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☆ VCs are 'hedging their bets,' backing competing LLMs like Anthropic and OpenAI, breaking a long-standing venture taboo
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-26 | by ( Ben Bergman | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Venture firms are increasingly investing in competing LLM startups like OpenAI and xAI. Some VCs argue investing in multiple LLMs is strategic, while others see it as unethical. AdvertisementWhen venture firms pull out their checkbooks, there has traditionally been an unspoken rule: Do not back a competitor. Sound Ventures and Wisdom Ventures backed both OpenAI and Anthropic. There is also the matter of money, with only a handful of firms capable of writing the colossal checks required to fund LLM companies.

Persons: VCs, —, Joe Aaron, — Sheel, Andreessen Horowitz, Elon Musk's XAI, Ilya Sutskever, Umesh Padval, Padval, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gregg Hill, they've Organizations: Service, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Ark Invest, Sound Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, Parkway Venture, Madrona Ventures, NASDAQ Locations: OpenAI, Canadian

☆ The 2024 AI Power List: Matt McIlwain
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Operating in Seattle, in the shadow of Amazon and Microsoft headquarters, McIlwain's Madrona Ventures was an early investor in AI companies such as Xnor.ai, which Apple acquired in 2020. The firm likes to say no investment is too early, as it prefers to be there as early as formation. Madrona also hosts the annual Intelligent Applications Summit, with this year's event featuring Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, and Arvind Jain, the CEO and cofounder of Glean. McIlwain says companies should focus more on their business model than on an AI model. See Business Insider's full AI Power List

Persons: Madrona, Mustafa Suleyman, Arvind Jain, McIlwain Organizations: Microsoft, McIlwain's Madrona Ventures, Apple Locations: Seattle

☆ OpenAI has a lot of challengers, says Madrona's Matt McIlwain
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-27 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailOpenAI has a lot of challengers, says Madrona's Matt McIlwainMatt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, joins 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss tech buyouts, co-founder departures and outlook for the sector.

Persons: Matt McIlwain Matt McIlwain Organizations: Madrona Venture Group

☆ Amazon's Bedrock success prompts a surprising question: Do you need a top model to win in AI?
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-24 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewSo far, the generative AI race has been about who can build the most powerful models. Almost two years later, there are so many powerful AI models out there, it's no longer that special. Advertisement'Important but not critical'AWS CEO Matt Garman appears to be fine not having a fancy, home-grown AI model. "It'll be important but not critical," Garman said when asked about the importance of offering a top-performing first-party AI model. AGI teamThis doesn't mean Amazon has given up on building its own powerful AI model.

Persons: —, Claude, Meta's, Matt Murphy, Anthropic, Murphy, ChatGPT, Patrick Neighorn, Amazon's, Andy Jassy, Matt Garman, Garman, Matt McIlwain, Brent Thill, Jefferies, Thill Organizations: Service, Google, Business, Microsoft, OpenAI, Gemini, Menlo Ventures, AWS, Intuit, Toyota, New York Stock Exchange, BI, Asia, Madrona Venture Group, Amazon Locations: Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Japan, North America

☆ 'These are not normal;' A new type of dealmaking for AI startups is rattling Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-10 | by ( Ben Bergman | Sri Muppidi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Google unnerved Silicon Valley last week when it agreed to pay $2.5 billion to license Character.AI's technology, hire its two superstar cofounders and 20 percent of employees. The deal came after AI developers Adept and Inflection both effectively sold themselves to Amazon and Microsoft, respectively, in recent months. It was only last year Character.AI raised $150 million in venture funding, which valued the company at $850 million. Its appeal as a chatbot that uses AI to make virtual characters that interact with users seems decidedly niche. Related storiesMost of the founders and investors Business Insider spoke to for this story say Google has little interest in Character.AI's actual product.

Persons: cofounders, Brent Queener, Kyle Sanford, Character.AI, Iris Sun, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Jack Selby, Peter Thiel's, Steve Brotman, Shazeer, De Freitas, PitchBook's Sanford, they're, Roy Bahat, Arvind Jain, Cameron Lester, Lester Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Bonfire Ventures, Business, Apple, Big Tech, AZ, Biden Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, Alpha Partners, FTC, DOJ, New York Times, Google, Madrona Venture, Bloomberg Beta, Jefferies

☆ I'm 'most bullish' on Microsoft, says Madrona's Mike McIlwain after Big Tech's bumpy week
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-26 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailI'm 'most bullish' on Microsoft, says Madrona's Mike McIlwain after Big Tech's bumpy weekMatt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, joins 'Closing Bell Overtime' to talk Big Tech's downturn, IPOs, and more.

Persons: Mike McIlwain, Matt McIlwain Organizations: Microsoft, Madrona Venture Group

☆ Nadella, Narayen among tech CEOs investing in cricket's American dream
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-07 | by ( Seema Mody | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Somasegar and Nadella are among the key owners of Seattle's cricket team, named the Orcas. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen are among the executives investing in the new U.S. professional league, Major League Cricket. Other cricket investors include Iconic Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and executives from Google . As the Men's T20 Cricket World Cup , co-hosted by the U.S. for the first time, ramps up, investors have pumped nearly a billion dollars into their American ambition. Venture capitalist Anurag Jain, part owner of Major League Cricket team the San Francisco Unicorns, said the U.S. national team is primarily made up of players in the league.

Persons: Somasegar, They're, Soma Somasegar, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayen, Monank Patel, StubHub, Anurag Jain, Satyan Gajwani, Gajwani, Rangaswami, —, Jessica Golden Organizations: Microsoft, CNBC, Madrona, Adobe, Major League Cricket, Iconic Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Google, U.S, team, ICC, Grand Prairie Cricket, Pakistan, Sunday, The New York Times, Venture, San Francisco Unicorns, U.S ., Times Internet Locations: Bellevue , Washington, America, U.S, Pakistan, Dallas, West Indies, India, Nassau County, New York, of India, North America, South Asia, Australia

☆ Check out the pitch deck productivity startup Read AI used to land $21 million to fuel its meeting-summary generator
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The startup, Read AI, closed a $21 million Series A funding round in April. Goodwater Capital led the round, with participation from existing investor Madrona Venture Group, which led the startup's $10 million seed round in 2021. David Shin, who co-founded Read AI alongside Robert Williams and Elliott Waldron, told Business Insider that the generative AI boom over the last year has supercharged what the startup can offer clients. Read AI offers multiple pricing plans, including a basic, free version for individual users as well as enterprise and enterprise plus accounts that cost $22.50 and $29.75 a month per user, respectively. Check out the 23-slide presentation Read AI used to raise $21 million in Series A funding.

Persons: David Shin, Robert Williams, Elliott Waldron, Read Organizations: Goodwater Capital, Madrona Venture Group, Business, Microsoft, Google, Read, Bloomberg Locations: Seattle

☆ DocuSign, Zoom, and Twilio thrived in the pandemic-era stock market. In 2024, they're some of cloud software's most likely M&A targets.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

With the promise of generative AI fueling investment in technology, industry experts expect 2024 to be an active year for cloud software M&A. The market is right for buyers and sellers, as companies like Salesforce and Nvidia enter 2024 with cash on hand and mature startups face a slowed venture market. "There's so much demand for amazing talent in AI," Somasegar said. Deals in 2024 will likely be at smaller valuations, Jaluria noted. Jaluria expects that several companies that flourished during the pandemic — only to lose momentum with the rise in return-to-office mandates — are likely candidates for M&A in 2024.

Persons: Somasegar, Rishi Jaluria, Jaluria, Jaluria's Organizations: Business, Nvidia, Madrona Venture Group, RBC Capital Markets, Activision Locations: Seattle, Figma

☆ OpenAI chaos is good for Google, Amazon, and others trying to catch the AI leader
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-18 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The chaos is good for Google, Amazon, and others trying to catch OpenAI. Especially Google and Amazon, which were caught flat-footed by ChatGPT's rapid success and the impressive capabilities of GPT-4 and other OpenAI models. "In a fast-moving race, this lap has the advantage going to Google and Amazon but it's a marathon, not a sprint." Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and provides cloud infrastructure that runs the startup's AI products. Interestingly, Google and Amazon recently invested billions of dollars in Anthropic, an AI startup that is probably the closest rival to OpenAI in terms of talent and product capabilities.

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, —, ChatGPT, OpenAI's, Altman, pic.twitter.com, Guy, @buccocapital, Oren Etzioni, there's Organizations: Google, Service, Employees, Madrona Venture, Microsoft, Amazon Locations: Silicon

☆ Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-04 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

There's a new stack of hardware, software, tools, and services that will power AI applications for years to come. Cloud 2.0Another key point here: Most AI developers already know how to use CUDA and Nvidia GPUs. Arguably, Nvidia has already created an AI cloud platform – as AWS once did for the Cloud 1.0 era. James Hamilton is an AWS cloud infrastructure genius who can take on Nvidia, even if the chipmaker has a major head start. Her startup spent months building a data center from scratch to help customers train AI models.

Persons: —, Jensen Huang, Nvidia Rick Wilking, Andrew Ng, CUDA, Michael Douglas, Bernstein, Douglas, Luis Ceze, Ceze, It's, Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, James Hamilton, Oren Etzioni, Claude, Dario Amodei, Anthropic Anthropic, Noah Berger, Sharon Zhou, Zhou, Lamini didn't, Etzioni Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Service, Home Depot, AWS, VMware, Cloud, Madrona Venture, Amazon, Amazon Web, Annapurna Labs, Intel, AMD Locations: San Francisco, Seattle, Selipsky

☆ Being underweight stocks would be a 'mistake' if a recession is avoided: JPMorgan's Phil Camporeale
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-23 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailBeing underweight stocks would be a 'mistake' if a recession is avoided: JPMorgan's Phil CamporealePhil Camporeale, JPMorgan Asset Management portfolio manager and Matt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, join 'Closing Bell Overtime' to talk the day's market action, Big Tech earnings, what to expect from the Fed at Jackson Hole and more.

Persons: Phil Camporeale Phil Camporeale, Matt McIlwain, Jackson Organizations: JPMorgan, Management, Madrona Venture Group, Big Tech, Fed

☆ This is the start of a new tech bull market, says Dan Ives after Big Tech earnings
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailThis is the start of a new tech bull market, says Dan Ives after Big Tech earningsDan Ives, Wedbush and Matt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, join 'Closing Bell Overtime' to talk Microsoft and Google quarterly earnings reports.

Persons: Dan Ives, Wedbush, Matt McIlwain Organizations: Big Tech, Madrona Venture Group, Microsoft

☆ 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?

☆ Amazon CEO says ChatGPT is 'exciting,' but that Amazon has been working on similar tech for a long time
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy said generative AI like ChatGPT presents "exciting" possibilities. He told the Financial Times that Amazon has been working on generative AI for a long time. Amazon company supporters are worried the company is falling behind in this area, per the FT.Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. "I think it's exciting, what's possible with generative AI," Jassy told the FT. "And it's part of what you're seeing with models like ChatGPT. But most large, deeply technical companies like ours, have been working on these very large, generative AI models themselves for a long time."

☆ Watch CNBC's full interview with Matt McIlwain
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWatch CNBC's full interview with Matt McIlwainMatt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, joins 'TechCheck' to discuss the future of M&A and investing in cloud in 2023.

☆ Pitch Decks That Advertising Tech Startups Used to Raise Millions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Business Insider | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Check out these pitch decks that they've used to sell their vision and raise millions from private equity and VC investors. Blocking ad fraudAdtech startup Lunio, announced a $15 million Series A funding round in September 2022. In May 2022, the software-as-a-service startup raised a $30 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. Marketing in the metaverseAnima, an augmented-reality startup, raised a $3 million funding round from investors in Janury. He raised $50 million in Series D after closing a $34 million Series C last year, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

☆ After a very quiet 2022, these are the five tech startups that could go public in 2023, according to bankers and tech market experts
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In a bleak market, some startups are turning to sellsides or letting go of IPO lawyers. Many companies that were looking to go public are now pausing IPO efforts due to falling public and private valuations, according to five investors, bankers, and tech market experts Insider spoke with. This year hasn't been a total wash for the tech IPO market. Some expected Mobileye's IPO to open the public market floodgates. Here are five companies that could end the 2022 IPO winter, according to people close to the tech markets who spoke with Insider.

Meanwhile, the number of "mega-deals" — or funding rounds of more than $100 million — dropped to its lowest level since 2018, CB Insights also reported. According to CB Insights, the volume of payments-related dealmaking reached nearly $4 billion, or slightly less than a third of all fintech funding. And while that's not a record-breaking amount, payments are accounting for a larger amount of the fintech funding pie. One year ago, when third-quarter fintech funding topped $36 billion in the midst of a bull market, payments accounted for roughly 20% of overall funding volume. But even amid a relative pullback in broader fintech funding, payments represent a safe, evergreen thesis because it is a largely complicated and analog space.

☆ Fintechs have been getting crushed this year, but the sector's biggest investors say payments are a key area to watch in 2023. Here's what they are most excited about.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Emilia David | Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

☆ Amazon gets in front of holiday shopping with second Prime Day of the year
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailAmazon gets in front of holiday shopping with second Prime Day of the yearMatt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, joins 'TechCheck' to discuss Amazon launching a second Prime Day sale this year, e-commerce reaching shoppers in an inflationary environment, and holiday season commerce concerns.

☆ Tech stocks haven't priced in the full implications of a recession, says Madrona Venture Group's McIlwain
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailTech stocks haven't priced in the full implications of a recession, says Madrona Venture Group's McIlwainMatt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group managing director, joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss what metrics he's watching to indicate a bottom in equity markets, the names he's looking at and more.

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