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☆ The hottest AI startups are raising back-to-back funding rounds. Suddenly, it's feeling very 2021 in Silicon Valley for a chosen few.
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-20 | by ( Ben Bergman | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Read previewIn February, Glean announced a $200 million funding round valuing the AI enterprise software startup at $2.2 billion. AdvertisementThe transaction is the latest in a string of dizzying back-to-back funding rounds at ever-higher valuations for a handful of AI startups that stand in stark contrast to the doldrums of the overall market for startups. Earlier this year, Sakana raised $30 million in a seed funding round led by Lux Capital. Slingshot AI, which has built an automated mental health counselor, also raised separate rounds of funding just months apart. Advertisement"VCs are increasingly faced with frequent requests from their hot AI companies to follow on or double down on investments," said Iris Sun, an investor at 500 Global.

Persons: —, Glean, Arvind Jain's inbox, Jain, Steve Brotman, Perplexity, SoftBank, Sakana, Gregg Hill, that's, Matt Murphy, Dario Amodei, Kimberly White, Murphy, I'd, I've, Jenny Chang, Rodriguez, Jai Das, Rajeev Dham, couldn't, Das, Sapphire, Uber, Iris Sun, Chandrasekar Organizations: Service, Business, DST Global, Alpha Partners, Bloomberg, Google, New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Parkway Venture Capital, Menlo Ventures, Getty, Sapphire Ventures, Investments Locations: Tokyo

☆ 'I just wanted to take a break:' Some early-stage founders are putting their startup dreams on hold in the tech downturn to try corporate life
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read previewMehak Vohra has been a startup founder ever since she dropped out of college in 2016. But earlier this year, she shut down Skillbank and joined a bigger tech company as its head of marketing. That has early-stage startup founders who founded companies during the free-flowing boom cycle that ended in 2022 rethinking whether they want to be founders after all. I have a much bigger social life now, and I don't feel bad about going out."

Persons: —, you've, Ishita Arora, Arora, Jacek Prus, Prus, Sri Chandrasekar, Chandrasekar, I've Organizations: Service, Jamocha Media, Business, Instrumentl, Animal, Point72 Ventures Locations: San Francisco

☆ Artificial intelligence is coming for venture firms. VCs predict it could reduce headcount by more than 50%.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Firms like Correlation Ventures, 645 Ventures, and Fly Ventures have long used data and AI to help guide investment decisions. AdvertisementEarlier this year, Sri Chandrasekar, a partner at Point72 Ventures, noticed a startup in his portfolio was having a breakout week. Related stories"If you go to any venture firm's website, you'll find that half the names are not doing anything to do with investing," Chandrasekar said. Advertisement"If you look at the large firms, they got very, very large in the last few years," said Andy McLoughlin, managing partner at Uncork Capital. Venture firms will have to remake themselves into a combination of people and A.I."

Persons: —, Matt Krna, Krna, Sri, Chandrasekar, Christina Melas, Andreeseen Horowitz, Andy McLoughlin, James Currier, Currier, McLoughlin Organizations: Service, Business, Ventures, Fly Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Bain Capital, Catalyst, Lightspeed, Uncork, Venture, Deloitte, San Locations: San Francisco, Sri Chandrasekar

☆ 16 VCs that are funding the future of entertainment by backing generative AI and other disruptive tech
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-12 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

AdvertisementAfter a period of "wild west" investing in AI, Blank believes activity will favor AI companies that respect artists' consent and compensation. It recently co-led a $1 million seed round in Conduiit, which centralizes entertainment companies' production finance operations. Endeavor Venture InvestmentsEndeavor Venture Investments is the venture arm of entertainment and sports behemoth Endeavor. SWaN & LegendThe Virginia-based VC firm has a broad consumer portfolio that includes a number of entertainment investments. With Hollywood in contraction, SWaN has largely hit pause on new entertainment investments to get its portfolio companies on a strong footing.

Persons: Michael Blank, Blank, Jon Miller, Miller, Slack, Garnet Heraman, BDMI, Urs Cete, Michael, TMRW, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Elysian Park Ventures Jay Adya, Grant Lamos, Tom Brady, Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan, Jay Adya, Morgan, Kushaan Ahuja, Drew Glover, Glover, Alex Harris, they've, Noah Doyle, Payback India, Jed Katz, Rich Greenfield, Rich, Ilya Pozin, Jamie Seltzer, LightShed, Steve Cohen's, it's, Sri Chandrasekar, Tripp Shriner, Ishan Sinha, That's, Wondery, Ian Doody, Raine, Gordon Rubenstein, Joe Ravitch, Jeff Sine, ‐, Fred Schaufeld, SWaN, that's, Oscar, Jose, Schaufeld, Sam Wick, Alex J, Investcorp, Paul Yoo, Edgar Bronfman Jr, Daniel Leff, Waverley, Leff Organizations: Service, Creative Artists, Connect Ventures, Business, Hollywood, Veteran, TPG, Integrated Media Co, Advancit, CAA, Bertelsmann, Waverley, Octopus Ventures, Accel, Facebook, Venture, Aperture Venture, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Fremantle, Connect, CAA Connect Ventures, New Enterprises Associates, TMRW Sports, Disney, Universal, Elysian Park Ventures, Elysian, Sports, Endeavor Venture, Endeavor Venture Investments, behemoth Endeavor, Dapper Labs, Fiat Ventures, Fiat Ventures Fiat Ventures, Fiat, Payback, Rent, LightShed, Rich Greenfield Influential, LightShed Ventures, Pluto, Apple, Octopus Ventures Octopus Ventures, Investments, Corp, Etsy, Re, Point72 Ventures New York Mets, Range Media Partners, Point72 Ventures, Sri, Powerhouse, Athletic, The New York Times Co, Evolution Media, Creative Artists Agency, Astro, Rave Digital Media, Accel Entertainment, Jose Andrés Media, Berliner, UTA Talent, UTA, UTA Ventures, Ventures, VR, Amazon, PFL Locations: blockchain, —, Conduiit, fintech, London, Australia, Papercup, Los Angeles, Virginia, UTA.VC

☆ Layoffs hit coding community Stack Overflow as software engineers increasingly shift to AI for help
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Kylie Kirschner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Coding community Stack Overflow announced on Monday that it's laying off 28% of its staff. Many generative AI models were partly trained on Stack Overflow's information. This is the second round of layoffs Stack Overflow has had this year — it laid off 10% of its workforce in May. Stack Overflow recently announced the new round of layoffs after more than doubling its headcount in 2022. "Some of them are very explicit about calling out Stack Overflow as a primary source," Chandrasekar previously told Insider.

Persons: Stack, —, GitHub, OpenAI's, Prashanth Chandrasekar, Chandrasekar Organizations: Service

☆ Why tiny homes could be a big deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-06 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

It's easy to look at these tiny homes as undersized gimmicks, but there are real use cases. Others are leaning on tiny homes to house homeless veterans. Denver changed its zoning laws to make ADU construction easier, allowing two-story units in some parts of the city. Tiny homes won't fix that, but innovation in zoning and construction, taken with recent data pointing to a surge in residential construction, offer reasons for hope. Why tiny homes could be a big dealThis first appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.

Persons: Joyce Higashi, Katie Sandoval, Clark, Maggie, John Randolph, crumbles Karl Maasdam, Lawrence D, Thornton, Rebecca Zisser, Francesca Gino, Gino, she's, Read, Morgan Stanley, Arantza Pena Popo, Who's, James Gorman, Ted Pick, Morgan Stanley copresident, Insider's Hayley Cuccinello, Pick, Andy Saperstein, Ted Pick Big, Tyler Le, Brad Setser, Tess Turner, Stack, coders, — Jasmine Hyman, Doc Martens, Matt Turner, Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan Organizations: Service, Harvard, Big Pharma Locations: Wall, Silicon, California, San Jose, New Hampshire, Denver, Austin's, New York City

☆ Death by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI world
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Alistair Barr | Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Some AI models that compete against Stack Overflow were partly trained on the company's data. Online communities, like Stack Overflow and Wikipedia, thrived as hubs for experts and curious browsers to come together and share information freely. In 2021, Prosus, a major backer of Chinese tech giant Tencent, bought Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion. However, Nat Friedman, the CEO of Github through 2021, expects tech companies to pay for training data in the future. Stack Overflow is also working on new ways to measure the impact of a human's answer on the platform.

Persons: Prashanth Chandrasekar, OpenAI, Chandrasekar, coders, OpenAI's GPT, Stack, Elon Musk, Andreessen Horowitz, Sam Altman, JASON REDMOND, Jaap Arriens, GitHub, it's, chatGPT, Nasim Uddin, we're, Nat Friedman, Nat Friedman GitHub Friedman, Friedman, Axel Springer, Semafor, Prashanth Organizations: Union Square Ventures, Getty, Twitter, Publishers, Microsoft, Associated Press Locations: GPT, Prosus, AFP

☆ Dyson doubles down on Singapore and ramps up hiring globally
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Nessa Anwar | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The company is trying to hire another 2,000 engineers globally, according to Dyson's director of upstream robotics, Kashyap Chandrasekar. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum is displayed at the company's headquarters at St. James Power Station in Singapore in May 2023. Lauren Choo | CNBCAnother Dyson device that has garnered attention, due to its futuristic look, is the Dyson Zone — headphones that double as a wearable purifier. Dyson's global investment planSince its inception in 1991, founder Sir James Dyson has been set on pioneering new technology. The company currently has a £2.75 billion investment plan divided across Singapore, the U.K. and the Philippines.

Persons: Dyson, John Churchill, Kashyap Chandrasekar, Lauren Choo, Churchill, We'll, Sir James Dyson, they're Organizations: Robotics, James Power, CNBC, Dyson, St Locations: St, Singapore, United Kingdom, Philippines, Malaysia, Shanghai, Batangas

Oct 13 (Reuters) - Late-stage U.S. startups are scooping up talent unlocked by layoffs and hiring freezes at Big Tech, adding experienced engineers and project managers to their roster despite signs of an economic slowdown. A survey of 581 executives, almost entirely from U.S. tech startups, showed that more than 40% of them boosted their hiring plans in the first half of 2022, according to hiring firm A.Team and startup consultant MassChallenge. Companies are also shortening hiring times and offering higher pay packages to lock in candidates as they compete for talent in a tight labor market, recruiters said. Still, some analysts warn there is only so long until startups can continue the hiring pace amid a weak economic backdrop. "If the economy does indeed go into recession, it will only add to the pressure faced by tech firms as demand dries up," says Dante DeAntonio, director of economics research at Moody's Analytics.

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