DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ 10 Things in Tech: Shopify's midlife crisis, how to land deals with brands, and Microsoft's former human resources vice president shares advice
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Also, please let me know what you want to see in Insider Today. Startup studios like Fractal think of startup ideas, then hire founders to execute the vision. But multiple Fractal founders say their businesses are on life support. Many of them think it's because of how startup studios structure terms and conditions for investing — they take a massive chunk of ownership. Investors also prefer when startup founders create the ideas themselves.

Persons: I'm, Siu, Chelsea Jia Feng, Melia Russell, Stephanie Palazzolo, Tyler Le, Shopify's, Chris Williams, Lindsay Noah, Vermillion, Jim Vermillion, Diamond Naga Siu, Alistair Barr, Hallam Bullock Organizations: Startup, Investors, Nike, Abercrombie, Amazon, OpenAI, Syracuse Land Bank, Leasing, Galactic, Space Station, Computing, Intel, Microsoft, MIT Locations: Tech, Syracuse , New York, Syracuse, New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Silicon Valley, London

☆ Startup studio Fractal created 130 companies in 3 years. Founders say the deal structure has led VCs to 'blacklist' them.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Melia Russell | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

www.fractalsoftware.comOf the dozens of Fractal startups that have raised a seed round of funding, about half had Bienville Capital lead the deal, according to people familiar with the matter. Others say they knew what they were getting into with a venture studio, where a large ownership position is standard. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty ImagesThe biggest draw for some Fractal founders was its plug-and-play approach. The founder of one Fractal startup remembered a time when his company was struggling to grow its customer base. That firm is raising a new $325 million fund to provide additional funding to Fractal companies exclusively, according to a person familiar with the effort.

Persons: Fractal's, he'd, they'd, Andreessen Horowitz, Mike Furlong, Nate Baker, Bienville, —, Brendan Smialowski, Founders, Angela Lee, Furlong, Baker, Ezra Shaw, who'd, who's, It's, Lee, She's, 8VC, Bain, Jeff Greenberg, Omri Bloch, who've, didn't, Stephanie Palazzolo, Melia Russell Organizations: Flatiron Health, Bienville, Insight Partners, Bienville Capital, Getty, Columbia Business School, Alpha, Midwest, Science, Olympic Club, Tiger Global, Craft Ventures, Founders, Vertical Venture Partners, Zag, Crew Capital, Bain Capital, Universal, Foundation, Fifth Locations: Bienville Capital, New York, Bienville, Indio, AFP, Santa Monica , California, Miami, San Francisco, GreenSpark, Columbia, Barti, Aktos, Bessemer, 8VC

☆ Exclusive: How this under-the-radar VC landed a $27 million third fund and bets in some of the buzziest startups like Jasper and Motherduck
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Essence VC has raised its third fund of $27 million from LPs like Cendana and Sapphire Ventures. The fund has bet on buzzy startups like generative AI darling Jasper and a16z-backed Motherduck. And now, his firm Essence VC has just raised its $27 million third fund. The latest fund, backed by VC firms and funds of funds including Cendana Capital, Vintage Investment Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Level Ventures, and Crossover, follows a $7 million and $1 million fund. However, the "first-mover advantage" for startups also holds true in the land of VC, Chen says.

Persons: Jasper, Tim Chen, you've, Liz O'Sullivan, Vera, Chen, Scott Shi, —, Chi Zhang, Tim, Zhang, funder Chen, Christos Kozyrakis, Michael Huang, They're, it's, Ben Van Roo, Van Roo, Chen wasn't Organizations: Sapphire Ventures, Cendana, Vintage Investment Partners, Level Ventures, Founders, Stanford, Cloudera, Google Locations: a16z

☆ 10 Things in Tech: Low morale at Microsoft
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Hallam Bullock | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Morale appears to be low at Microsoft. According to internal messages, those changes were another blow to morale, after Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 staff in January. In other news:The AGI House is the Bay Area's hottest AI hacker house, hosting dinners, hackathons, and fireside chats on a weekly basis. Founders and VCs are clamoring to get into a $68 million AI hacker house. AGI House, an 18,000 square foot Hillsborough mansion, serves as a hacker house and community hub for the Bay's exploding AI scene.

Persons: Hallam Bullock, Satya Nadella, Kathleen Hogan, Stephanie Palazzolo, ElevenLabs, Andreessen Horowitz, Wharton, Eddie Wu, Daniel Zhang, Wu, Meta, Ashley Flowers, Jordan Pettitt, Shona Ghosh Organizations: CBS, US Coast Guard, Microsoft, Workers, Tmall, Getty Locations: London

☆ Founders and VCs are clamoring to get into this $68 million AI hacker house. Here's how the AGI House exploded into a community hub for the red-hot Bay Area AI scene.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In February, the AGI House launched as a community hub for the buzzy Bay Area AI scene. Since launching in February this year, it's served as a hacker house and community hub for the Bay's exploding AI scene. Depending on the day, the residence houses between eight to ten AI founders and researchers, including a researcher from AI giant OpenAI. Stephanie PalazzoloFrom flying cars to fireside conversationsThe AGI House wasn't always the AGI House. "It's great to live in a community house where you're naturally connected to the AI founder community," she said.

Persons: Steve Jobs, Elon, it's, Demi Guo, Stephanie Palazzolo, wasn't, Andrej Karpathy, Rocky Yu, Karpathy, Sergey Brin, Kelly Peng, Yu, Jeremy Nixon, Tim Shi, Lerer Hippeau, Peng, Guo, There's, Greylock's, Corinne Riley AGI, they're Organizations: AGI, Technologies, Genesis, Foundation Capital Locations: buzzy, Hillsborough, Stanford, Alamo, LA, AGI, New York City, Stanford's

Google invested in generative AI startup Runway as part of a $100 million round, sources say. Google and Runway also signed a $75 million cloud computing project, leaked documents show. Google has invested in generative AI startup Runway as part of a $100 million deal, as the Alphabet-owned company leverages its cloud advantage to cozy up to other artificial intelligence players. In addition, Runway has signed a cloud deal with Google worth $75 million over three years, according to internal documents reviewed by Insider. It previously raised $100 million from Amplify Partners, Lux Capital, Coatue, and Felicis Ventures.

Persons: Oscar, Anthropic Organizations: Google, Runway, Lux, Felicis Ventures, Financial Times, Microsoft's, MIT Technology Locations: New York, OpenAI

☆ Exclusive: Fractal, a New York venture studio, is laying off staff and will stop creating new startups
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Melia Russell | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The venture studio Fractal Software will no longer start new companies, Insider has learned. Fractal Software, a venture studio that creates startups by hatching its own ideas and hiring founders to execute, has laid off staff and will stop starting new companies, Insider has learned. At least 28 employees, about 25% of staff, have left Fractal in the past six months, according to LinkedIn. Fractal confirmed layoffs occurred starting in December, but would not specify the number of employees affected. Fractal has a few more startups in the pipeline, with a goal of launching 145 companies, two people familiar with the company's strategy said.

Persons: Omri Bloch, That's, Joe Lonsdale's 8VC, Bienville, Melia Russell, Stephanie Palazzolo Organizations: New, Software, Investors, Tiger Global, Bienville Capital, Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter Locations: New York, 8VC, Bienville

Google and the generative AI startup Runway have a huge new cloud computing contract. Google and Runway have a major new contract that provides the generative AI startup will millions of dollars in cloud services and related credits. Recently, Runway raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a top cloud provider, Insider reported. Cloud giants like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft have also run startup programs for years that provide free cloud credits. Previously, Google Cloud salespeople even expressed concern they wouldn't be able to match AWS's offer of free cloud credits to startups.

Persons: there's, Airbnb, Pinterest Organizations: Google, Runway, Lux Capital, Web Services, Microsoft, AWS Locations: OpenAI

☆ Exclusive: Buzzy legal generative AI startup Casetext is in talks to be acquired
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-25 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

AI startup Casetext is in talks to be acquired, Insider has learned. This hypothesis may have found its first example in Casetext, a buzzy legal generative AI startup that is in talks to be acquired, according to people familiar with the situation. Casetext has raised $68 million in funding from VCs including Union Square Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Y Combinator, and Touchdown Ventures. Now, the technology powers Casetext's AI legal assistant CoCounsel, which aids lawyers with everything from legal research memo drafting to deposition preparation to document review. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

The Seed 100 is our annual list of the best early-stage investors, based on data analysis. These investors have proven track records and are on track for continued success. Also read our list that focuses exclusively on successful women: Seed 30: The best early-stage women investors of 2023Seed-stage investing is the riskiest — and potentially most rewarding — venture-capital round and the choice of seed investor can make or break a startup. The Seed 100 identifies top investors via data analysis supplied by Tribe Capital*. Scroll down for the full Seed 100 list.

Our annual list of the best women seed investors has been expanded this year. Also read: The Seed 100: The best early-stage investors of 2023The venture-capital industry has historically been a boys' club. That's changing as more women join venture firms, found their own firms, become angel investors, and join investing syndicates. The best seed investors can repeatedly identify winners years before they are successful. Scroll down for the full Seed 30 list.

☆ VC firm Sequoia is pulling out all the stops to dominate AI, insiders say. The firm is using everything from 'speed dating' to star studded summits to woo founders.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

It's just one move of many the VC firm has taken to cement its position in the white-hot AI space. Huang and Grady wrote a public blog post on Sequoia's website inviting AI founders to email them their ideas and pitches directly. But the firm has been louder where it counts, investing in splashy AI startups like Harvey and LangChain. Every member of the firm, from managing partner Roleof Botha on down, has made AI a top priority, with Grady, Huang, and Buhler most prominently involved. Both Huang and Buhler now spend over 90% of their time researching AI companies, versus 50% in previous years, they said.

☆ Welcome to the final phase of software eating the world. SaaS companies beware, you're on the menu this time.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

This could disrupt the way software is created, distributed, and used, VCs and startup founders say. This outcome would flip the traditional software industry on its head, calling into question the value of SaaS companies in a world where everyday people can build software themselves. "This is the final chapter of software eating the world, where a bunch of people can create enterprise software within the enterprise." A 'healthy pressure' for traditional SaaS providersTo be sure, the death of the traditional software company still seems a long way off. However, even skeptics admit that the threat of generative AI to traditional SaaS will push established software companies to prove their worth.

☆ AI startup cloud deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon ring 'accounting alarm bells' across Silicon Valley over revenue 'round-tripping'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Eugene Kim | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Some investors question whether these arrangements are artificially juicing cloud revenue growth. When Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI earlier this year, the deal made Azure the ChatGPT-maker's "exclusive cloud provider." There's another deal in the works with similar attributes involving Runway AI and a major cloud company. But they are drawing more scrutiny lately because they could artificially inflate cloud revenue, a key driver of growth for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, according to Ted Mortonson, managing director of financial-services firm Baird. Is OpenAI a regular cloud customer that is getting no investment money from Microsoft?

☆ Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst lead $50 million seed round in Hippocratic AI to deliver large language models to healthcare providers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Hippocratic AI is a large language model company aiming to serve healthcare providers. Now, the entrepreneur is marrying his interest in healthcare with his experience as a multi-time AI founder to create Hippocratic AI, a healthcare-focused large language model company. First, Hippocratic AI tested its large language model against 114 different healthcare certifications, 105 of which its model outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4 on, Shah told Insider. Despite its intensive model training efforts and recent hefty capital infusion, Hippocratic AI has yet to release a product. "This language model business has turned software development back into a capital intensive business," he said.

Andreessen Horowitz is preparing to launch a fund of funds to invest in other startup backers. A16z has already been courting up-and-coming fund managers at events in San Francisco and LA. The venture-capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz has in recent months been in discussions to form a fund of funds focused on early-stage investing, according to multiple people familiar with the project. In recent months, the firm has started to court up-and-coming fund managers with events in San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to three sources familiar with the firm's plans. Partners at crossover fund Tiger Global tried a similar strategy in recent years, committing $1 billion to back an array of early-stage venture funds.

☆ Autonomous agents are Silicon Valley's latest AI obsession. Here's why pizza-ordering bots may be coming to a computer near you soon.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

"Autonomous AI agents" are AI bots that can plan and prioritize to achieve user-provided goals. However, the rise of AI agents has sparked concerns around safety and the potential for AGI. From assistants to digital friendsHowever, AI doomsdayers don't have to be too worried yet — the performance of these AI agents have often been less than stellar. Without the proper guardrails, AI agents with unrestricted access to the Internet may similarly take unanticipated steps to complete its goals, like transferring money from a bank account. And sometimes, the misuse of AI agents is intentional, rather than accidental.

☆ Exclusive: Generative AI startup Runway just raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a cloud service provider
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Generative AI startup Runway has raised a funding round of at least $100 million, Insider has learned. The deal tripled the startup's valuation from its last round to a whopping $1.5 billion. Investors recently told Insider that they were big fans of buzzy photo and video generative AI startup Runway. Runway has raised a Series D funding round of at least $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a cloud service provider, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

☆ Exclusive: $38 billion data and AI darling Databricks acquires security startup Okera
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Data and AI company Databricks is acquiring data security startup Okera. Recently, customers have increasingly asked about data security when creating custom AI models. In 2015 and 2016, software engineer Nong Li spent a number of months at data and AI startup Databricks. Databricks plans to integrate Okera deeply in the company, specifically as part of its data and AI governance offering, Unity Catalog, Ghodsi said. Today, Unity Catalog is Databricks' number one priority as it looks to build the end-to-end platform for data, analytics, and AI, Ghodsi said.

☆ How Runway's idea for AI-driven video and photo editing and generation went from a "crazy" concept to a Silicon Valley darling worth half a billion dollars
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

When Runway's founders first came up with the idea for an AI art startup, they were called crazy. Now, the generative AI startup has become a fan favorite of VCs and the public alike. When Cristóbal Valenzuela began building his generative AI company Runway in 2018, investors, filmmakers, and advertisers told the cofounder that he was crazy. "They were saying, 'why would you want to build AI tools for video and filmmaking?'" Many of these features were developed hand-in-hand with customers, who often described to Runway the problems and obstacles they ran into while creating videos, Valenzuela said.

☆ How Anthropic cofounder Daniela Amodei plans to turn trust and safety into a feature, not a bug
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Amodei chatted with Insider about her approach to trust and safety and what the future holds for AI. However, the majority of Anthropic cofounder and president Daniela Amodei's career has been spent trying to prove the opposite: that trust and safety is a feature, not a bug. "It's an organizational structure question, but it's also a mindset question," she told Insider. In 2020, Amodei and six other OpenAI employees, including her brother Dario Amodei, left the company to start rival AI lab Anthropic. Throughout Anthropic's growth, the company has kept an interdisciplinary culture, with employees whose experiences range from physics to computational biology to policywriting, Amodei told Insider.

☆ VCs are scrambling to invest in AI startups in Y Combinator's latest class: 'There's hysteria for a reason'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

VCs are scrambling to back the AI startups in Y Combinator's latest batch. Several generative AI startups have already secured funding from top firms, sources say. And while valuations are down across the board, YC AI startups are still hot. Startups focused on AI, and generative AI specifically, which saw a substantial jump in the latest batch, were some of the most highly sought after by investors. An AI feeding frenzyVC buzz was common across generative AI startups both in the application and infrastructure layers.

☆ 44 of the most promising generative-artificial-intelligence startups of 2023, according to investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

We asked investors to name the most promising generative-AI startups of 2023. VCs were asked to name startups in their portfolios and ones with which they had no financial ties. This past year has seen doom and gloom for most of the tech world, but a small, rapidly growing group of startups have seen a renaissance. In the model layer, third-party and open-source providers like OpenAI and Stability AI train AI models that startups can build upon. Insider asked 22 top artificial-intelligence and machine-learning investors to nominate the early-stage generative-AI startups within this ecosystem they believe show the most promise.

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Driven by the recent AI boom, companies are raiding top college campuses for rare technical talent. She's currently on leave from her Stanford AI Ph.D. program to focus on Moonhub. In 2011, new AI Ph.D. graduates took jobs in the tech industry and academia in about equal measure. But since then, the majority of new grads have headed to the AI industry, with nearly double the percentage of AI Ph.D. grads taking industry jobs versus academic roles in 2021, according to Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI's 2023 AI Index Report. "All AI companies have roles for people with Ph.D.s and without," said Attaluri, the soon-to-be researcher at DeepMind.

☆ Developer tool startups in Y Combinator's latest class are grabbing the attention of investors like Elad Gil and Google's Gradient Ventures. Here are 4 that have already landed funding.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Developer tool startups that were part of Y Combinator's latest class are drawing strong interest from several high-profile venture capitalists. Sequoia partner Lauren Reeder personally participated in the code review startup's recent funding round, according to a Sequoia spokesperson. That fundraising was at a $30 million post-money valuation, one person familiar with the deal said. Developer tool startups accounted for 26% of the companies in YC's winter 2023 batch, up from 16% of the summer 2022 class, according to the accelerator's startup directory. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

Search resuls for: "Stephanie Palazzolo"

25 mentions found