Sourcery

I went inside Starcloud’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, right outside of Seattle, to tour the $2.3B company building AI data centers in space.

Philip Johnston, CEO & Co-Founder led the tour, alongside technical features with Co-Founder & CTO Ezra Feilden, Co-Founder & Chief Engineer Adi Oltean, as well as Bailey Montaño, Miguel Rivera and Camilo Lopez from the engineering team.

Starcloud has raised $450M to put Nvidia GPUs, AI inference and eventually gigawatts of computing infrastructure into orbit. Its latest round was $250M, led by Manhattan West, with Nvidia, Cisco Investments, Benchmark and EQT. The team went from founding to orbit in 21 months. Starcloud 1 launched with the first Nvidia H100 in space. Starcloud 2 launches in January with 100x the power, and Starcloud 3 is designed to deploy up to 50 satellites per SpaceX Starship launch.

We cover the economics of orbital vs terrestrial data centers, the $500/kg launch cost threshold, SpaceX rideshare and Nvidia chips in space. We also get into liquid cooling and radiators, radiation and chip burn-in, edge inference for government customers and plans for an 88,000-satellite constellation.

We also go behind the scenes of spacecraft testing, including a rebuilt secondhand vibe table, plus laser fabrication and welding. We close with Philip’s take on SpaceX passing $100T and his mission to send a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri.

Philip Johnston: https://x.com/PhilipJohnston 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/mdq6urSx-f8

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/ 

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

I got interviewed! Paige Finn Doherty of Behind Genius sat down with me in the yard to look back on Sourcery's insane growth for her 100th episode. Copy below is from her post, check out her podcast Seed to Harvest. (https://open.spotify.com/show/1TcSnOcmeCG82HnXwNZwM0?si=452aee7408c1489c)

In just one year of full-time building Sourcery, Molly O’Shea has interviewed over 200+ founders, CEOs, execs & investors across public co's, startups, VC, growth equity, PE, hedge funds on her show, Sourcery - including Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir ($PLTR), Palmer Luckey, CEO of Anduril, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. In today’s episode, we talk about how an art degree led her into venture, how an internal deal newsletter became Sourcery, and why she went all-in on X when Elon bought it.She also shares her contrarian take on funding-announcement exclusives and how a Top 100 dream-guest list landed her the Alex Karp interview that went viral. And yes, we talk about the Alex Karp sword swinging moment. My mission is to educate and inspire the next generation of CEOs and builders, and the reason why I wanted to share a conversation with Molly is she’s one of my favorite creators in the technology space!00:25 Intro01:26 Lemonade stands in Connecticut and growing up with two entrepreneur parents03:59 Drawing houses in Moleskines and teaching herself dimensions06:14 Using art to stand out08:32 Why the USC Architecture program failed her ROI test11:17 Discovering VC at Google’s 30 Weeks incubator15:12 Breaking into VC18:44 How Sourcery started as an internal deal newsletter22:53 Why she went all-in on X when Elon took over27:41 Breaking news vs. timeless content, and a funding-announcement playbook31:34 What frustrates her: companies that don’t amplify their own interviews34:21 Her Top 100 dream-guest list38:06 How the list landed Alex Karp40:55 Alex Karp: The first walking interview and the sword46:17 Jack Altman: “It’s my brother”48:28 Dry humor, Will Ferrell, and learning to smile49:53 The next list, and landing 20%+ of the first one in a year51:24 How Molly chooses guests55:41 Her vision for Sourcery: more walk-and-talks, factory tours, future list1:01:36 Molly asks Paige about Behind Genius Ventures1:05:28 What we’re each manifesting for the next 12 months

Is AI in a bubble? What happens to circular AI financing deals, and why is one of the world's largest asset managers investing in SpaceX and Anthropic?

I sat down with Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton ($1.8T AUM), at the firm's NYC headquarters to discuss today's market conditions, AI valuations, private markets, and the future of investing.

We cover:

• AI Bubble & Circular Deals: AI infrastructure spending, revenue recognition, chip depreciation, and risks in long-term data center financing.

• SpaceX & Anthropic: Franklin Templeton's late-stage venture investments, the SpaceX IPO, and Elon Musk's ambitions.

• Market Conditions: Inflation, interest rates, geopolitical risks, and where Jenny sees opportunities.

• Building a $1.8T Asset Manager: 17 acquisitions in six years, the $4.5B Legg Mason deal, and Franklin's expansion into private markets.

• AI & Tokenization: 1,000+ AI agents, an 11% sales uplift, and why blockchain could transform financial infrastructure.

Jenny also shares how she went from Franklin Templeton's mailroom to CEO, and why she believes Elon Musk is the modern-day Benjamin Franklin.

Jenny Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyjohnsonfranklintempleton 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/VmCKksLNmsM

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  • Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Jenny Johnson, CEO at Franklin Templeton

(01:08) Where is the market really headed?

(05:34) Why AI is the biggest growth lever

(08:10) Are we in an AI bubble?

(11:28) How Franklin Templeton got into SpaceX and Anthropic

(18:28) Closing a $4.5B deal in the middle of COVID

(21:39) The strategy behind 17 acquisitions in 6 years

(24:11) How Canvas grew from $2.5B to $30B

(28:43) Why blockchain will rebuild finance

(32:50) Will companies stop paying for top AI models?

(37:08) Franklin Templeton’s 70-year climb

(40:21) Who is the modern day Ben Franklin?

What if AI could predict human behavior before it happens?

I sat down with Joon Sung Park, Co-Founder & CEO of Simile, the $2B AI startup building foundation models of human behavior, backed by Greenoaks, Index Ventures, + investors including Fei-Fei Li & Andrej Karpathy.

Simile is building digital twins of real people to simulate how individuals, consumers, and entire populations make decisions. Its foundational Stanford research demonstrated 85%+ accuracy in predicting human behavior, and today the company has partnerships providing access to over 40 million real people globally.

Companies including CVS, Wealthfront, Deloitte, and Banco Itaú are already working with Simile to understand their customers, test products, optimize messaging, and simulate decisions before deploying them in the real world.

Recorded at Index Ventures in San Francisco, we discuss how Joon's original Stanford research, Smallville, evolved from 25 autonomous AI agents into a $2B company, why human behavior is more predictable than we think, and how simulations could transform traditional market research, corporate strategy, and decision-making.

We also put Simile to the test. Before our interview, Joon simulated our conversation using AI, and the model correctly anticipated one of my opening questions.

Joon Sung Park: https://x.com/joon_s_pk 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/-6Kg5N7JL7I⁠

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

Former Twitter CEO & CTO Parag Agrawal predicts AI agents could drive another 5,000–10,000x increase in web usage, fundamentally transforming how the internet operates and makes money.

Now Founder & CEO of $2 Billion Parallel Web Systems, Parag is building the search infrastructure for an internet where AI agents, not humans, become the primary users. With a reported $230M raised, customers including Harvey and Notion, and a team that has grown 4x this year, Parallel is positioning itself at the center of the AI infrastructure boom.

Recorded at Index Ventures in San Francisco, we discuss the massive GPU demand behind AI search, why traditional advertising and subscription models could break, and how Parallel is developing a new way to compensate content owners as agents replace human browsing. Parag also explains why the web will shift from reactive to proactive, how he's scaled Parallel from 30 to 120 employees this year, and lessons from his 11 years at Twitter as engineer, CTO, and CEO.

Parallel Web Systems was funded by Index Ventures.

Parag Agrawal: https://x.com/paraga 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/iRI6gTe1wGM⁠

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Parag Agrawal, Founder & CEO at Parallel 

(01:03) What is Parallel AI? 

(05:28) Bots took over the web & it’s only the start

(07:22) Will people stick with AI agents?

(11:55) Why models will get bigger, smarter and cheaper

(14:47) Where AI startups actually find GPUs

(19:43) Is 10x a year the new normal?

(21:59) Searching the web faster than you can blink

(26:02) AI that knows what you need before you do

(26:57) Agents are breaking the web’s business model

(31:08) Good bots vs bad bots

(42:04) Why great models still give bad answers

(47:56) Proactive agents and the future of search

(51:30) The person who drives Parag’s ambition

Apollo bought Yahoo and AOL from Verizon in 2021 for about $5B. 5 years later, Yahoo has returned Apollo’s capital in one of the fastest returning deals in the firm’s history.

Jim Lanzone has been CEO of Yahoo since September 2021. Yahoo ranks among the top 5 internet companies in the US, reaching roughly 90% of the American online population and 700M users globally each month across Finance, Sports, Mail, News, and Search. Jim previously served as CEO of Tinder, CBS Interactive, where he launched CBS All Access (now Paramount+), and Ask Jeeves, and co-founded eTour. He sits on the board of Snap.

We go inside the Apollo acquisition, a structure of roughly $4.25B in cash, $750M in preferred interests, and a 10% stake retained by Verizon, and how Jim works with Reed Rayman, now Head of the AI Sector at Apollo and still Yahoo’s board chair. Jim walks through reorganizing Yahoo into GM-led brands, shutting down and selling a money-losing ad tech stack, and divesting EdgeCast, TechCrunch, and AOL, which went to Bending Spoons for a reported $1.4B to $1.5B. We also cover Yahoo Scout, the company’s first in-house search engine in 17 years, and why startups with less than one-tenth of 1% of Yahoo’s users carry higher valuations.

“It’s one of the fastest returning deals in the history of Apollo. We are playing with house money now for what the upside could be here.”

We cover:
 › Inside Apollo’s ~$5B acquisition and the deal structure
 › Working with Apollo’s Reed Rayman on a growth-led turnaround
 › Divesting AOL, EdgeCast, TechCrunch, and the ad tech stack
 › Yahoo Scout, AI search, and 30 years of search data
 › 700M monthly users and Yahoo’s valuation vs AI startups

Jim Lanzone: https://x.com/jlanzone 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/31JELwiXgMo

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

Guillermo Rauch, Founder and CEO of Vercel, joins Sourcery from the company's San Francisco headquarters to discuss how AI agents are transforming software development, infrastructure, and the economics of SaaS.

Vercel has reportedly reached $600M in annualized revenue, growing 148% YoY, with more than 485,000 paying teams and a $9.3B valuation. Its infrastructure powers applications for OpenAI, Meta, Stripe, Shopify, DoorDash, and more.

AI agents now account for 60% of Vercel deployments, up from just 3% at the beginning of 2026. Guillermo explains why coding is becoming dramatically cheaper, why companies may eventually generate software instead of buying it, and how the internet is shifting from human interfaces to agent-native infrastructure.

We cover open vs. closed AI models, autonomous agents, cybersecurity, the future of SaaS, exploding compute demand, and how the role of software engineers is changing.

Guillermo Rauch: https://x.com/rauchg

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/WuorvLfAFmA

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Guillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO at Vercel

(03:32) The simplest advice for going viral

(07:24) How Vercel became the index of AI

(14:34) Robots writing code for robots

(17:57) The web's next users aren't human

(21:15) Is ChatGPT reading your website right now?

(29:16) The end of SaaS and the rise of personal software

(34:07) AI agents are soldiers with no frontal lobe

(45:42) AI hackers and the coming cyber war

(52:10) 80% of tokens now go to open models 

(59:00) The biggest risk for frontier labs

(1:04:00) Can AI labs survive the public markets?

(1:06:28) Why AI has Silicon Valley working 7-7-7

(1:16:56) Your vibe-coded demo won't get you hired

(1:22:22) The hardest part of running a company is keeping it simple

(1:27:01) Why no company can run all its AI apps 24/7

Dr. Nworah Ayogu, MD, MBA, Partner at Thrive Capital, joins Sourcery to discuss how AI is transforming drug discovery, medicine, and the economics of healthcare.

A Harvard-trained physician, founding team member of Cityblock Health, former General Manager of Amazon Clinic and first Chief Medical Officer of Amazon Pharmacy, Nworah is now a partner at Thrive Capital. The investment firm has grown to over $65bn in AUM and its healthcare portfolio includes Neuralink, Nudge, Isomorphic Labs, OpenEvidence, OpenAI, Oscar Health, and Cadence.

We cover AI's potential to accelerate drug development, Isomorphic Labs and Demis Hassabis, Neuralink's brain-computer interfaces, OpenEvidence's rapid adoption among physicians, personalized medicine, and the emergence of 10X doctors and nurses.

We also explore some of Thrive’s breakout healthcare incubations, the next generation of trillion-dollar healthcare companies, and why AI's most important breakthroughs may happen in medicine rather than software.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are the speaker's own as of the recording date and are subject to change. Thrive funds and their affiliates have investments in certain companies discussed in this episode. References to those companies are illustrative, do not represent all investments made by Thrive, and should not be viewed as recommendations or indications of future investment performance. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Dr. Nworah Ayogu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nworah

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/gYA2yyV6U5E

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: https://www.harvey.ai

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

Perplexity Founder & CEO Aravind Srinivas believes the next wave of American economic growth could come from smaller, AI-native businesses, not just the largest technology companies.

Perplexity, valued at ~$20B with more than $2B in reported funding and backing from NVIDIA, SoftBank, IVP, NEA, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and Elad Gil, has evolved from an AI answer engine into a platform for autonomous agents, research, and knowledge work.

I sat down with Aravind at Perplexity's new San Francisco headquarters to discuss the economics of AI, the future of entrepreneurship, and why agents could enable a generation of smaller, more profitable companies.

Aravind reveals that Perplexity's revenue is growing 5x year over year, enterprise adoption is accelerating, and one solopreneur is spending over $1M annually on Perplexity Computer while generating $3M in annual revenue.

We also explore Perplexity's bet on local AI, its work with NVIDIA and Apple, and why the company has no plans to build its own data centers despite the massive infrastructure buildout underway.

Aravind Srinivas: https://x.com/AravSrinivas 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/1C8_n9nnx5Y

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure: 

Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder & CEO of Perplexity

(01:30) Why Perplexity's brand is built on curiosity 

(08:18) How to build a $1T company in America alone

(13:45) Is the American dream still alive?

(16:28) Stop blaming users for bad prompts

(22:55) How Perplexity quietly grew 5x

(28:28) "We don't have competitors, we have contributors"

(29:20) The data center is coming to your laptop 

(34:32) Orchestrating up with NVIDIA, down with Apple

(39:17) Why Perplexity is skipping the data center race 

(41:25) Stop asking AI to write code, ask it to think

(48:27) The Hugging Face incident & multi-agent threats

(53:31) Why Perplexity isn’t chasing a billion users

USV spent 20 years keeping its funds small on purpose. Its new $900M raise is the largest fund cycle in the firm’s history.

I sat down with USV General Partners Fred Wilson, Rebecca Kaden and Michael Mignano at the firm’s New York office to unpack why one of venture capital’s most disciplined early-stage firms is getting bigger now, and what they think the next era of AI will look like. Together with General Partner Nick Grossman, they’re leading USV into its next chapter.

USV was early to Twitter, Coinbase, Stripe, MongoDB, Twilio, Etsy, Duolingo and Abridge. More than 20 years after Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham laid out the firm’s original internet thesis, Fred believes AI today looks a lot like the internet in 2003. The infrastructure is here, but many of the defining applications have yet to be built.

We get into why AI is making products cheaper to build but breakout companies potentially more expensive to create, why ARR can hide weak retention, the growing importance of founder storytelling, personal AI agents, the “Rebel Alliance” around open AI infrastructure, and why energy may be one of the cleanest bets on AI.

At the center of USV’s new thesis is “obliterate, don’t automate.” Instead of making existing industries incrementally more efficient, AI could completely restructure them. Fred’s version is simple. Don’t hire a lawyer, use an AI lawyer. Don’t hire an accountant, use an AI accountant. Don’t hire a doctor, use an AI doctor.

Fred Wilson: https://x.com/fredwilson

Rebecca Kaden: https://x.com/rebeccakaden

Michael Mignano: https://x.com/mignano

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube: https://youtu.be/sYH4fKKtSPw

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure

Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.