hdahmΞ 🛡️

1/9 - The end of the year is a glorious time for reflection, and I love reading all the year in review + forecasting pieces all the firms put out. It's interesting to see how the stochastics converge, when they're largely developed in isolation. A common thread that I've seen from financial analysts is that 2026 is the year of capex buildout for scaling transformer models, but to me, it's the year of the architecture renaissance. The lens is increasingly incomplete. The next wedge isn’t just more parameters; it’s different architectures + different economics, pushing toward ambient, abundant intelligence. The full essay is at delphiintelligence.io/research/ambie… , courtesy of @Delphi_Digital and blog.hack.vc/ambient-and-ab…, courtesy of @hack_vc

@DJ_CURFEW Unsure if satire. So many emdashes

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why. First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it. Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands. Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition. I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively. THE 100X ORGANIZATION The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago. Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken. The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems. These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now. The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working. THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS — THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality. Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment. AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down. Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed. So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code? And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time? If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code. The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x. The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated. I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already. More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well. — THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS Product management and design roles are merging. Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers. And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers. The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results. The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy. Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on. To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production. Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck. That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time. — THE SYSTEM MANAGERS Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp. The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world. You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is. — THE FRONT-LINERS In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers. This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings. One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers. REWARDING 100X IMPACT In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go? In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it. We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them. You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace. Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems. THE FUTURE Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next. The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago. ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

@jared_western Woah, you can use it for both car and fire fuel?! Bullish. Duckish.

First Gundo bonfire featuring DUCKWEED, come through!!

@Cdempsey44 We love you Connor, it was an absolute pleasure to work together

@AndySaunders_1 @NASA This is so beautiful, excited to see the final cut!

This is incredible. The new @NASA image release from #Artemis includes a sequence of 'Hello World' still photographs. I've been processing / animating them and here's what the original didn't show us: Satellites, including their solar arrays, lightning storms and dancing aurora!

Non technical folks shipping production code that's constantly being attacked. Sounds safe.

@DanielleFong 🙋‍♂️, and my DGX!

anybody want to join my neolab? it is something between a compute buyers club, a data center development company, a lightsaber powerplant, and a polythestic pantheon / monastery

Uncontrolled AI poses a severe danger to all of humanity. On Wednesday, I'll be hosting a discussion with leading AI scientists from the US and China about the need for international cooperation against this existential threat. This is an enormously important issue. Join us.

@ChadowskiIsBack Please make a legit flag of this so I can put it up

The one and only aerospace republic is the United States of America!

@rohanpaul_ai @0xRodney

This is the AlphaFold moment for brain-computer interfaces. Sabi releases the Sabi Cap. The first mass BCI (brain-computer interfaces) may be something you wear, not something surgeons implant. It is a normal beanie you wear on your head. Inside sit 70,000 to 100,000 tiny custom biosensors that read electrical signals from your brain through your scalp. They trained a Brain Foundation Model on 100,000 hours of neural data from 100 people. The model turns your internal speech into text on a computer screen. You think the words and it types them at about 30 words per minute right now. You also click, select, or command software purely by intending the action. “The biggest and baddest application of BCI is if you can talk to your computer by thinking about it,” says Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, one of Sabi’s investors. “If you're going to have a billion people use BCI for access to their computers every day, it can't be invasive.” Sabi’s mind-reading hat uses Electroencephalography, or EEG, which records the brain’s electrical activity through metal discs placed on the scalp. The downside of traditional wearable system is that its sensors have to detect brain activity through skin and bone, which weakens the signals. Surgically implanted devices capture much stronger signals because they sit much closer to neurons. Sabi believes the way to improve accuracy in a wearable is to massively increase the number of sensors. Most Electroencephalography devices use anywhere from 12 to a few 100 sensors. Sabi’s cap is expected to use around 70,000 to 100,000 tiny sensors.

@FilArons We are going to win

We are going to win

How can you not be optimistic Either we'll make it to an era of glorious abundance, or we won't. If we don't, it's not really our problem anyway

@ThePrimalDino I streamed the whole thing during work hours. Very worthwhile, much magic supplementation to writing prose

SEVENTY EIGHT MILLION VIEWS.

@codyaims So pumped man. How much of the program can I do from my garage, assuming I've got intermediate level hardware?

We are hiring for the final core team 3D Designers, Animators, Editors You will create the world’s highest quality training material. The building blocks of industry. GD&T, CAD, CNC. These works will be gifted to America, free. A precursor to unbelievable human potential

@SantiagoPliego @DiscipulusVent See you at demo day sir!

@dillon_dunteman @hyperion__cap Congrats! Super solid early portfolio, nicely done!

Today, we are unveiling @hyperion__cap, an investment firm built to be the best strategy partner for deeptech founders. Again and again, we heard from these founders that venture capital has been failing them, even as more deeptech funds entered the market in recent years. Too many deeptech VCs lack a real command of industry history, hardware unit economics, go-to-market, and engineering nuance. Instead of rigorously evaluating complex frontier technologies, they often pass with vague references to “science risk." They overlook exceptional founders outside usual elite networks and concentrate capital based on pedigree, reducing their thinking to hand-wavy “founder bets." These VCs then prioritize promotion and social media over delivering real value to founders. In this world, LPs are also losing. And more of them continue to be disappointed by the lack of rigor that their deeptech GPs bring to evaluating these startups. We raised $35 million for Hyperion's Fund I to change this paradigm. On average, we complete 100+ pages of deep research and strategy ideas that are shared with our founders. We also share this industry research with our LP base, which has already helped support our founders with additional capital and valuable introductions. We hold regular strategy sessions with our founders and obtain key connections that unlock new growth vectors for their businesses. Over the last 6 months, we’ve already invested $9 million behind founders across 7 companies: @FarisSbahi at Normal Computing, @isaiah_p_taylor @ Valar Atomics, Will Wilson @AntithesisHQ , @drauwsy @ Kunin, @abeirami & @aparandehgheibi @ [stealth], Charlie Cheng @ TC Lab, and Mike & Josh @ F-ADA. I'm deeply grateful to the senior leadership at Vista Equity Partners for their support, to the venture GPs who have advised us, and to the founders who chose to partner with us in the earliest days. We’re especially grateful to our limited partners, who put their trust in us at the firm's inception. Lastly, to build this firm alongside one of my closest friends and college teammates @henr56520 been a true privilege. We’re looking forward to working relentlessly for the founders we've backed and for those we’ll have the chance to support in the years ahead. hyperioncap.co

@GeorgeJourneys cc @BernieSanders icymi, this is a good take

So, basically, if Anthropic was not a US company, we’d be facing zero days with multiple unknown points of attack on virtually all of our systems to an adversary who developed this capacity before us.

A follow-on to my last thread, while Mythos trains Mythos2 (which is undoubtedly in development): If the valley of labor death is real, the next question is not whether it’s fair. It’s how to survive it, adapt through it, and be positioned for what comes after. -- At the highest level, the shift is simple: in a world where labor gets commoditized, you want to be on the ownership side of the equation. Own equity. Own assets. Own distribution. Own trusted relationships. Own systems that scale. Selling hours gets structurally weaker from here. -- As a person, the play is not “learn more skills.” It’s: adopt frontier models early, build sharper judgment, go deeper on trust, and move your life toward ownership rather than wage exposure. Skills automate. Taste, judgment, and trusted allocation last longer. -- That also means accumulating hard assets while the world still thinks mostly in salary terms. Equity. Real estate. BTC. Productive assets. If the valley gets ugly, asset prices may wobble with demand destruction. But on the other side, AI-driven productivity could re-rate scarce assets violently. -- Psychology matters more than most people think. Even people who are “winning” this transition may feel disoriented by it. If your sense of meaning is tied entirely to economic productivity, the next few years could feel destabilizing. Better to answer that question early than under pressure. -- As an investor, the stack comes in layers. First: the displacement infrastructure. Compute, energy, agents, security, AI-native tooling. Every company that cuts headcount will need software, models, and systems to replace what those people used to do. I think markets are pricing this fairly. Bearish people calling it a bubble -- Then comes the transition layer. Identity. Benefits. Retraining. Mental health. New coordination systems. If labor-based distribution starts to break, societies will need new rails for who gets supported, who gets verified, and how people stay economically legible. -- Then the post-valley layer: robotics, crypto rails, abundance-era businesses built around trust, status, experience, and human connection. AI drives the displacement. Crypto may help build the coordination layer for what comes after. Many people are talking about how both are part of the same story, but my thing for a long time is that the foundation of crypto (untrusted networks, game theory, heterogenous hardware, unknown counterparties, digital scarcity) is what matters more than tokens and memecoins -- Operationally, this is also why firms should be using AI themselves. If your team can evaluate more deals, diligence faster, and stay lean while preserving human judgment where it matters, you get stronger exactly when the environment gets harder. The firms that adapt operationally will see more of the future sooner. We do this... ... aggressively. And we are very good -- This transition may be brutal for labor sellers and extraordinary for capital allocators who understand the arc. The hard part is staying psychologically grounded while deploying into chaos. Direction matters more than timing. That has always been true in venture. It may be even more true now.

I think practically and personally, this is the most exciting and important time to be alive, to be the last generation of just human Intelligence becomes abundant, the walls between disciplines start to fall. We get to become more interdisciplinary, more creative, more fully expressed versions of ourselves. I think everyone should learn how to work with wood, metal, tensors, meat, PLAs, and hops. If automation commoditizes the generic, it should make quality matter even more. Perpetually optimistic. Maybe naively so