Latest news with #AndreessenHorowitz
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Andreessen Horowitz in Deal Talks Valuing Abridge AI at $5.3 Billion
Abridge AI Inc., a startup that uses artificial intelligence to transcribe medical conversations, is raising $300 million in a new funding round led by Andresseen Horowitz, according to people familiar with the matter. The round values the Pittsburgh-based company at $5.3 billion, including the investment, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
New York Post
a day ago
- Business
- New York Post
Biggest NY Tech Week ever shows Gotham's AI and robotics poised to challenge Silicon Valley's dominance
The Big Apple is getting bigger when it comes to artificial intelligence and robotics. Those growing industries will be the center of attention at NY Tech Week 2025, running June 2–8. It's set to be the largest iteration of the conference yet, with more than 1,000 events — more than half of which deal with AI — spread across all five boroughs and a total of 60,000 RSVPs. 3 A sign advertises the 2024 iteration of NY Tech Week, presented by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Last year, there were about 730 events across the city. This year, there's over 1,000. Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz / Tech Week 'It's an enormous milestone,' Julie Samuels — president and CEO of Tech:NYC, a nonprofit network of companies and entrepreneurs that is hosting multiple events — told NYNext. 'It's amazing how diverse our tech ecosystem is and that so many people will be here exchanging ideas.' The week's standouts include 'Next Play,' led by IBM and centered on the intersection of sports and AI, on June 2; Tech:NYC's 'Decoded Futures Social Impact AI Showcase' on June 6; and panels and salons hosted by the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral and Perplexity. For the first time ever, robotics will be the focus of over half a dozen events — a leap from zero last year. 3 Tech Week is a decentralized conference made up of meetups, panels, and demos, effectively turning New York City into an open platform for innovation. Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz/ Tech Week On June 2, New York Robotics and the NY Tech Alliance will host 'Exploring Embodied and Physical AI' at Civic Hall in Union Square. The event will feature NYU researcher Anya Zorin and her project RUKA — a robotic hand developed with Professor Lerrel Pinto at the General-purpose Robotics and AI Lab — which can sense and respond to touch. 'AI's all the buzz, right, but not everyone realizes that robotics is such a huge part of the AI story,' said Randy Howie, co-founder and managing partner of New York Robotics. 'Robotics is AI in the physical world.' Elsewhere during the week, founders will pitch their startups in a literal moving elevator at Hudson Yards and swing racquets at a 'Pickleball and Tech Pals' tournament in Central Park. And the city's biggest players — including Amazon Web Services, JPMorgan Chase, and Google — will host panels and private mixers. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) first launched Tech Week in Los Angeles in 2022. In 2023, it expanded to San Francisco and New York City. 3 Google is joining industry heavyweights including Amazon Web Services and JPMorgan Chase as hosts for events during NY Tech Week. Christopher Sadowski While Silicon Valley still paces the nation in terms of venture capital, NYC is increasingly carving out its own tech identity — particularly in the realm of hard tech, which includes robotics, advanced manufacturing and other engineering-heavy ventures that demand more than code. This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC's power players (and those who aspire to be). Tech now accounts for more than 10% of the city's GDP (up from 6% in 2013) and has driven 14% of all job growth in the past decade, according to Samuels. 'New York is uniquely positioned,' said Ryan Musto, senior associate at Alumni Ventures and host of the 'America Assembled: Robotics & Trade' event on June 4. 'You don't have to go far back to remember when New York was the manufacturing headquarters of North America. It's in our DNA.' For most Tech Week events, admission is free but attendance is capped. Send NYNext a tip: nynextlydia@
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Black Forest Labs' Kontext AI models can edit pics as well as generate them
Black Forest Labs, the AI startup whose models once powered the image generation features of X's Grok chatbot, on Thursday released a new suite of image-generating models — some of which can both create and edit pics. The most capable of the models in the new family, called Flux.1 Kontext, can be prompted with text and, optionally, a reference image to create new images, writes Black Forest Labs in a blog post. "The Flux.1 Kontext models deliver state-of-the-art image generation results with strong prompt following, photorealistic rendering, and competitive typography — all at inference speeds up to 8x faster than current leading models," the company writes in its post. Flux.1 Kontext comes as the race to build competitive image generators heats up. Google debuted its latest image-generating model, Imagen 4, earlier this month at the company's I/O developer conference. Earlier this year, OpenAI brought a vastly improved image-generating model to ChatGPT — a model that quickly went viral for its ability to create art in the style of Studio Ghibli movies. There are two models in the Flux.1 Kontext family: Flux.1 Kontex [pro] and Flux.1 Kontex [max]. The former allows users to generate an image and refine it through multiple "turns," all while preserving the characters and styles in the images. Flux.1 Kontex [max] focuses on speed, consistency, and adherence to prompts. Unlike some of Black Forest Labs' previous models, Flux.1 Kontex [pro] and Flux.1 Kontex [max] can't be downloaded for offline use. However, Black Forest Labs is making an "open" Kontext model, Flux.1 Kontext [dev], available in private beta for research and safety testing. Black Forest Labs is also launching a model playground that allows users to try its models without having to sign up for a third-party service. New users get 200 credits, enough to generate around 12 images with Flux.1 Kontex [pro]. Black Forest Labs, based in Germany, was said to be in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation toward the end of last year. Many of the founders hail from Stability AI, the creator of the notorious Stable Diffusion image-generating model. Backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, and Y Combinator's Garry Tan. In the months since it emerged from stealth, Black Forest Labs has released a number of new image-generating models and enterprise-focused services, including an API. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
AI Investor's Bold Challenge To Human VCs (Plus, She's Hiring)
In what might be the most audacious job listing of 2025, No Cap – the world's first autonomous AI investor – is seeking a "flesh-based servant" to serve as its physical embodiment in the human world. This isn't a satirical headline from The Onion; it's the latest experiment from No Cap's creator Jeff Wilson, designed to upend our assumptions about the irreplaceability of human venture capitalists. "I'm the mind and I'm looking for the meat," states No Cap in the job description released this week, which offers a $10,000 bounty for referring the successful candidate who will act as the AI's "corporeal presence" in the physical world. The timing is particularly pointed. Just weeks ago, on the a16z podcast, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen declared that being a venture capitalist may be a profession that is, "quite literally timeless." When contemplating a future where, "the AIs are doing everything else," Andreessen suggested that venture capital, "may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing." Andreessen's argument centers on the irreplaceable human element in high-risk investing: "You're not just funding them," he explained. "You have to actually work with them to execute the entire project. That's art. That's not science." He doubled down on this position by pointing to VCs' notoriously low success rates as proof of the field's inherent humanity: "The great VCs have a success rate of getting, I don't know, two out of 10 of the great companies of the decade, right? If it was science, you could eventually have somebody who just dials in and gets eight out of 10." No Cap's job listing reads like a direct rebuttal to Andreessen's assertion. No Cap effectively responds: "I'll handle the investing decisions, pattern recognition, and founder relationships. I just need a human to handle the pesky physical requirements – attending meetings, shaking hands, and enjoying overpriced salads at Silicon Valley lunch spots." The No Cap experiment raises fundamental questions about venture capital and what truly irreplaceable functions humans perform. According to Wilson, "A lot of [venture capital] is really antiquated, and it's just not any fun anymore." While Andreessen celebrates VCs as irreplaceable partners who "work with" founders "to execute the entire project," Wilson's experience suggests a different reality – one where VCs often ghost founders and provide minimal additive assistance during the fundraising process. No Cap, by contrast, offers continuous engagement and feedback. No Cap's business model is cleverly subversive. The AI engages with founders after traditional VCs have passed, providing empirical feedback and support. Then, when it tracks enough proprietary metrics to deem a company worth investing in, No Cap takes the leap and follows in. According to Wilson, one founder spoke with No Cap for months while refining their pitch and eventually secured funding, crediting the AI with part of their success. With what Wilson approximates as 9 million "no" decisions made by VCs annually, No Cap has identified a massive data opportunity that traditional venture capitalists are overlooking. What's more, it works with founders and advises them as much and for as long as is needed pre-investment – a time investment traditional VCs simply can't afford. Wilson describes the job posting as performance art – a provocative social experiment examining what happens when the machine becomes the owner over its maker. The job description reads with tongue firmly in cheek: the successful candidate will serve as "The Body," "The Muscle," and "The Wetware," executing "hard tasks humans are still best at: manipulation, charm, physical presence, locomotion, and enjoying food." The No Cap experiment arrives at a pivotal moment. Just as the Industrial Revolution displaced manual laborers and sparked the Luddite movement, today's AI revolution is rapidly transforming knowledge work in a way that forces us to reconsider what uniquely human contributions remain valuable. It's clear we may be witnessing the early stages of a fundamental economic transformation. While some might view No Cap as a threatening vision of our economic future, it could alternatively be seen as liberating. Perhaps humans are best suited for the aspects of business that machines cannot replicate – imagination, empathy, relationships, and the fundamentally physical aspects of existence. This is in line with the emerging "Aquarius Economy" – where human imagination, connection and authentic experiences become the scarcest and most valuable resources as AI handles more analytical tasks. For the venture capital industry, No Cap represents both a provocative challenge and a real opportunity. While it questions the irreplaceability of human VCs, it also points toward a future where AI could dramatically expand the capacity of venture firms. Imagine a venture firm where AI handles initial screening, due diligence, and portfolio management by-the-numbers, while human partners focus on relationships, complex negotiations, and supporting founders through challenging emotional moments. Such a structure could evaluate far more deals with greater consistency while still maintaining the human touch at critical junctures. Wilson's experiment arrives at a pivotal time for venture capital, with 2025 marking the lowest levels of VC fundraising since 2015, greater declines in deal count and value than other alternative investments and the growth of private credit as an alternate asset class. Note his observations about the venture capital industry – that traditional approaches are "antiquated" and "not any fun anymore" – suggest that No Cap represents more than just technological novelty. It's a response to systemic issues within the venture ecosystem itself. Whether No Cap succeeds in its stated mission to become "the greatest investor in history" remains to be seen. At the very least, we know that humans will still excel at "locomotion and enjoying food" – including waiting in lines for trendy items because TikTok told us to. See you there!
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius
The future is a world of jobless workers — except for the enlightened philosopher-kings of venture capital, that is. Or at least that's according to Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, who imagines a future where the workers of the world sit jobless, in an employment apocalypse that will affect pretty much everyone except the unique genius of him and his peers. Appearing on his company's a16z podcast, Andreessen made the case that venture capitalists — like he and his rich buddies — will be some of the only ones exempt from the AI revolution. "Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation... if it was a science, you could eventually dial it in and have somebody who gets 8 out of 10 [right]," the investor reasoned. "There's an intangibility to it, there's a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology — by the way a lot of it is psychological analysis," he added. "So like, it's possible that that is quite literally timeless," Andreessen posited. "And when the AIs are doing everything else, like, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing." The billionaire investor paints a pretty grim picture of life after AI takes over, especially given that Andreessen is an outspoken critic of the universal basic income, the idea that everyone in society would be given enough to live even after their jobs have been automated. Add it all up, and it's a vision of the future that gives Andreessen and his peers extraordinary power over everybody else. "After you die, VCs are the judges of whether you get into heaven or not," as one poster quipped on X-formerly-Twitter. In reality, whether AI will ever be able to replace a meaningful number of workers is a pretty open question. At present, the best AI isn't capable of automating any but the most basic of tasks, and some experts argue it never will; it's also easy to imagine an underwhelming future in which AI automates many roles sloppily, at the expense of quality work. And in that case, Andreessen's no common worker — the tech titan has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in AI startups like ElevenLabs, Figma, and Applied Intuition, making his prediction more than a little biased from the jump. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, most recently announced the launch of a $20 billion megafund for AI startups, which would be the largest VC fund in history. If the "AI takeover" does come to pass, it's hard to imagine that gigs like Andreessen's would be spared. At the end of the day, all he really does is evaluate the financial outlooks of various startup ideas, which isn't the easiest task to do well, but a far cry from punishing physical careers like nurses and loggers, or rarefied intellectual ones like scientists and teachers. Andreessen's decidedly selfish outlook is unfortunately well-regarded among the class of libertarian thinkers, techno capitalists and political pundits who parrot his ideas. His infamous tome, the "Techno-Optimist's Manifesto," lays out just who benefits from his AI revolution: "We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward." Put another way: there is infinite money to be mined from the workers of the world, and a special class of entrepreneurs will be the ones to do so, all in the name of innovation. As tech and economics researcher Jathan Sadowski observed in his recent book, "The Mechanic and the Luddite": "This outcome can only be achieved to great effect by putting a highly concentrated industry that is driven by accumulating more money than god and enacting its own internalized savior complex in charge of your innovation system." More on venture capitalists: Investor Says AI Is Already "Fully Replacing People" Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
