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☆ Citadel's Ken Griffin considers selling minority shares whilst handing out political advice to Trump
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-22 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In today's big story, billionaire Ken Griffin has some advice for President-elect Donald Trump, including a suggestion for his Treasury pick . While speaking Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, Griffin said he appreciates the importance of those issues to Americans but said aggressive tactics to address them could make things work. Griffin is one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party, but declined to publicly endorse either presidential candidate this year. AdvertisementModeration hasn't been the name of the game for Trump with some of his proposed policies. AdvertisementHe said he'd be open to selling a minority stake in his hedge fund to the right partner.

Persons: it's, Ken Griffin, Donald Trump, Trump Ken Griffin, Mike Blake, Insider's Bradley Saacks, Michelle Abrego, Griffin, Manny Roman, Trump, Marc Rowan, Rowan, Alexander Tamargo, Thoma Bravo Griffin, he'd, Zalubowski, Chelsea Jia Feng, Elon, Paul, Tyson, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson Ron Antonelli, Chip Somodevilla, Rebecca Zisser, Tucker Carlson, Bari Weiss, BI's Peter Kafka, Chris Balfe, Ridley Scott's, You've, Dan DeFrancesco, Jack Sommers, Grace Lett, Ella Hopkins, Amanda Yen, Milan Sehmbi Organizations: Business, Treasury, Trump, Citadel, Milken, Global Conference, Reuters, Economic, of New, Republican Party, Citadel Securities, Sequoia, Millennium Management, BlackRock, Chelsea, Getty, Netflix, Bank of America, NY Daily, Fox News, Auto, Ford, GM, Volkswagen Locations: Beverly Hills , California, U.S, of New York, Montreal, New York, London, Chicago

☆ Elon Musk's startup xAI is now reportedly worth more than what the billionaire paid for Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-21 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

AdvertisementElon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has been valued at $50 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. xAI's valuation has doubled since the spring, surpassing the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter. Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has reportedly been valued at $50 billion — $6 billion more than what the billionaire paid to acquire Twitter, the social media platform now known as X. AdvertisementThe new valuation means xAI has surpassed the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter back in October 2022. xAI previously raised a $6 billion Series B from A16z and Sequoia Capital at a $24 billion post-money valuation.

Persons: Andreessen Horowitz, Elon, xAI, Musk, Sam Altman, OpenAI Organizations: Elon, Street Journal, Twitter, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, The, Equity Partners, Qatar Investment Authority, Microsoft Locations: A16z

☆ Citadel founder Ken Griffin said he would be 'open' to selling a stake in his $65 billion hedge fund
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-21 | by ( Bradley Saacks | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

AdvertisementCitadel founder Ken Griffin said on Thursday that he's "open" to selling a stake in his hedge fund. Griffin had previously sold a minority stake in his market maker to VC funds Sequoia and Paradigm. BlackRock's potential investment into Izzy Englander's Millennium might have Citadel founder Ken Griffin thinking. Griffin said Sequoia has pushed Citadel Securities' leadership in the boardroom, making them a better company. AdvertisementAs for who he'd want as a minority stakeholder of Citadel, Griffin clearly has a type.

Persons: Ken Griffin, Griffin, Izzy Englander's, Larry Fink, Sam Bankman, he'd, that's, it's, Sequoia Organizations: Citadel, Sequoia, Economic, of New, BlackRock, Millennium, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Citadel Securities, Apple, Nvidia Locations: of New York, York

☆ Alphabet's VC arm backs little-known SAP rival Odoo, boosting valuation to $5.3 billion
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-20 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Fabien Pinckaers, CEO of Belgian-based enterprise software startup Odoo. OdooOdoo, a startup taking on SAP in the realm of enterprise software, boosted its valuation to 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in a secondary share round led by Alphabet 's venture fund and Sequoia Capital. "The reason everybody [has] failed [in this market] is that it's quite complex," Pinckaers told CNBC. The last time Odoo secured primary funding was in 2014, when it raised $10 million in a Series B round. Prior to the latest secondary round, Odoo was most recently valued by investors at 3.2 billion euros.

Persons: Fabien Pinckaers, Odoo, Pinckaers, Andrew Reed, Reed, He's, Billings, aren't, Alex Nichols, CapitalG, he's, bootstrapping, Odoo hasn't, Wallonie Organizations: Belgian, SAP, Sequoia Capital, CNBC, Enterprise, Sequoia, Summit Partners Locations: Belgium, India, billings, Sequoia

☆ Ark's Cathie Wood changed Wall Street. Now, she's set her sights on venture capital.
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-13 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Wood's effort to do something similar for venture capital has delivered investments in many of Silicon Valley's hottest deals. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is Ark Venture Fund's largest holding, accounting for 13% of the fund's total assets. SpaceX is Ark Venture Fund's largest holding, accounting for 13% of the fund's total assets, worth around $9 million. OpenAI makes up just 5% of the Ark Venture Fund's portfolio, which means it has less than $4 million invested. AdvertisementArk Venture Fund charges a flat fee for investing assets under its control, the same as a venture fund.

Persons: Cathie Wood, Brett Winton, Wood, Andreessen Horowitz, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, David McNew, Winton, it's, Ark, OpenAI, Donald Trump's, Morningstar, that'll Organizations: Ark Venture Fund, Ark, Investors, Ark Invest, Elon, SpaceX, Ark Venture, Epic Games, Venture Fund Locations: Sequoia

Buy now, pay later firms like Klarna and Block's Afterpay could be about to face tougher rules in the U.K.Klarna, which is known for its popular buy now, pay later business, announced Wednesday that it's confidentially filed IPO documents with the SEC. The company said the offering would follow the SEC's review process and is subject to market conditions. Analysts recently valued Klarna, which was founded in 2005, in the $15 billion range. Klarna's decision to go pursue a listing in the U.S. represents a major blow to European stock exchanges, which have been trying to encourage local tech companies to list at home. "European IPO markets have seen some recovery as of Q3 this year," she added.

Persons: Block's, it's confidentially, Klarna, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CNBC's, Siemiatkowski, Siemiatkowski hadn't, Navina Rajan, We've, Rajan Organizations: SEC, SoftBank's Vision, Sequoia Capital, CNBC, Apple, Meta, London Stock Exchange Locations: London, Europe, U.S

☆ OpenAI is reportedly struggling to improve its next big AI model. It's a warning for the entire AI industry.
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-11 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

It reignites a debate about the feasibility of developing increasingly advanced models and AI scaling laws — the theoretical rules about how the models improve. It remains to be seen how smart an AI model can get when it has that much capital thrown at it. There could also be strategies to make AI models smarter by enhancing the inference portion of development. The model OpenAI released in September — called OpenAI o1 — focused more on inference improvements. Still, it's clear that, like Altman, much of the industry remains firm in its conviction that scaling laws are the driver of AI performance.

Persons: OpenAI's, It's, —, Sam Altman, Fabrice Beaulieu, Altman, OpenAI, Andrew Caballero, Reynolds, Ion Stoica, Gary Marcus, Anthropic, Marcus, Claude, Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, Kevin Scott, we're, Scott, they've Organizations: Service, OpenAI's, Orion, Business, Getty, Companies, New York University, Reuters, Sequoia, o1 Locations: GPT, Silicon Valley, AFP

☆ Silicon Valley's Trump boosters celebrate: 'It's time to build'
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-06 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tech leaders who openly supported Donald Trump took to X to celebrate his win Wednesday morning. AdvertisementAs former president Donald Trump swept to victory Wednesday morning, supporters in Silicon Valley posted messages of congratulations and even gloated over his return to the Oval Office. Some of tech's most high-profile and wealthiest names offered their first reactions after major news networks called the race for Trump. The billionaire owner of X and Tesla watched the election results roll in with Trump from Mar-a-Lago. AdvertisementMarc Andreessen, an early Facebook and Coinbase investor via his firm Andreessen Horowitz, had a curious relationship with Trump.

Persons: Donald Trump, Keith Rabois, —, Chamath Palihapitiya, Shaun Maguire, Trump . Elon Musk, Tesla, Joe Biden, Israel —, Musk, Trump, Doug Leone, Joe Lonsdale, David Sacks, Obama, Biden, Harris, Sacks, Leone, Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz, Andreessen Organizations: Tech, Service, tech's, Trump, Trump ., Mar, San Francisco, Republicans, Israel, Craft Ventures, Republican National Convention, Business, Federal, Commission, National Republican, Founders Fund, SpaceX, Khosla Ventures Locations: Silicon Valley, Sequoia, America, San, Pennsylvania, Rabois

☆ Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at $2.4 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-04 | by ( Hayden Field | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC. Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Physical Intelligence's new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.

Persons: Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Microsoft's Bing Organizations: Economic, Amazon, Change, Physical Intelligence, CNBC, Investors, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Tesla, Google, Intelligence Locations: Davos, Switzerland, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, San Francisco, ChatGPT

☆ Meet Glean, the enterprise AI search company that's so powerful Sam Altman deemed it a threat to OpenAI
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-31 | by ( Sri Muppidi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Among them are Anthropic, Elon Musk's xAI, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, and AI search startup Perplexity. The last of the five rivals, and perhaps the least well-known, is Glean, an enterprise search assistant. Founded in 2019 by Rubrik cofounder and ex-Googler Arvind Jain, Glean helps corporate workers find information across their companies' tools and data. Related Video Sam Altman moves to Microsoft after OpenAI fires him as CEOThe company enables AI search by integrating apps like Slack and Dropbox and powering search across their company's universe of data. AdvertisementBesides enterprise search, Glean also has an AI assistant that generates answers based on search results, such as summarizing the day's Slack messages or synthesizing multiple documents.

Persons: Glean, Jain, —, Sam Altman, Elon Musk's, Ilya Sutskever's, Googler Arvind Jain, Kleiner Perkins, Deedy Das, Larry Page, Das, Bipul Sinha, Rubrik, Mamoon Hamid, Vishwanath, Tony Gentilcore, Piyush Prahladka, …, Arvind, Hamid, Paul, Rajeev Dham, they're, Slack, Altman, It's Organizations: Google, Service, Elon Musk's xAI, DST Global, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia, Microsoft, Sony Electronics, Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Technology, IIT, Menlo Ventures, IIT Delhi, University of Washington, Akamai Technologies, Technology, YouTube, Kleiner Locations: Jaipur, Indian, IIT Delhi, India, Glean, Seattle

☆ Elon Musk's xAI startup could soon be worth many times more than X
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-30 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk's xAI is raising fresh funding at a $40 billion valuation, the WSJ reported. Social media network X, meanwhile, is currently valued at $9.4 billion, according to Fidelity filings. AdvertisementA new funding round in the works for xAI could value Elon Musk's startup at more than four times what his social media network, X, is currently worth, according to recent Fidelity filings. The AI startup is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $40 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Assuming the investment was made at X's $44 billion valuation, the fund now estimates X's value to be around $9.4 billion.

Persons: Elon Musk's, —, Musk, ChatGPT, That's Organizations: Social, Fidelity, Service, Elon, Wall Street, Sequoia Capital, Growth Locations: a16z, xAI

☆ Apple’s iPhone AI debuts today. Here’s what to expect
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-28 | by ( John Towfighi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Apple’s AI features for iPhones will be available for free to users with any iPhone 16, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, who update to iOS 18.1. Apple Intelligence is also available for iPad and Mac models that support iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15. The AI features rolling out with iOS 18.1The Apple Intelligence features rolling out Monday include improvements to writing and editing, Siri and the Photo app. “Some market participants are optimistic that Apple Intelligence could dramatically boost iPhone shipments soon,” Kuo said in the blog post. Following Apple's new product announcements, customers can pick up the new iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max from UK Apple Stores today.

Persons: Pro Max, Siri, Angelo Zino, Dan Ives, ” Ives, didn’t, Chi Kuo, Kuo, ” Kuo, Max, Peter Nicholls, “, Wedbush’s Ives, CFRA Research’s Zino, ” Zino, Apple’s Organizations: CNN — Apple Intelligence, Apple Intelligence, Pro, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Developers Conference, Big Tech, Apple Apple, CFRA Research, CNN, Wedbush Securities, TF International Securities, Regent, AirPods, Apple Stores Locations: London, England

☆ The Apple devices that can run Apple Intelligence AI features — and those that can't
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-28 | by ( Ana Altchek | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Apple rolled out new Apple Intelligence features with iOS 18.1 on Monday. If you don't have a brand-new Apple device, you might still be able to take advantage of Apple Intelligence. You can also access Apple Intelligence features on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Users with an iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15, or any earlier version cannot access Apple Intelligence features. Those are the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and the iPad Mini.

Persons: —, Siri, Max Organizations: Apple, Apple Intelligence, Service, Sequoia, iPad, MacBook, Mac

☆ Apple Intelligence is finally here for some as part of the iOS 18.1 software update
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-28 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Apple rolled out long-awaited AI features to some iPhone and other users with its iOS 18.1 update. The new software is officially available on iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, months after the tech giant first announced Apple Intelligence at the Worldwide Developers Conference. These are the Apple Intelligence features out nowApple Intelligence was revealed at Apple WWDC 2024. AdvertisementWith iOS 18.1, Apple said Siri can field typed requests, answer "thousands of questions" about Apple products, and understand context better. AppleTo ensure they get the features, iPhone owners must join a waitlist to request activation of Apple Intelligence.

Persons: Dan Ives, —, Siri, Apple, There's, Tim Cook Organizations: Apple, Apple Intelligence, Service, Sequoia, Worldwide, Wedbush Securities Locations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa

☆ 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

☆ Bolt CEO changes RTO policy to 'stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali.' Read the memo.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-25 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The CEO of European ride-hailing app Bolt is mandating workers return to the office 12 days a month. AdvertisementThe CEO of European mobility app Bolt didn't mince words earlier this month when calling workers back to the office. "We will stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali," he said. "We believe that in-person collaboration drives innovation and performance, and our existing policy advises employees to work from a Bolt office for 2-3 days a week," a Bolt spokesperson said. "Starting from 1 January, this policy will be formalised with employees being asked to work from a Bolt office 12 days per month.

Persons: Markus Villig, Bolt, —, Villig, Elon Musk, flexibly, it'd, Read Organizations: Service, Business, Apple, Amazon, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management, Team, – Locations: Bali, Tallinn, Estonia, – Tallinn

☆ Sequoia Capital partner Pat Grady is redefining AI investments
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

The prestigious venture firm Sequoia Capital likes to say all its partners invest in every sector. But more than anyone, the growth-stage partner Grady, part of Business Insider's 2024 AI Power List, has led the firm's AI strategy, making bets on companies including OpenAI, Harvey, and Hugging Face. Along with another partner, Sonya Huang, Grady also wrote a public blog post on Sequoia's website inviting AI founders to email them their ideas and pitches directly. A successful deal for Sequoia is more about investing in the best people rather than at the best price, Grady told Business Insider last year. See Business Insider's full AI Power List

Persons: Grady, Harvey, Sonya Huang Organizations: Sequoia Capital, Sequoia

☆ Exclusive: Maven Clinic is swapping out its finance chiefs as the women's health unicorn looks ahead to an IPO
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Maven's chief financial officer has left the women's health unicorn one year after taking the role. AdvertisementMaven Clinic is swapping out its chief financial officers on the heels of a fresh funding round as the women's health startup inches closer to an IPO. Related storiesAs the highest-valued women's health startup, Maven is expected to be a candidate for the next wave of digital health IPOs. The startup's hopeful future exit would be a boon for the women's health market, which remains a small fraction of all healthcare funding. Wrapbook raised a $20 million funding round in September at a valuation of $750 million.

Persons: Maven, —, Kristina Campbell, isn't, Campbell didn't, haven't, Campbell, Wrapbook Organizations: Service, StepStone Group, Business, Sequoia Capital, Catalyst, Lux Capital, Oak HC, SEC

☆ Amazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortages
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-23 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Electricity and labor headwinds slow Amazon's data center buildout. AdvertisementAmazon is spending heavily on data centers to support booming AI workloads, putting it on pace to build 240 new facilities by 2040, one estimate found. David Cahn, a Sequoia Capital general partner, recently predicted data center delays across the sector. Bernstein Research recently estimated that electricity demand for AI data centers could exceed supply in just two years without action. An Amazon data center in Oregon.

Persons: —, It's, David Cahn, Marc Wulfraat, MWPVL, we've, Bernstein, Amazon's, Matt Garman, JOSH EDELSON, Garman, Manuel Pineda, Pineda, Owens Corning Organizations: Service, Sequoia Capital, Energy, Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, Bernstein Research, Business, Web, San Francisco 49ers, BI, AWS, Uptime Institute, Center, Survey Locations: AMER, Americas, Oregon , Ohio, Northern Virginia, Amazon's Portland, Arizona, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Silicon Valley, Santa Clara , California, Santa Clara, Levi's, City, Santa, Oregon

☆ My mom came home from dinner to an eviction notice on the door and even worse news to follow. Now I spend $28 a month to make sure it can't happen to me.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-21 | by ( Matt Seidholz | Read More | Read Less | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

He had a $1.5 million life insurance policy, which my mom used as leverage to get a loan for his care. My mom's experience convinced me to buy a 20-year, $500,000 term life policy of my own, at $28 a month. That math looks grim, and it would look a whole lot worse if my stepfather didn't have a $1.5 million term life insurance policy. Life insurance was a financial lifeline for my motherThough the mortgage had slipped my stepfather's mind, the life insurance premiums were on autopay. Get Life Insurance Quotes Compare affordable life insurance options with Policygenius.

Persons: —, he'd, hadn't, He'd, didn't, Roger Deal, Roger, they'll, Banks, there's, George Bailey Organizations: Service, CPA, Sequoia Wealth Partners Locations: Omaha , Nebraska

☆ Venture capital is going to war over the election. Here's the data to prove it.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-19 | by ( Rob Price | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

VCs are lobbing cash at the presidential election and key congressional races, FEC data shows. This election cycle, investors at the top venture capital firms have plowed tens of millions of dollars into the election, both backing their favored political candidates and just cannily promoting commercial interests. (The filing deadline for Q3 data for quarterly filing entities was October 15, but this data isn't yet readily available in full online.) Business Insider selected 10 venture capital firms to focus on, taking into account fund size and cultural and industry significance. Sequoia Capital's Doug Leone is one of VC's most prolific GOP-aligned political donors, giving his almost $3.8 million to the National Republican Committee and other causes.

Persons: Reid Hoffman, Kamala Harris, —, hasn't, Andreessen Horowitz, blockchain, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, a16z, Horowitz, Andreessen, Harris, megadonor Reid Hoffman, Keith Rabois, Kleiner Perkins, Michael Moritz, Shaun Maguire, Joe Manchin, Hoffman, Horowitz Hoffman, Joe Biden, Biden, Nikki Haley, Trump, Vinod Khosla, John Doerr, Doug Leone, Elon Musk, Melia Russell, Rob Price Organizations: Service, Federal, Commission, Yuga Labs, White, Republicans, Founders Fund, SpaceX, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Heritage, Business, Republican, Lincoln, Democratic, Democratic Party, Democratic Congressional, Sequoia, National Republican, Future Forward PAC, America PAC, Elon, Investors, splashy Hamptons, Harris Victory Fund, Harris Action Fund, Democratic National Committee Locations: Solana, Sequoia, West Virginia, New Hampshire

☆ AI sales startup Clay is raising a new funding round at a $1.3 billion valuation, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-16 | by ( Sri Muppidi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The company last raised a $46 million Series B at a $500 million valuation led by Meritech in June. AdvertisementClay, the AI-powered sales startup, is set to be valued at $1.3 billion in a new insider funding round, two sources told Business Insider. Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Box Group, and Boldstart Ventures participated in that round. Clay's AI messaging tool can then help sales teams send tailored outbound messages to prospective customers. Apollo, a sales intelligence startup, raised a $100 million Series D round led by Bain Capital Ventures last year at a $1.6 billion valuation.

Persons: Clay, Meritech, —, Kareem Amin, Amin, Varun Anand Organizations: Service, Business, Meritech Capital, Sequoia Capital, Boldstart Ventures, Wall Street, Bain Capital Ventures

☆ AI labs are fragmenting because of ego clashes and commercial pressures. It's about to drive a wave of new startups.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-15 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

There is an impending wave of new startups spinning out of larger AI labs, per Air Street Capital's State of AI report. AI labs are fragmenting due to ego clashes, philosophical disagreements, and commercial pressures. But as AI labs work towards the sector's holy grail, known as artificial general intelligence, those personalities have clashed — sometimes leading to a very public parting of ways. They are just some of the examples in a long line of AI labs that have fractured away from their juggernaut predecessors to form new startups. The exception would be if AI labs pivot toward building a niche model within a specific vertical, he said.

Persons: —, Ilya Sutskever, Andreessen Horowitz, StabilityAI's, H's cofounders, Sam Altman, Noel Hurley, they're, Nathan Benaich, Samir Kumar, Kumar, Peter J, Liu, Hurley, Benaich Organizations: Service, Sequoia, Black, Labs, TechCrunch, Accel, UiPath, NEA, Founders, Air Street Capital, Literal Labs, Touring Capital, Meta, Google Locations: Capital's, Paris, Sutskever

☆ Women's health startup Maven Clinic closes funding at $1.7 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-08 | by ( Ashley Capoot | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Kate Ryder, CEO of Maven, speaking at the CNBC Changemakers Summit in New York on April 18th, 2024. Maven Clinic, a health-care startup for women and families, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $125 million funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation. Maven CEO Kate Ryder told CNBC she founded the company in 2014 after watching her friends struggle to find the support they needed while building their families. "Digital health is just at the very beginning," Ryder told CNBC. The company was the first U.S. startup dedicated to women's and family health to ever reach "unicorn" status, or a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Persons: Kate Ryder, Maven, Ryder, Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon Organizations: Maven, CNBC, Maven Clinic, Microsoft, Oak HC Locations: New York

☆ OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla on why all the executive departures may be a good thing, taking on Elon Musk, and fixing AI's image problem
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-08 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Khosla Ventures was the first investor in OpenAI when it switched to a "capped-profit" model in 2018. When OpenAI switched from a non-profit to a "capped-profit" company in 2018, he put his money where his mouth was when Khosla Ventures stepped forward with the first check. While some notable earlier investors sat out this round, such as Sequoia Capital, sat out this round, Khosla Ventures doubled down. "There's plenty of companies in the public markets that have higher revenue multiples with much lower growth than OpenAI," Khosla said during an interview this week. Advertisement"I think a number of people who left recently really want to start something of their own, but the organization is also being rationalized for agility and speed," Khosla said.

Persons: Khosla, —, Vinod Khosla, OpenAI, Mira Murati, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, John Schulman, Sam, Altman, Sutskever, X, 4chan Khosla, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Musk Organizations: Khosla Ventures, Service, Sequoia Capital, 4chan, 4Chan Locations: OpenAI, Silicon Valley, It's

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