This past year has been a blur of nine-figure funding rounds and billion-dollar-plus valuations for artificial intelligence startups that investors hope can be the next OpenAI or Midjourney. I can’t tell you how many times investors have justified the money they’ve put into a brand new startup by saying things like: “Well, he was one of the lead authors on the Llama paper!” or “Well, she was a star AI PhD at Stanford!”. (This TikTok from Redpoint Ventures isn’t too far from reality.)
So I’ve been patiently waiting for the day when the tides turn… and I think we may be almost there.
A growing number of AI startups are struggling to get what they want from venture capitalists who probably would have jumped at the chance to invest in them a year ago, my colleague Natasha Mascarenhas and I discovered in this piece.
