8VC

Much of the AI narrative revolves around architecture research, compute scaling & buying human data. Very few understand the deep technical discipline of "data research," which has driven many of the gains in model capabilities. @vvkgopalan sits down with @madiator & @AlexGDimakis, founders of @bespokelabsai, a company defining the category of data research. (00:00) Introducing Mahesh and Alex (03:40) Teaching a 1000 person ML class at Berkeley / changes in CS education in the age of AI (06:10) Open source data for frontier model training, OpenThoughts & training models for data curation (12:00) Why multiple-answer yields more performant models, benefits of keeping unverifiable examples in datasets (17:20) RL scaling laws / introduction to Bespoke (19:45) "Environment-driven Development" (28:35) New capabilities in frontier models & coding agents (34:30) Market outlook for RL environments (42:30) Exciting recent research and how we arrived at today's state of RL (50:00) Bespoke's Series A

1/ Customer research is a $140B industry built on outdated tools. @AaronLCannon & @OutsetAI are a canonical example of the AI wave -- one of the fastest growing, AI-led primitives we've seen. What's their unlock? Why does it matter? And are they just replacing humans?

Awesome to finally announce our involvement with @Ollama since the seed round It’s the most important infrastructure project around the use of open models

huge ollama day. few people care more about developers than Michael & Jeff. it’s been a delight for us @8vc (s/o @AlexKolicich) to have worked with them from the beginning. heres to the next gajillion tokens

@vvkgopalan @madiator We are very proud to partner with this team since the beginning! bespokelabs.ai/blog/bespoke-l…

Much of the AI narrative revolves around architecture research, compute scaling & buying human data. Very few understand the deep technical discipline of "data research," which has driven many of the gains in model capabilities. @vvkgopalan sits down with @madiator & @AlexGDimakis, founders of @bespokelabsai, a company defining the category of data research. (00:00) Introducing Mahesh and Alex (03:40) Teaching a 1000 person ML class at Berkeley / changes in CS education in the age of AI (06:10) Open source data for frontier model training, OpenThoughts & training models for data curation (12:00) Why multiple-answer yields more performant models, benefits of keeping unverifiable examples in datasets (17:20) RL scaling laws / introduction to Bespoke (19:45) "Environment-driven Development" (28:35) New capabilities in frontier models & coding agents (34:30) Market outlook for RL environments (42:30) Exciting recent research and how we arrived at today's state of RL (50:00) Bespoke's Series A

We’re thrilled to announce a $40M investment that will fuel our mission to make AI agents reliable. For the past two years, we've been heads-down doing world-class data curation research and shipping best-in-class reinforcement learning environments for training and optimizing AI agents. This funding lets us go a lot deeper on both. Thank you to our investors @Wing_VC, @MayfieldFund, @8vc, @thehousefund and our angels such as Jeff Dean, Dheeraj Pandey, Tristan Handy, and several others from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta. And thanks to the frontier labs and enterprises we work with every day, for sharing our vision for a future where agents can run autonomously for weeks and months at a time. (more below)

@bespokelabsai Proud to partner with you guys since the beginning!

@AmOptimistShow @JTLonsdale @AaronLCannon @OutsetAI 🇺🇸

EPISODE 159: How AI Is About to Upend the $140B Customer Research Industry @JTLonsdale sits down with @AaronLCannon, founder & CEO of @OutsetAI Learn how AI can outperform humans in customer surveys, the new possibilities with real-time customer feedback, how Outset grew revenue 8X this past year, and more! (00:00) Episode intro (01:10) Aaron's entrepreneurial journey (06:00) How does AI-moderated research work? (09:25) Why people will talk to AI more than humans (13:40) How Outset landed Microsoft, Google & Uber (14:55) Are you replacing human jobs? (20:56) New possibilities for real-time product improvements (23:30) The pros and cons of synthetic research (28:00) Insane growth / how Outset 8X'd revenue (35:00) How AI is upending a $140B industry

@JTLonsdale @OrcaBio 🇺🇸🇺🇸

Today, the FDA approved @OrcaBio's TREGZI cell therapy for adults with hematological malignancies (eg, cancer).  In Orca’s pivotal trial, TREGZI roughly doubled the rate of patients alive and free of serious chronic complications at one year.  Congratulations to the Orca team!

@denykhoung @DrCapsoul @indent We’re already thinking about the next one. Stay tuned!

@denykhoung @DrCapsoul @indent Find the artists/vendors on IG: studio.763, studio.trieu, 10thfloor.studio, nowplacesf, yumishowroom, pmaccay, djpatrick, tacossinceros, caffeine depot

Thank you to everyone who spent part of your busy Config week with us at Pixel Eight Cafe. It was great to see designers, artists, builders, and friends all in one place!

Had a very fun chat with the @TradedVC team Shared some current thoughts on building 8VC as a craft firm in an era of mega funds, stewardship over ownership, and why none of the bottlenecks left are technological traded.co/blog/how-8vc-s…

@AmOptimistShow @JTLonsdale @NGhamsari @blendlabsinc 🇺🇸🚀

EPISODE 158: Nima Ghamsari on the Power of AI Agents & Infinite Workforce @JTLonsdale sits down with @NGhamsari to cover some favorite stories from Palantir, why he's all-in on AI agents, @blendlabsinc's comeback story, and more. (00:00) Episode intro (01:45) Making millions playing poker to joining Palantir (06:00) Most important lessons from Palantir (07:30) Founding $BLND / understanding the mortgage industry (11:25) How to win over banks and risk-averse customers  (15:50) Blend's meteoric rise and fall  (19:00) Going all-in on AI agents / Blend's Act II  (22:55) efficient markets / is Blend undervalued today?  (26:50) Impact of AI on internal operations / increased productivity  (32:00) The future of SaaS  (36:20) The optimistic case for AI

Congratulations to the entire team at @DeepFission on today's IPO. We’re proud to have backed Liz, Rich, and friends since their seed, and to support them in bringing proven nuclear tech to new frontiers. 🇺🇸⚡️