-based firm helps large multinationals automate and digitize their transfer pricing. Check out the 10-slide pitch deck it used to raise the round co-led by DN Capital and FPV Ventures. Aibidia, a fintech that helps multinational giants pay taxes globally, has raised $14.2 million in funding. Multinationals use transfer pricing to manage their tax exposures by moving transactions between subsidiaries, affiliates, or holding companies to reduce their overall tax burden globally. "The reason no one has done this before is the number of data points and its taxonomy," Leppänen said.

Employees have been working around the clock to onboard as many startups as possible in the wake of the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank, which had more than $175 billion in deposits and served nearly half of US VC-backed startups, was taken over by US regulators on March 10. "That said, I am worried that this bias towards a Big Four bank is a double-edged sword," Shekar added. "SVB did not think like a big bank. They could understand your operating plan when a big bank would balk at it," Ashley Tyrner, CEO and founder of FarmBoxRX, told Insider.

"You're going to see every board member tell people to keep your money in multiple bank accounts," said Wesley Chan, cofounder and managing partner at FPV Ventures. "I'm not concerned about Bank of America," one business owner said as they left a Bank of America branch on Monday. Big banks can be less competitive, for example, on interest rates because of the security they offer. I think you'll see startups, in particular, questioning moving to the big banks given just how much more expensive it is," Matheson added. "The big banks are in very good shape, and so it probably is a stabilizing decision to move those deposits.

☆ 9 startup founders who banked with Silicon Valley Bank share where they're moving their money: 'We will not get caught like this again'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Silicon Valley Bank's failure has left startup founders scrambling for a new home for their money. Last Friday morning, the startup founder Mang-Git Ng zipped up the interstate before sunrise to a Silicon Valley Bank branch in St. Helena, in California's wine country. Ng's plight is similar to countless other founders following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, who waited with bated breath over the weekend on whether they'd ever get their money back. DiversificationSilicon Valley Bank's collapse could forever change how startups stash their cash, at least two investors told Insider. Silicon Valley Bank had exclusivity clauses with some of its clients, according to a CNBC report, forcing them to use the firm for most or all of their banking services.

At some Silicon Valley Bank branch locations in California, depositors gathered early Friday to attempt to get their cash out, fearing it could be inaccessible in the coming days. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N). A locked door to a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) location on Sand Hill Road is seen in Menlo Park, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ The fintech reckoning is upon us. Here’s what to expect next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Hugh Son | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Many fintech companies — particularly those dealing directly with retail borrowers — will be forced to shut down or sell themselves next year as startups run out of funding, according to investors, founders and investment bankers. Other private companies with a reasonable path to profitability will typically get funding from existing investors. The frenzy peaked in 2021, when fintech companies raised more than $130 billion and minted more than 100 new unicorns, or companies with at least $1 billion in valuation. "20% of all VC dollars went into fintech in 2021," said Stuart Sopp, founder and CEO of digital bank Current. "The competitive landscape shifts the most during periods of fear, uncertainty and doubt," said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a trading venue for private company stock.

☆ CIOs Can Play Key Role in Guiding Companies Through Slowdown
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( Steven Rosenbush | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

The market for cloud computing, business software, artificial intelligence and other so-called enterprise technologies has been a relative bright spot. “During times of economic uncertainty, companies look for ways where technology can drive growth and create more economic value faster,” said Juan Perez, chief information officer at Salesforce Inc. When budgets are under scrutiny, companies tend to focus on short-term solutions that can drive efficiency and productivity, Salesforce’s Mr. Perez said. Companies should take this opportunity to reconsider the pace of hiring and employ freelance workers where it makes sense. Additionally, CIOs say they are looking at the opportunity to hire valuable workers who lost their jobs at other companies or renew technology contracts on more favorable terms.

☆ Tech Layoffs Reflect Worsening Outlook
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Steven Rosenbush | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Layoffs at ride-sharing firm Lyft Inc. and payments company Stripe Inc., as well as a pause in hiring at Amazon.com Inc., reflect a darker outlook for tech. PREVIEW“The changes that we will see going forward will be based purely on the economic drivers from the overall economy slowing down,” Mr. Kanchi said. The metaverse, NFTs, and some aspects of cryptocurrency, or those technologies which don’t have immediate monetary value, will continue to fall out of favor, Mr. Kanchi said. “The downturn has kind of started but it hasn’t hit bottom and will get bad, very quickly, likely sometime mid next year,” Mr. Chan said. He predicts that “the new Google or Uber of 2023 and 2024 will come out of this downturn.”Write to Steven Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com

☆ Analysis: Tech Layoffs Reflect Worsening Outlook
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Steven Rosenbush | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

☆ Wesley Chan's FPV Ventures coleads $10 million round in Astra, a fintech startup that makes it easier for companies to embed payments technology into their businesses
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The startup raised $10 million in Series A funding led by FPV and Slow Ventures. Astra, a fintech startup that's developed technology to allow developers to embed financial automation into existing products, raised a $10 million Series A along with a $30 million line of credit. "Everything was going really, really fast and really big, so we said, why not ride this growth." For example, B2B payments company Hopscotch recently raised $6.1 million in additional funding in March. Akos said one of Astra's goals is to move upmarket and begin providing payments services to startups in the later stages.

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