Latest news with #Conviction
Bloomberg
12 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Businessweek Celebrates the 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech
Bloomberg Businessweek celebrates its 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech list. Editor Brad Stone sits down with one of the honorees, Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction for her take on where to invest around AI at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI's Altman sees 2026 as a turning point for AI in business
STORY: :: June 2, 2025 :: San Francisco, California :: Sam Altman says 2026 will be a big year for AI solving problems and making discoveries :: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI 'I think we'll be at the point next year where you can not only use the system to sort of automate some business processes or fill these new products and services, but you can really say, I have this hugely important problem in my business. I will throw tons of compute at it if you can solve it. And the models will be able to go figure out things that teams of people on their own can't do." 'I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge or can figure out solutions to business problems that are kind of very nontrivial. Right now, it's very much in the category of, okay, if you got something like repetitive cognitive work, we can automate it at a kind of a low level on a short time horizon." 'So what an enterprise will be able to do, we talked about this a little bit, but just like give it your hardest problem if you're a chip design company, say go design me a better chip than I could have possibly had before. If you're a biotech company trying to cure some disease, so just go work on this for me. Like that's not so far away.' Speaking alongside Conviction founder Sarah Guo and Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, Altman said companies prepared to harness the full potential of AI will experience a 'step change' as models evolve from automating routine tasks to tackling non-trivial challenges. 'I would bet next year that, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge,' Altman said, adding that future systems may significantly accelerate scientific discovery. Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Inicia sesión para acceder a tu portafolio Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arbra launches tech-focused private market fund
Arbra Partners has launched a private markets investment vehicle that provides exposure to some of the most promising high-growth tech companies, including the space exploration company SpaceX. The multinational asset management and wealth advising firm introduced its High Conviction Private Markets Basket I, a curated portfolio of private technology companies operating in North America and Europe. Other companies in the basket include Varda, an innovative manufacturing firm, and Ramp, a finance platform. The Basket, which is designed to leverage on rising global digital trends, is part of Arbra's larger strategy of identifying investment opportunities outside of established markets. Furthermore, the portfolio includes both direct equity shares and co-investments through top-tier general partners, typically at the Series B and beyond. The fund will operate as a Delaware-based Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), with an investment minimum of $500,000. Arbra's approach is based on what it calls a "high conviction" thesis, which is a rigorous technique that combines venture capital knowledge with hedge fund strategy. Analysts at the firm focus on areas and technology that they believe will drive tomorrow's economy, such as: Democratisation of technology Global surge in talent AI as an innovation catalyst Government as consumers of technology The fund intends to make opportunistic exits within four to five years, which means it will not have to wait for IPOs or M&A transactions to deliver capital to investors. This initial Basket is at the crossroads of what Arbra sees as the next wave of technological and economic development. Sectors of particular relevance are: Industrialisation 4.0, covering space and defence tech, robotics, and advanced manufacturing Climate tech, including nuclear energy, next-generation power grids, and carbon capture technologies Enterprise technology, from fintech to cybersecurity, big data and cloud computing Arbra additionally focuses its global outlook and focus on alternative assets. In addition to wealth management and traditional asset services, the business uses its global network, particularly in the BRICS markets, to provide tailored M&A and investment opportunities. Philip Harris, Chief Executive of Arbra, stated: 'Our High Conviction Basket aims to fill a gap in the way our investors gain exposure to private market opportunities. All our targets are part of a highly curated long list of unique tech disruptors, and we are delighted to bring this to market.' Lucas Bitencourt, founder of Arbra, added: 'We're backing the breakthrough technologies and proven sectors we believe will reshape the future - and our High Conviction Basket offers investors a bold, distinctive opportunity to stay ahead of the curve.' Future Baskets will be offered on a rolling basis as new opportunities arise, with Arbra refining its selection methodology to catch the most transformative and scalable enterprises in private tech. "Arbra launches tech-focused private market fund" was originally created and published by Private Banker International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
She was one of the youngest general partners in venture capital. Now she's at the forefront of AI investing
Sarah Guo didn't just grow up around startups—from her youngest years, she was immersed in one. Her parents ran Casa, a cable and telecom infrastructure startup competing with industry giants like Cisco and Ericsson, and serving customers like Time Warner. The team was relatively small and tight-knit—and it was challenging 10,000-person competitors on the strength of their products. Guo was drawn to startup chaos even then, showing up to the office each day after school. Surrounded by snacks and Diet Cokes, she'd tag along with engineers, soaking up how their jobs really worked and learning to code. 'It was really formative for me to see how fun and stressful startups were,' Guo said. 'It wasn't a particularly well-networked group of people, but the product was the best in the market.' Fast-forward to today: Guo is the founder of Conviction, one of the most talked-about venture firms investing in the hottest area in VC: AI. Since Guo founded Conviction in 2022, the firm has backed some of the buzziest AI startups out there, including the legal AI startup Harvey (last valued at $3 billion), French open-source AI startup Mistral (last valued at $6 billion), inference platform Baseten (last valued $825 million), and ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor's conversational AI platform Sierra (last valued at $4.5 billion). Guo is part of a wave of VCs—from legendary firms like Sequoia Capital to accelerators like Y Combinator—looking to invest in this transformational next era of technology. And as a sought-after early-stage investor, her firm will be on the ground floor shaping what that future of AI looks like. Conviction has so far remained small, with eight people on staff including Guo and former Sequoia partner Mike Vernal. 'I don't care a lot about scale and power,' says Guo. 'I don't think that's how entrepreneurs make their decisions about early-stage partners. I think they care about trust and understanding. They do care about brand, and they should. But that's different from: 'I need the $10 to $50 billion AUM manager behind me as the first check.'' Before founding Conviction, Guo became a general partner at vaunted VC firm Greylock while still in her 20s. She left that position behind to strike out on her own. So, in addition to AI, her firm is right in the middle of another trend: the bifurcation of venture. As firms are becoming bigger, some are leaning into the 'collect-them-all' ethos of asset management, moving away from venture's cottage-industry tradition. Guo is sometimes talked about as a challenger to established VC firms, a notion she doesn't think fits. 'I actually think I'm pretty traditionalist,' says the 35-year-old, who fundamentally sees venture as as services business. 'I'm going to say a couple things that—ludicrous to me—are controversial. Some of my very favorite growth and crossover investors, and other early-stage investors, will say that judgment doesn't matter. That it's all just access and a random draw. I don't believe that, and we don't behave as if that's true.' The early days of Conviction were an expected whirlwind; as ChatGPT came out, Guo was looking for office space. She'd personally been an early investor in Inflection AI, cofounded by Greylock's Reid Hoffman and DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman, so the underpinning technology didn't surprise her, exactly. What she has been surprised by is the rate of change, and how quickly longstanding assumptions can become obsolete. Case in point, from well before she started Conviction—in 2016, Guo considered leaving Greylock to start an AI company with Andrew Ng, AI research pioneer, cofounder of Coursera, and founder of Google Brain. Their idea: An AI-driven language learning startup. She ultimately decided that the technology wasn't there at the time—but recently told Duolingo cofounder Luis von Ahn that he got it right. ('It took a minute,' she says he told her.) Now, she recalls that example to illustrate how fast AI is evolving. 'I'm not at all saying that I would have been able to build anything like Duolingo,' she says. 'But what I am saying is that the market is now possible, and I think that's now true for a lot of things. One of my big beliefs about doing venture in 2025 in AI is that a lot of your priors, your existing beliefs about markets just don't make sense anymore. They're not actually relevant, because the technology changes a lot." Guo hosts a podcast with famed solo GP Elad Gil called No Priors. And, in some sense, that's the crux of the thesis behind Conviction—that we can't trust our previous assumptions and that it's going to take work to find the truth. In that pursuit, Guo publishes all her LP letters, essentially open sourcing her thinking. 'You are much more likely to find the truth if you are curious and willing to be wrong," she says. Guo's bet that AI matters has proven to be right, but she still faces the question that all investors in the space do: Where is the long-term value in AI? Guo thinks about the crystal hammer gag gift she received from an investor friend when she started the firm, amid a wave of skepticism. "The joke was that you have this AI hammer, and that's not the way you should go looking for companies to invest in,' Guo explains. 'And I'm like, well, it kind of depends: How good is the hammer? AI is a great hammer. So, what are the interesting nails out there in the world?" This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arm Holdings (ARM): Record Revenue, But AI Growth Faces Cyclical Headwinds
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM) stands against other trending AI news updates on Wall Street's radar. Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, spoke on Bloomberg Technology about the evolving AI space and the impact of open-source models. She noted that AI has developed rapidly since her firm launched, reinforcing its belief in its long-term significance. Initially, the firm invested in application companies and vertically integrated businesses, a strategy she believes remains relevant today. She pointed out that competition among foundation models has increased significantly in recent weeks. Guo also discussed Deep Seek and described it as a powerful model with multiple layers, including a base model, an instruction-tuned version, and a reasoning model. While DeepSeek's origins in a Chinese hedge fund surprised many, she sees its open-source nature as beneficial for developers and a challenge for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. She also emphasized that no single country holds exclusive control over AI talent, making export restrictions less effective. When the discussion shifted to investment trends, Guo explained that while AI is expanding economic opportunities across infrastructure, tooling, and model development, her firm prioritizes applications and industry-specific solutions. She noted that training large models remains costly, despite claims of lower expenses, and expects the most sustainable growth to come from application-focused companies. Guo also discussed agentic AI and how it improves customer experiences in industries such as finance and travel. She explained that AI's ability to handle more complex tasks increases its value to businesses, making applications that automate tasks more attractive. As AI continues to advance beyond simple responses, she expects companies working on industry-specific automation to capture significant market value. For this article, we selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey's database of 900 hedge funds. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (). Close-up of Silicon Die are being Extracted from Semiconductor Wafer and Attached to Substrate by Pick and Place Machine. Computer Chip Manufacturing at Fab. Semiconductor Packaging Process. Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 38 Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM) designs and licenses semiconductor technologies, including microprocessors and system IP products, serving markets like automotive, computing, and IoT. On February 6, Bernstein maintained its Underperform rating on Arm with a price target of $100, due to concerns about cyclical challenges. Arm's Q3FY25 revenues reached a record $983 million, exceeding expectations, driven by strong licensing and royalties. However, v9 adoption has stalled at 25% of royalties, missing earlier growth projections. While Q4 guidance aligns with expectations, full-year revenue was only slightly revised upward. Bernstein highlighted the company's increasing reliance on related parties revenue, especially from China, and remains cautious on short-term performance, despite long-term growth potential in AI and related sectors. The firm said: 'There was significant commentary on AI traction, expectations for Compute Subsystems (CSS), and the broader ecosystem, indicating continued long-term potential. Arm emphasized its focus on building capacity to address these opportunities, suggesting a continued commitment to R&D spending. However, in the near term, even with the slight uptick in full-year guidance now slightly ahead of expectations, we believe the response from investors may be muted given current valuation levels. We remain cautious on cyclical headwinds for now, though we acknowledge the long-term story continues to develop positively.' Overall, ARM ranks 2nd on our list of trending AI news updates on Wall Street's radar. While we acknowledge the potential of ARM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ARM but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
