I guess investors are hoping for another Anthropic, or resurrection of Richard Feynman to help with development.
Danny Hillis deserves a mention
Absolutely, moreso than Feynman in this context. But, Danny Hills doesn't make a good sound bite.
Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
181–190 of 260 posts
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#182Could somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines in this thread? I realize that they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building, and they have some pretty significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself. Some amount of skepticism is warranted, of course, but a lot of these comments read as closer to…
Where is all the hate for SSI?
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#183> The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia This is really obvious 'round-tripping' no? Nvidia invests in startups that are going to spend a majority of their funds on GPUs, Nvidia's revenue goes up, Nvidia's stock goes up, Nvidia makes more 'investments' in startups who use that investment to continue the cycle?
No different than investment banks in the US loaning money to ukraine so they can get patriot missiles. This generates two income streams for the US ( interest payments on the debt and money to RTX for the missiles). Trump gets a cut on both of these monies (tax on income).
This is why the Us is pro Israel as well. They are a good customer to the military industrial complex.
Now if we could only get japan, ASEAN, S.Korea into a conflict w China over taiwan we could ramp up this model - but we’ll need to build drone factories to usurp the the cheap turkish, polish, ukrainian, and russian suppliers.
And the additional bonus is that all this has to be transacted in dollars giving our currency preeminence so we can print more of them and not suffer inflation- even tho there are more dollars chasing the same goods- its happening symmetrically around the world because everyone has to use them.
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
They use our pension funds for this. They also distort the market. I do see some value in it, we need to take risks with our capital and on a long term horizon it's fine. But there has to be some rationale behind it at least, some evidence based approach.
They don't "use" pension funds, pension funds can choose to invest in VCs if they decide to do so. I think most usually invest low single digits of investment in VCs, mostly as diversification.
Absolutely.
But I imagine there's immense pressure to do so. Returns are tracked relative to others. All distorted by big jumps in valuations. In the long term, there might be a more prudent/sustainable use of some of that capital but we'll never know, everyone's chasing share price go up, not value added / profit go up.
Yes, it's good to have your finger in the pie. But the stake may be overpriced, given current behaviour.
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#185> The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia This is really obvious 'round-tripping' no? Nvidia invests in startups that are going to spend a majority of their funds on GPUs, Nvidia's revenue goes up, Nvidia's stock goes up, Nvidia makes more 'investments' in startups who use that investment to continue the cycle?
No different than investment banks in the US loaning money to ukraine so they can get patriot missiles. This generates two income streams for the US ( interest payments on the debt and money to RTX for the missiles). Trump gets a cut on both of these monies (tax on income). This is why the Us is pro Israel as well. They are a good customer to the military industrial complex. Now if we could only get japan, ASEAN, S.K…
I've been worried about the US abandoning Japan and this radically shifting the power centers in the world. But, the way you describe it sounds like I should not worry. At least, as long as I trust the weapons manufacturers to keep things stable so they can extract their new profit opportunities. I still feel a tinge of worry.
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#186On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…
If it's actually that easy, why don't you do it?
Are you seriously just leaving $5 billion on the table?
I'll tell you why you won't. Because you wouldn't get it. Because it's not that easy.
Mira Murati is not some rando off the street. Ilya Sutskever is not some rando. Zuckerberg is not paying Millions to randos of the street to come work for meta.
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#187On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…
Shark Tank is semi-scripted entertainment. It's not representative of how venture capital works in the real world.
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#188On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…
You mean, "I have no revenue and no business model but I was the CTO of one of the most important technical companies of this generation, we put out one of the fastest growing SaaS products of all time in a completely new technical category."- not sure how much more signal you would need than that. I don't really get why anyone would be confused about why they are throwing money at her. It's an extremely large amount…
By that logic it almost sounds as if Meg Whitman was highly qualified to run HP…
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean, "I have no revenue and no business model but I was the CTO of one of the most important technical companies of this generation, we put out one of the fastest growing SaaS products of all time in a completely new technical category."- not sure how much more signal you would need than that. I don't really get why anyone would be confused about why they are throwing money at her. It's an extremely large amount…
By that logic it almost sounds as if Meg Whitman was highly qualified to run HP…
She was qualified.
Are you saying that her previous experience shouldn't have counted as a positive attribute for being hired?
Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
#190On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…
On the other hand, if for whatever reason some top tier soccer/football/basketball/etc. went to shark tank and said «I want to release my own sportswear brand», they’d probably get their funding. In fact, they’d probably have investors lined up.
Same thing here. Mira is a top tier, high-profile person in the AI space. So investors lined up.