Good morning 👋
And welcome to a new work week.
A lot of people speculate on the future of AI; we only really care about the opinions of people who are working deep in the weeds of AI.
So when the CEO of Anthropic shares a 15k-word essay on his views, we listen, and we break it all down in today’s piece.
Let’s get into it.
P.S. 💰 Are you a full-time investor AND do you want to get paid more?
TL;DR:
HEADLINES
The utopian AI sales pitch 🔆
AI will save the world - at least according to Dario Amodei.
The Anthropic CEO is doubling down on AI optimism, writing out a 15,000-word essay for a future where AI solves world hunger, cures diseases, and even doubles human lifespans. According to him, AI will outsmart Nobel Prize winners by 2026 and revolutionize medicine, engineering, and beyond - all within the next decade.
The timing of this “AI-as-savior” narrative aligns with Anthropic’s push to raise billions in venture funding, so we’re digging a little bit deeper.
Why it matters:
Bold claims, shaky foundation: Many of Amodei’s promises rely on breakthroughs that AI hasn’t achieved yet. Even the best models today can’t "think" like humans, and the timelines shared by many people in the AI community are shaky at best.
Medicine isn’t easy to disrupt: AI might speed up drug discovery, but other parts of healthcare’s complexity and regulation are major bottlenecks. Human biology isn’t software - something that many people in tech forget.
Reality check for AI startups: Amodei’s essay indirectly suggests that any company not embracing AI at this scale is at risk of irrelevance. We don’t see many companies not embracing AI today, but this type of blog aims to create a wave of fear-driven investment in AI-heavy solutions.
What happens next:
When you realize that Anthropic’s entire business hinges on global adoption of this type of thinking, you can separate reality from hype.
We are not dismissing any of the promises from Dario’s blog, but in our opinion, AI is years away from delivering on these kinds of promises.
But that’s one of the issues with fundraising: in order to attract more dollars, you have to sell a bigger vision. And that’s exactly what Anthropic is doing.
Expect more tech CEOs to crank up the AI hyperbole as they chase larger checks. In the near-term, investors should brace for exaggerated timelines and bloated valuations.
The real winners from this period will be those who can separate hype from what’s actually achievable.
COMMUNITY
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LINKS
🎴 Wischoff Ventures Fund III Deck: The actual deck used by Nichole to raise $50m
🧠 100 Lindy Books in 10 Minutes: The biggest ideas from 100 of the best books of all time
✏️ 29 notes from “The Mind of Napoleon”: “The simplest moves are the best.”
🤖 AI Agents: A New Architecture for Enterprise Automation (report from Menlo)
📶 1000x leverage: Using code, content, capital, and your network
📶 Deal Flow Report: 10/13/24: A better way to analyze and report on internal metrics, how to create documentation like Stripe, plus an AI-enabled pipeline generation machine
TWEET
HEADLINES
Sequoia Capital and the evolution of the VC industry (FT)
Market Map: VCs bet on data infrastructure to keep fueling AI (Pitchbook)
Numeric grabs $28M Series A to automate accounting using AI (TechCrunch)
More startups are exiting at a loss than at any point since 2009 (Pitchbook)
There’s an Arms Race for the Next Million Dollar Protein Bar (The Information)
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POLL
What is the realistic timeline for AI solving complex issues like solving world hunger, curing diseases, and doubling human lifespans?
Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.
Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.
- Clay
RESULTS
Here are the results from our poll question in Friday’s piece:
Is venture platform dead?
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Yes 💀 (12)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No 🙏 (16)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Not yet but definitely becoming less of a focus (10)
38 Votes
