We’re in the home stretch. Silicon Valley’s political nightmare could hopefully soon be over. In the latest episode of the Newcomer podcast, we dig into all of the tech industry’s burning political takes.

There was Josh Wolfe’s endorsement waffling. Jeff Bezos’ editorial intervention. And the general sense that everyone is losing their minds leading up to what should be Trump’s last run at the presidency.

Later in the episode, we break down General Catalyst’s massive fundraise haul and its transition into a “company.” We also discuss Stripe’s billion-dollar acquisition of Bridge.

Episode produced by Christopher Gates

Timestamps: 

00:00 — Intro

04:13 — The VC political divide

09:27 — The Washington Post’s editorial debacle

12:25 — General Catalyst raises $8B

15:38 — Stripe acquires Bridge

Note for our listeners: We’ll be back with a couple episodes of the Cerebral Valley Podcast starting next week, so stay tuned.

Newcomer turns four this week. On the podcast, Madeline talked with me about how it all began.

When I made the decision to start Newcomer, the venture capital industry was in the beginnings of a record-breaking bull run. A lot has changed since then, for both venture and the media industry, but I’m excited about our growth at Newcomer and wanted to share a bit more about what’s next.

Description

Eric and Madeline discuss Newcomer’s revenue milestones, the growth of Newcomer over the past four years, and what’s next for the publication. They also focus on the downturn in the venture industry and how this will affect first-time fund managers.

Produced by Christopher Gates

Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

02:08 — Newcomer’s 4 Year Anniversary

08:22 — Building out a media company in 2024 and what’s next

15:46 — The venture downturn vs. new emerging funds

22:02 — X-energy's $500 million raise

22:42 — $100 million for Path Robotics

Description

In this episode, Eric Newcomer is joined by guest host Jon McNeill, a seasoned executive with experience at Lyft and Tesla who is now leading DVx Ventures. They discuss the bear case for OpenAI. The OpenAI discussion then leads into a closer look at the contrast between founder and manager modes before concluding with a discussion on Tesla’s advancements, or lack thereof, in self-driving technology. 

Produced by Christopher Gates

Chapters: 

00:00 — Introduction

03:27 — Bear case for OpenAI

13:07 — Founder mode management

17:20 — Tesla promises, but SpaceX delivers

Description: 

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger discuss two major funding rounds, the ongoing downturn in VC funding, and the growing imbalance between public relations professionals and reporters. Eric and Madeline highlight Poolside’s $500M round and Impulse Space’s $150M raise, while pointing out that even the AI mega rounds cant hide the downturn in VC funding.

Produced by Christopher Gates

Audio Chapters: 

00:00:18 — Poolside’s $500M round 

00:02:24 — Impulse Space’s $150M raise

00:05:17 — Downturn in VC

00:11:03 — The imbalance between PR and journalism

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, hosts Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger delve into the world of venture capital deals, starting with Ujet’s $76M Series D for its AI-powered call center software. Next up is the drama surrounding PearAI, whose growth-hacker tweet set the tech world buzzing. From there, they navigate through OpenAI’s own “Game of Thrones,” exploring internal power plays and high-stakes exits, before turning to California’s latest AI regulatory battles. To wrap things up, they call for some balance in Silicon Valley’s escalating discourse around drugs and psychedelics.

Chapters:

00:22 Ujet

01:40 PearAI

05:49 Open AI

11:45 AI Regulation

16:34 Drugs + SV

Episode 1: AI + Robots, YC Preview, and Why the Cool Kids Keep Picking on Tech

In this week’s episode of the Newcomer Podcast, hosts Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger discuss three top venture capital deals, including World Labs and delivery startup Flink. They also wade into Y Combinator’s upcoming Demo Day, highlighting trends in defense tech and the implications of AI’s power consumption.

The conversation touches on Runway’s licensing deal with Lionsgate and concludes with an examination of John Mulaney’s performance at Dreamforce.

Chapters

* 00:00 World Labs: A New Era in AI Robotics

* 05:10 The Rise and Fall of Delivery Startups

* 09:19 Y Combinator’s Demo Day

* 11:46 Defense Tech

* 20:09 Powering AI: The Nuclear Debate

* 24:24 Runway’s Licensing Deal

* 28:02 John Mulaney’s Roast

Today we’re highlighting two fireside chats from the Newcomer Banking Summit on March 14.

First up is Mercury CEO Immad Akhund. He talked about how the Silicon Valley Bank crisis sent customers rushing to his digital banking service.

He pitched a world where software — not human bankers — solve most of customers’ problems. Akhund told me, “My experience with relationship banking was I need to send a wire and I literally cannot figure out to do it, please help me. Which to me never felt like a relationship, it felt very transactional and painful — and with Mercury you don’t have to do that.”

Mercury is limited by the fact that it is not a bank — it’s a software company on top of banking partners — at a time when regulators are looking closely at how banks work with fintech partners.

We concluded our summit with Jackie Reses — who was a top executive at Square before leaving to buy a bank. Reses is the CEO of Lead Bank, a regional Kansas City bank that still serves local customers but has built an onramp for financial technology companies to connect with the banking system.

“The thing I saw at Square — which I consider to be a very strong, innovative fintech — is that owning a bank and operating a bank is a 10X delta in understanding compliance to working in a tech company,” Reses said. At Square, Reses said, she learned to “appreciate the complexity of what it takes to do this, so that we could learn how to serve our clients better and help them scale — but make sure we never put ourselves in the position to risk the relationship that we have operating with our regulators.”

You can give the episodes a listen or watch them on YouTube.

Also: The Future of Banking with Rho, Jiko, and Ripple

In case you missed it, we’ve posted another panel with three fintech/banking leaders.

Rho CEO Everett Cook, Jiko CEO Stephane Lintner, and Ripple President Monica Long are all trying to solve shortcomings in the legacy banking system, with different approaches. Check it out to see their takes on the major problems with banking today.

We’ve got two great sessions from the Newcomer Banking Summit for you:

* First up, WestCap Group founder Laurence Tosi and Lux Capital co-founder Peter Hébert. They give an unvarnished account of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank with the benefit of hindsight. “It was like the banking equivalent of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Hébert said. “It was absolute sheer terror.”

* We follow that up with Silicon Valley Bank President Marc Cadieux, who talks about where SVB is today and fields questions about all the new competition his reconstituted bank, now owned by First Citizens, is facing.

I thought Tosi and Hébert’s talk was the spiciest of the day. And Cadieux was the man of the hour. I wanted to know where his head was at one year after the crisis.

You can give the episodes a listen or watch them on YouTube.

Breaking the Bank: BCV’s Matt Harris

If you missed it, yesterday I published a talk from Bain Capital Ventures’ Matt Harris.

In the headline, I made a mortifying error and used the acronym of another VC firm. Harris is Bain Capital Ventures’ fintech guru; he gave a great presentation and I had nightmares last night about my mixup. Apologies!

Here’s that talk:

Today, we have a double episode for you — two conversations from the Cerebral Valley AI Summit.

Reid Hoffman was fresh off a meeting with President Joe Biden when Hoffman and I sat down on stage at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit Nov. 15. On stage, he told us that working to get Biden elected next year is one of his top priorities.

Then, I sat down with the ever-feisty Vinod Khosla. The investor called for a TikTok ban and more welcoming immigration policies while warning against open-source artificial intelligence projects.

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Hoffman Plans to Go Big for Biden

Hoffman, fresh off a meeting with President Biden, kicked off the afternoon with a strong endorsement of the President’s record. Hoffman praised Biden for his recent executive order on artificial intelligence.

Reid called himself “a 95%-98% supporter” of the executive order, endorsing provisions on reporting and monitoring, “red team” testing, and voluntary commitments by companies that might eventually be enforced via the Defense Production Act. But he pushed back on the idea that the FTC should be monitoring the AI industry for anti-competitive conduct.

“Startups are not being impeded right now,” he asserted, despite the apparent dominance of OpenAI and the mega-cap tech companies. Reid sits on the board of Microsoft, and offered that he was in fact “first money in” on OpenAI, through his personal foundation, but he’s not concerned about, er, his own companies having too much power. “I don’t think it constrains competition on any level.”

Hoffman is always happy to engage on policy, and I asked him what he thought about Marc Andreessen’s recent “techno-optimist” manifesto, which denigrates the very idea of government oversight. Reid said he was a techno-optimist too, and half-joked that Andreessen “quoted kind of liberally from things I’ve written and said” without any attribution. But Hoffman said that he’s not on board with Andreessen’s approach. “It’s kind of dumb to think that when you have major technologies there can’t be negative side effects,” he said, noting that all his AI projects have safety teams. “Tech can be amazing. Let’s be intentional about building.”

Khosla Wins Cheers from the Cerebral Valley Audience

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla confirmed that his firm, boosted by an early stake in OpenAI, was about to close on $3 billion in commitments for a new fund. Valuations are high, he said, “but just because valuations are high doesn’t mean it isn’t a good time to invest.”

He’s not buying existential risk, calling it “nonsensical” talk from academics who had nothing better to do. But he’s long on China risk, saying the U.S. is in a “techno-economic war” with China and needs to fight hard. “I would ban TikTok in a nano-second,” he said, unlike his predecessor on stage, Hoffman, who Khosla said he very much admired. Khosla is firmly against open-source AI models as well due to the China risk.

Bio-risk and cyber risk are real concerns too, he noted.

But if China or rogue viruses don’t kill us, Khosla thinks the near-future is very bright: “I do think in 10 years we’ll have free doctors, free tutors, free lawyers” all powered by AI. 

Khosla also gave a grudging endorsement of the Biden Executive Order, saying it was “okay.” 

But like most Silicon Valley moguls, he has no time for antitrust issues. “We have to get people like Khan out of there,” he said, referring to the chair of the FTC (though misstating her name), calling her “crazy, left-wing.”   

Khosla said he’s long believed that AI would force us to “redefine what it is to me human.”

Meantime he himself plans another 25 years of VC investing, and if all goes well, maybe more. 

Give it a listen

We were delighted to kick off the 2nd Cerebral Valley AI Summit with Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, and Naveen Rao, co-founder of MosaicML.

Their encounter at our debut event in March led to Ghodsi buying Rao’s company, which had little revenue, for $1.3 billion. At our event on Nov. 15, the two discussed how the deal came together quickly after meeting at the conference dinner.

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NVIDIA DGX Cloud on OCI is an AI training-as-a-service platform for customers to train complex AI models like generative AI applications. Included with DGX Cloud, NVIDIA AI Enterprise brings the software layer of the NVIDIA AI platform to OCI.

Talk with Oracle about accelerating your GPU workloads.

Ghodsi recounted how he started spending some time with Rao and thought, “these guys are pretty good,” and then by chance noticed an employee he respected poking around with MosaicML and offering a strong endorsement. Soon Ghodsi was on the phone with the head of his deals team, who told him “if you want to buy these guys you have to do it this weekend.” Rao said by that point “you kind of know he’s going to pop the question,” and once they worked out the money, the deal was done.

The two executives certainly seemed to be in harmony as they touted the potential benefits from their combination, which in simple terms will bring MosaicML’s expertise in building specialized generative AI models to Databricks’ corporate data platform products, essentially super-charging Databricks for the generative AI era.

They were eager to defend the idea of open-source foundation models that are specific to certain tasks, rejecting the notion that general-purpose models like ChatGPT-4 will eventually swallow everything. (This conversation took place before OpenAI was thrown into chaos by its board of directors.)

Ghodsi said calls to limit open-source models on the grounds that they’ll be too easily exploited by bad actors a “horrible, horrendous” idea that would “put a stop to all innovation.” 

“It’s essential that we have an open-source ecosystem,” he said, noting that even now it’s unclear how a lot of AI models work, and open-source research will be critical to answering those questions.

Rao added that many of the people making predictions about how AI would develop are “full of s**t.” On the safety question, he noted that cost alone would stand in the way of any existential risks for a long time, and in the meantime the focus should be on real threats like disinformation and robot safety.

Give it a listen