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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

☆ The investing world reacts to death of Berkshire legend Charlie Munger
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( Pia Singh | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Several investors mourned the passing of famed investor Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway , on Tuesday. "So sad to hear the news of the passing of Charlie Munger," El-Erian wrote. Mario Gabelli, chairman and CEO of Connecticut-based GAMCO Investors, wrote on Twitter: "Charlie Munger ….a titan has passed …all will miss Charlie." "Charlie Munger helped build an American institution, and through his wisdom and insights, inspired a generation of leaders. "Charlie Munger was a brilliant attorney," Annandale Capital chairman George Seay said Tuesday evening on Yahoo Finance.

Persons: Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett, Munger, Ariel Investments, Charles Bobrinskoy, Mohamed El, PIMCO, Erian, Mario Gabelli, Charlie Munger …, Charlie, Tim Cook, Cook, Stephanie Link, Hightower, Whitney Tilson, Tilson, George Seay, Wesley Chan, Chan, —, Christina Cheddar Berk, Brian Evans, Alex Harring Organizations: Warren, Allianz, Twitter, Apple, Berkshire, Hightower Advisors, Berkshire Hathaway, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Daily, Costco Locations: Munger, Connecticut, Berkshire, American, California, Annandale, FPV

☆ 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

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.

☆ 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.

"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.

HALF MOON BAY/MONTEREY PARK, California, Jan 24 (Reuters) - America was supposed to be a place of safety for Jose Romero when he arrived some two years ago to work on a California farm alongside other immigrants from Mexico and China. Romero was killed on Monday, shot dead by a gunman along with six other farm workers in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. Antonio Perez, who now lives in Half Moon Bay after moving from Mexico in 1983, said he feels stuck between cartel violence in his homeland and gun violence in the United States. “What a tragedy.”People gather for a candlelight vigil after a mass shooting during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California, U.S. January 24, 2023. About 9.3% of Asian immigrants keep guns in their homes in California, compared with 5.6% of Latino immigrants and 12% of white immigrants, said Ninez Ponce, the lead researcher on the UCLA study.

☆ 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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