Grace Isford
@graceisford
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Partner @Lux_Capital investing in the future 🚀 | board @ecorner (STVP) previously @canvasvc @stanfordwib @joinhandshake @stanford
New York, NY
Joined June 2013
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Pinned Tweet
Today I’m thrilled to announce
@Lux_Capital
's NYC AI Directory & NYC AI Map - 2 resources for the burgeoning AI talent ecosystem
READ MORE👇
NYC AI Directory:
NYC AI Map:
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1/ Big News! Today I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve joined
@Lux_Capital
in their NYC office to invest in technology companies shaping the future 🚀
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nyc marathon ✅
no race quite like nyc - running through all 5 boroughs w/ electric crowd energy made me very grateful to call this city home!!
huge shoutout to the crowds, music, friends & family who kept me going 🏃🏼♀️
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1/ THE WEB3 WORLD 👾
Today I’m excited to publicly share my WEB3 WORLD deck - read it and see it here 👇
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Thrilled to announce the launch of Lux Capital 8 - our single largest $1.15B vehicle to back the most AMBITIOUS founders solving the world's most pressing problems from first $100K to last $100M 💫
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Thrilled & so grateful for this exciting milestone - especially thankful for the founders we work with & learnings from the rockstar
@Lux_Capital
team
Excited to partner with the next generation of technologists inventing the future in the computational sciences & beyond!💡🚀
8/
@graceisford
promoted to Partner. Grace first graced our presence earlier this year and got off to a fast start adding a jolt of positive tenacious energy and an immediate investment impact
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A very exciting day for
@runwayml
- announcing a $141M funding round bringing a ton of firepower onboard
@google
@nvidia
@salesforce
& continuing to build the future of the *multimodal* AI creative economy
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headed back from a week spending time in the Parisian tech & VC ecosystem - here’s what I learned..
hint: paris is buzzing 🇫🇷
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1/ APIs are nothing new..but it seems like they may be having their heyday in 2020.
I wrote about my framework for evaluating standout API-first companies and why the very best companies give their users “superpowers”
read it here 👇
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I’ve been diving deep into the Web3 rabbit hole - and thanks to friends, readings & investing myself I’ve learned quickly 🙏
Hoping to pass along SOME of my learnings below to help others understand 1) what Web3 is ✨ & 2) how to think about segments of the landscape
THREAD 👇
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I’ve chatted with 50+ researchers, entrepreneurs & industry experts from companies like
@huggingface
@runwayml
@MosaicML
@Stanford
@StanfordCRFM
on the AI infrastructure & application landscape - here’s what I’ve learned..
THREAD 👇
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incredibly energizing
@Lux_Capital
&
@tcg_crypto
Women x Web3 brunch this AM — 24 women crushing it 👾👑
co-hosted w/ the amazing
@gaby_goldberg
✨
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Very excited & grateful for the next chapter building and learning with founders & colleagues at
@CanvasVC
!
just getting started 🚀
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lots of exciting events this spring in NYC
@runwayml
RNA AI research night
Pydata NYC
@southpkcommons
demo day
@Work_Bench
enterprise tech meetup
@SiliconVlyBank
Empire State of AI
@EricNewcomer
NYC x AI Summit
I’m also hosting a few private dinners - dm to join! 🙌🗽
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Excited to announce that
@Lux_Capital
is leading the $30M founding round of
@SakanaAILabs
🇯🇵
@hardmaru
@YesThisIsLion
& Ren Ito are building nature inspired AI foundation models, launching a state of the art research lab in Tokyo, Japan
Read more 👇
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Continue to be impressed by the growing French engineering & AI ecosystem ↗️
views from the
@huggingface
Paris office 🤗
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Incredible week in Tokyo with the
@SakanaAILabs
team
They’re just getting started (& they’re hiring!) 🚀🗼🌱
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friendly reminder that
@Lux_Capital
portfolio companies are hiring for all roles in NYC, SF, Boston, LA, Paris, London, Tokyo + more!!
dm me if you are looking for your next thing and happy to put you in touch 🤝🤗
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1/ Excited to launch the API-First Directory today, a growing record of API-first companies across enterprise & consumer industries & announce my API-first pricing framework!
READ IT & SEE THE API-FIRST DIRECTORY HERE 👇
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Thrilled to announce
@SakanaAILabs
’s first launch (< 2 months after seed funding!) of 3 SOTA evolutionary AI foundation models for the Japanese market
@SakanaAILabs
challenges the current paradigm of costly model development w/ resource-efficient, evolved models
THREAD👇🇯🇵
Introducing Evolutionary Model Merge: A new approach bringing us closer to automating foundation model development. We use evolution to find great ways of combining open-source models, building new powerful foundation models with user-specified abilities!
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Thrilled to announce
@Lux_Capital
is leading the $5M seed round of
@getreflex
- a platform to build web apps in pure python
READ MORE 👇
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future is bright ☀️
awesome
@Lux_Capital
NYC dinner with an incredible group of builders discussing everything from blockchains to batteries 💡
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theme I'm excited about in 2024 --> VERTICAL AI
hint - it involves large datasets
💸 LLMs x fintech (e.g.
@CorisInc
)
🧪 LLMs x sciences - biology, chemistry, physics
🏭 LLMs x manufacturing, supply chain, defense
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have added new 30+ NYC AI companies to the list + map TODAY since publication
NYC is booming
add to airtable here 🤗
Today I’m thrilled to announce
@Lux_Capital
's NYC AI Directory & NYC AI Map - 2 resources for the burgeoning AI talent ecosystem
READ MORE👇
NYC AI Directory:
NYC AI Map:
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Thrilled to announce
@Lux_Capital
is co-leading the $3.7M seed round of
@CorisInc
, the first risk platform to leverage LLMs at scale alongside friends
@CharleyMa
@MahdiRazaMR
@ExponentCap
READ MORE 👇
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Greetings from Cornell Tech for the first ever NYC AGI Hackathon!!
Over 600 applicants and a full room ready to get started 👍
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Today was a very special day - lucky to have brought together
@Lux_Capital
portfolio cos, researcher luminaries and enterprise company leaders in 1 room discussing CUTTING EDGE technology in AI 👇
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NYC Operator Dinner - gathering of 1st biz hires/early GTM leaders @ NYC startups 🗽
@tryramp
@modal_labs
@togethercompute
@recurrency
@TheArenaAI
@calypsoai
@knockapp
@floxdevelopment
A dinner series
@Lux_Capital
hosting w/
@CharleyMa
@MahdiRazaMR
📈🚀
dm to join next one!
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Early growth leaders dinner in NYC 🗽
@Lux_Capital
@ExponentCap
many fun discussions:
1) what is growth 📈
2) why overrelying on metrics is dangerous
3) self serve vs top down
4) working w/ founders
dm me or
@CharleyMa
to join next! Early GTM, growth, eng, product up next :)
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NYC 📈
Seems like AI companies are making some big moves in NYC 🔥
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Thrilled to announce $LUXDEX - the first ever investment index tracking publicly traded NYSE companies + publicly traded crypto assets
Read more on Axios & below👇
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THRILLED to announce
@togethercompute
's $20M seed financing led by
@Lux_Capital
- building the ML cloud of the future making AI accessible to anyone, anywhere.
Welcome
@vipulved
and
@togethercompute
's all-star research team
@HazyResearch
@ETH_en
to the
@Lux_Capital
family - read
We’re excited to announce our $20M seed round of funding to empower innovation and creativity by providing leading open-source generative AI models and an innovative cloud platform that makes AI accessible to anyone, anywhere.
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1 spot left for first business hire/early GTM leader dinner I'm co-hosting next week in NYC. Have a great group established of AI x devtool x fintech cos
cc
@CharleyMa
@MahdiRazaMR
who should we invite?
✅Must be NYC based
✅First or second person shaping the GTM team 🚀
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Future dinners will include 1st growth, marketing, engineering hires, chief of staff + more
Capping groups at 12 to maximize discussion, debate & insights sharing
only prerequisite? NYC based 🗽
NYC Operator Dinner - gathering of 1st biz hires/early GTM leaders @ NYC startups 🗽
@tryramp
@modal_labs
@togethercompute
@recurrency
@TheArenaAI
@calypsoai
@knockapp
@floxdevelopment
A dinner series
@Lux_Capital
hosting w/
@CharleyMa
@MahdiRazaMR
📈🚀
dm to join next one!
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hosting dinner for folks ideating in fintech x LLMs in NYC in May -- dm me if you are ideating in space and want to join!
This release made me and
@graceisford
start talking about new products tinkering at the intersection of AI x finance. To our surprise, there aren't a ton.
We're hosting a small Inspired Cap x Lux dinner next month for those who are. DMs open if this is interesting to you.
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1/ Thrilled to announce
@Lux_Capital
’s seed investment in
@choose_tactic
- helping businesses track, trace and reconcile crypto transactions at scale
Why we’re excited… 💸
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5+ of my girlfriends have bought crypto for the first time in the last week & I’m very proud and excited!
if you want to invest for the first time & need help hit me or
@hello_we3
up ✨💸
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@LangChainAI
NYC meet-up on fire 🔥
discussing an AI powered future - LLM corporate lobbyists, multi agent apps & ML model accessibility 👩🏼💻🤓🤖
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1/ Automation without boundaries. Thrilled to announce
@CanvasVC
has led the $21M Series A of
@RobocorpInc
alongside existing investors
@benchmark
@slow
@firstminutecap
& new investors
@salil
@haystackvc
+ announce I'll be joining the board!!
Read more 👇
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Huge congrats to Lux family co
@MosaicML
on its acquisition to
@databricks
and to my teammate
@Farshchi
for partnering with Naveen (twice!) from the earliest stages👇🏼🚀
1/ Two amazing companies:
@databricks
and
@MosaicML
plan to join forces to empower everyone to train their own AI models, imbued with their own data.
Here is a story of the journey thus far, and what's ahead of this great partnership🧵:
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Very special to host the
@stanfordwib
crew
@Lux_Capital
NYC today!!
Visited my first VC firm & scored my first internship with the program, excited to see what this brilliant group accomplishes! 🚀✨
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Thrilled to be included alongside incredible friends & investors 🔥
@Jillwillnyc
@aashaysanghvi_
@hchelkowski
@alanaagoyal
@AlexandraSukin
@courtneyzchow
@HeckDawit
@nancysxiao
@almostcmb
@MayaBakhai
@gaby_goldberg
@michellernie_
@emily__man
@morgan_blumberg
+ many more!
NEW:
@BusinessInsider
's annual list of the rising stars of
#VentureCapital
is here! These 71 investors are the up-and-coming dealmakers landing hot term sheets with big name startups that you should keep on your radar in 2023:
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these ladies are building the FUTURE!!
of AI/ML x healthcare x space x bio x blockchain & beyond 💫💪🏼🦸♀️
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unexpectedly signed up for the nyc marathon 🙃
12 weeks to race day, training plans & tips appreciated!
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We are SO lucky to have brilliant
@davidkmyang
join the
@Lux_Capital
team to supercharge our efforts at intersection of life sciences x techbio x AI/ML x BEYOND 🚀🌱
say hello & get to know him if you don't already :)
Thrilled to share that I’ve joined the Lux Capital team! Looking forward to continue backing and building transformational life sciences companies
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great group @ the NYC AI hackathon this weekend - thx to
@contrary
@betaworks
@Lux_Capital
for hosting & an awesome crew of builders 👩🏼💻⌨️🤗
working til 4:30 pm today..stop by!
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this HEADLINE & this incredible group of women - makes me energized to do the job everyday!! 📈💪🏼
honored to be included alongside my amazing
@Lux_Capital
teammate
@deenashakir
, close friends & wonderful humans
@caseyaylward
@Jillwillnyc
@anniecase1
@Maureenclue
+ many more!
At least 27 women in venture capital rose to partner or higher in 2022. We have the full list.
Notably, a number of women launched their own funds, and
@lightspeedvp
hired five female check-writers.
Cheers ladies 🥂
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happy to be a part of the **great migration** to nyc 😊
They want to be a part of it: VCs are flocking to New York like never before.
Here's what's driving a great migration in startup capital to the city that never sleeps (on dealflow).
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long NYC 🗽🚀
I'm excited to publish
@SiliconVlyBank
's blogpost on Empire State of AI: New York's Dynamic AI Community: Thank you
@BSchech
from
@PrimaryVC
and
@graceisford
from
@Lux_Capital
for contributing to this article
SF has long been known as "Cerebral Valley",
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Incredible evening bringing fantastic group of builders & investors at the intersection of frontier tech for a
@Lux_Capital
dinner in Paris -- data & AI, space, healthcare, crypto, climate & much more!!
Big shoutout to
@RoiStartup
for helping organize 🇫🇷✨
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Awesome to chat with
@CarolineHydeTV
@EdLudlow
@technology
re NYC as the next big AI hub 🗽
Featuring Lux cos
@runwayml
@huggingface
@togethercompute
& more!
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Thrilled to share the latest Securities podcast on a few whirlwind weeks in AI, including:
1️⃣first-ever AI film festival 🎬
2️⃣why LLM “knitting” matters
3️⃣typescript vs python in AI
4️⃣AI hype vs crypto hype
5️⃣role of cloud players & AI assistive loops
give it a listen 👇🏼🎧
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compelling graph mapping internet vs crypto users - still SO early in adoption cycle w/ inevitable bubbles/winters/hiccups coming Web3’s way
I’d argue crypto growth rate will slant higher but w/ greater volatility & dependency on stronger crypto infra to facilitate growth 📈
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2/ I’ll be focused on investing in web3, data infrastructure and AI/ML applications especially in financial services & healthcare - expanding Lux’s already stellar portfolio
@ftx_app
,
@Anchorage
,
@huggingface
,
@AppliedInt
,
@benchling
,
@mavenclinic
,
@AlifeHealthLab
,
@tryramp
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Leigh Marie is one of the best, feel lucky to learn and work with her & excited for her next chapter 💪🏼✨
I’m excited to share that I’m joining
@KleinerPerkins
as a Partner to invest in the next generation of history-making founders, esp. those working on infrastructure & ML applications. I’ve long admired KP's investing strategy & portfolio, and am thrilled to be part of the team!
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HUGE congrats to
@togethercompute
on their $102.5M (!!) Series A
@vipulved
& team are best in class
And they're hiring! Reach out if you're looking to join a rocketship or adopt the most performant AI cloud to build & develop open source & custom models ⚡️🚀
We are excited to announce our $102.5M Series A funding lead by
@kleinerperkins
with participation from
@nvidia
,
@emergencecap
, and many of our seed investors.
This funding will help us build a comprehensive AI cloud platform for developers everywhere.
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NYC run club! watch out for
@wolfejosh
on the west side highway 🏃🏻💨
Went from barely ever 🏃🏃 to seeing my V02max drop 📉to getting inspired esp by Lux partner
@graceisford
and now running 10k every other day!
Biggest hack?
Told myself:" I'm a runner now!"
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8/ NET - very excited about the future of the Paris tech ecosystem - think we will only continue to hear more about france esp in the software infra worlds of data/ML & crypto/fintech with cutting edge technology & design
à bientôt!
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6/ At
@Lux_Capital
, I’ll be writing checks from pre-seed to growth out of our seventh $1.5B fund globally!
So if you’re building or brainstorming the FUTURE in these spaces, let’s talk - dms are open :) - my new email is grace
@lux
.vc
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If you haven’t heard about
@ethelsclub
, check it out! Couldn’t be more excited to support Naj and her team to make her vision a reality
@najjmahal
@nickabouzeid
💫💫
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@OpenAI
@Meta
@huggingface
@MosaicML
@Azure
6/ in summary:
✅access to GPUs matter
💾proprietary data = moat
⌨️infra margins compressing
🕵️evaluation is unsolved prob
🤗open vs. closed tension
what did I miss? re hardware, fine tuning & beyond..
READ MORE:
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NYC AI x ART demo night..
Incredible group of NYC based artists x engineers x curators x visionaries building at intersection of creativity x AI
the future is bright ✨🌈
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1/ Excited to share my perspective on the CRYPTOGRAPHIC foundations of Web3 + OPPORTUNITY in web3 infra
special s/o to
@shomikghosh21
for the feature in his awesome Software Snack Bites newsletter
A THREAD 🧵
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“Women’s health is human health is population health”
@deenashakir
dropping wisdom
@FortuneMagazine
🔥
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Thx
@Techcrunch
for feature on my journey into crypto infrastructure and the inherent challenges + opportunity to grow adoption & trust in web3
read to figure out why security & critical enterprise infra platforms represent the biggest opp in crypto 🤓
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1/ Wrote about some of the problems brought to light by
#COVID19
and opportunities they present for VC investors to work together to solve them.
Read it here 👀:
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Thrilled to partner with
@hwchase17
& the
@LangChainAI
team! 🚀
They're just getting started (and they're hiring!!)
Exclusive: LangChain, the popular open source AI startup, has released its first paid product, LangSmith, today.
CEO Harrison Chase tells me
@forbes
the tool is used by 1,000 teams with a waitlist of 80,000.
He also confirms a $25M round led by Sequoia.
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this group is INVENTING the future ☄️
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nyc !!
OH this AM from someone tied this YC Batch:
"Most YC founders are moving to NYC after demo day"
Long NYC
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🚨 AGI HACKATHON in NYC this weekend 🚨
sponsored by
@Lux_Capital
w/ special appearances from portcos
@runwayml
@MosaicML
+ many others!
will be there all day Sunday + judging! stop by ✨
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A best-in-class team with a best-in-class product -
@runwayml
@c_valenzuelab
and team are relentless innovators and formidable opponents reimagining the end to end creative workflow 🎬🔥
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Go
@breeves08
!! one of the industry's best :)
Lucky to learn & work with him everyday!
Huge congratulations to our very own
@breeves08
for making the 2023
@Forbes
Midas Brink List!
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landed
@CryptoBahamas
- thanks to
@Lux_Capital
portfolio company
@FTX_Official
for hosting!
If you’re here and want to chat crypto infra say hello 👋🏼
also will be speaking tmrw @ 2:10 pm discussing crypto asset allocation in VC 📣
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we brought over 100 AI leaders together in NYC across academia, enterprise & entrepreneurship to discuss themes with an 👁️ to the future:
🪄Latent Space - open source, dev tools, ML infra
🧬Inner Space - biology, healthcare, medicine
🌍 Outer Space - space, defense, security
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2/ PROPRIETARY DATA = moat
-Don't have enough "good clean" data on web to train new LLMs
-Data source tracing impt for mission critical use cases
-Specialized data sets for specialized workflows w/ data product flywheel is crucial moat for apps e.g.
@runwayml
-effect of GPT-5/6?
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can’t wait to speak
@CryptoBahamas
later this month ✨
Speaker Announcement
#CryptoBahamas
A panel discussion on asset allocation into
#Web3
with
@GraceIsford
of
@Lux_Capital
Presented by
@FTX_Official
x
@SALTConference
Stay tuned for more:
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Hugely excited to unveil
@Nominal_io
to the world! Former
@Lux_Capital
intern turned portfolio employee
@anduriltech
@saildrone
starting a company seeded from his experiences with Lux!
All systems
@Nominal_io
🚀
1/ Today we share
@Nominal_io
with the world. We are on a mission to revolutionize the way mission-critical hardware systems are tested, validated, and monitored. We’ve been hard at work for the past 18 months building our core product offering, working with early customers
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silicon alley 🗽
Our next Cerebral Valley will be hosted in New York City on June 27! We're teaming up with the best co-hosts at
@Volleying
to bring you a great lineup of speakers and panelists.
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best resources on raising token funded vs. equity funded VC-backed startup rounds? have recently been seeing some protocol startups deciding to raise equity as well as web3 apps raise token rounds w/o any real framework...any best practices here?
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Full list:
Happy to see
@huggingface
rightfully take the
#1
spot, along with other great companies like
@MistralAI
@weights_biases
@databricks
@togethercompute
, who support the open-source ML ecosystem, be part of the top ranked AI companies in the world.
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4/ EVALUATION IS AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM
-Difficult to evaluate whether or not an LLM responded accurately to prompt/answered question
-Evaluation today has been qualitative/hand-wavy
-Need a more quantitative, data-driven solution to evaluate LLMs
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A common question I get asked - what are the key metrics you analyze when evaluating a prospective investment?
While every company and business model can vary - here's some of the first metrics I diligence when diving into a business at the Series A stage and why they matter: 👇
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In less than a year,
@togethercompute
has become one of the world's favorite AI platforms for OSS model development bringing research innovations to production applications at lightning speed ⚡️
BIG congrats to
@vipulved
&
@togethercompute
team on $106M funding round! 🚀🚨
Today we are thrilled to share that we’ve raised $106M in a new round led by
@SalesforceVC
with participation from
@coatuemgmt
and our existing investors.
Our vision is to rapidly bring innovations from research to production and to ultimately build the best platform we can for
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INCREDIBLE event bringing female fintech operators together w/
@stephkkh
@nycapartners
last night - thanks to
@NYCFintechWomen
@SashaFintech
@elipoaquino
@emily_jorgens
@calanthiaaa
@ltgrossman
@MADivver
+ so many others (not on twitter!), excited to do it again soon 🙌🙌
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the magical future of video editing is here -- checkout
@runwayml
's text to video editing feature ✨
Make any idea real. Just write it.
Text to video, coming soon to Runway.
Sign up for early access:
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3/ INCENTIVES - French government has unique tax incentives for young startups including temp tax breaks & “chomage” or 80% of salary paid for 2 years after unemployment..great safety net for prospective founders to ideate or prototype prospective companies
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Incredible
@Lux_Capital
and Babel AI engineering gathering last night 🚀💫
Featuring
@tri_dao
@togethercompute
discussing the frontier of AI infrastructure research
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