Jacob Effron

Legora sets the bar for operating at AI speed. Watching them become one of the fastest growing software companies of all time these past few years has provided constant lessons on what’s required to win in this new world. Fresh off @WeAreLegora's $550M Series D, CEO @MaxJunestrand joined @loganbartlett and me on Unsupervised Learning to provide a masterclass on building an AI-native company. He shared some amazing lessons around - Constantly rebuilding for the bleeding edge of model capabilities - Partnering with customers for both immediate impact and long-term transformation - Running Legora differently from traditional software companies He also included some spicy takes on - Why foundation models entering legal is good for Legora - Pricing AI products - The future of the legal industry It’s impossible to listen to Max and not pick up the infectious energy that makes Legora such a special company. Check out the full episode: YouTube: youtu.be/wzRZp-1EuaE Spotify: bit.ly/3Nc53za Apple: bit.ly/40ufr8m 0:00 Intro 1:16 Legora’s Series D Story 3:24 Why You Need Low Ego to Build in AI 5:58 From 60% to 100% Accuracy in One Summer 7:04 Law Firm Economics Shift 14:09 Pricing Seats Vs Outcomes 18:31 Why Foundation Models Entering Legal Helps Legora 30:10 Convincing a 75-Year-Old Partner to Go All In 33:02 Hiring Legal Engineers 34:32 Running an AI-Native Company 35:57 The Opus 4.5 Christmas Breakthrough 40:02 Building With Customers 44:01 All In On US Expansion 51:22 Stockholm Startup DNA

Legora sets the bar for operating at AI speed. Watching them become one of the fastest growing software companies of all time these past few years has provided constant lessons on what’s required to win in this new world. Fresh off @WeAreLegora's $550M Series D, CEO @MaxJunestrand joined @loganbartlett and me on Unsupervised Learning to provide a masterclass on building an AI-native company. He shared some amazing lessons around - Constantly rebuilding for the bleeding edge of model capabilities - Partnering with customers for both immediate impact and long-term transformation - Running Legora differently from traditional software companies He also included some spicy takes on - Why foundation models entering legal is good for Legora - Pricing AI products - The future of the legal industry It’s impossible to listen to Max and not pick up the infectious energy that makes Legora such a special company. Check out the full episode: YouTube: youtu.be/wzRZp-1EuaE Spotify: bit.ly/3Nc53za Apple: bit.ly/40ufr8m 0:00 Intro 1:16 Legora’s Series D Story 3:24 Why You Need Low Ego to Build in AI 5:58 From 60% to 100% Accuracy in One Summer 7:04 Law Firm Economics Shift 14:09 Pricing Seats Vs Outcomes 18:31 Why Foundation Models Entering Legal Helps Legora 30:10 Convincing a 75-Year-Old Partner to Go All In 33:02 Hiring Legal Engineers 34:32 Running an AI-Native Company 35:57 The Opus 4.5 Christmas Breakthrough 40:02 Building With Customers 44:01 All In On US Expansion 51:22 Stockholm Startup DNA

Legora sets the bar for operating at AI speed. Watching them become one of the fastest growing software companies of all time these past few years has provided constant lessons on what’s required to win in this new world. Fresh off @WeAreLegora's $550M Series D, CEO @MaxJunestrand joined @loganbartlett and me on Unsupervised Learning to provide a masterclass on building an AI-native company. He shared some amazing lessons around - Constantly rebuilding for the bleeding edge of model capabilities - Partnering with customers for both immediate impact and long-term transformation - Running Legora differently from traditional software companies He also included some spicy takes on - Why foundation models entering legal is good for Legora - Pricing AI products - The future of the legal industry It’s impossible to listen to Max and not pick up the infectious energy that makes Legora such a special company. Check out the full episode: YouTube: youtu.be/wzRZp-1EuaE Spotify: bit.ly/3Nc53za Apple: bit.ly/40ufr8m 0:00 Intro 1:16 Legora’s Series D Story 3:24 Why You Need Low Ego to Build in AI 5:58 From 60% to 100% Accuracy in One Summer 7:04 Law Firm Economics Shift 14:09 Pricing Seats Vs Outcomes 18:31 Why Foundation Models Entering Legal Helps Legora 30:10 Convincing a 75-Year-Old Partner to Go All In 33:02 Hiring Legal Engineers 34:32 Running an AI-Native Company 35:57 The Opus 4.5 Christmas Breakthrough 40:02 Building With Customers 44:01 All In On US Expansion 51:22 Stockholm Startup DNA

Big day at @WeAreLegora! We have raised $550 million at a $5.55 billion valuation in a Series D funding round, led by @Accel, to accelerate expansion across the United States. To all our customers and partners, this celebration is as much yours as it is ours.

.@MillionInt helped drive o1, o3, and Codex at OpenAI where he was VP of Research from 2019 to 2025. Then he left to pursue “types of research that are hard to do at OpenAI.” This week on Unsupervised Learning, I sat down with Jerry to discuss where AI research is headed and what he learned from seven years at the forefront of the field. - Why he left OpenAI after helping create some of its biggest breakthroughs - Why Jerry updated his AGI timeline after building reasoning models - The real limits of scaling reinforcement learning - Why Anthropic has done so well in coding - Inside OpenAI's pivotal decisions - What makes great AI researchers Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:26 Scaling Paradigms in AI 3:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning 11:48 AGI Timelines 18:36 Converging Labs and Economic Forces 25:05 Jerry's Departure from OpenAI 31:18 Pivotal Decisions in OpenAI's Journey 35:06 Balancing Research and Product Development 38:42 The Future of AI Coding 41:33 Specialization vs. Generalization in AI 48:47 Hiring and Building Research Teams 55:21 Quickfire Listen here: YouTube: youtu.be/XtPZGVpbzOE Spotify: bit.ly/4brrgTE Apple: bit.ly/4a2zjnc

.@MillionInt helped drive o1, o3, and Codex at OpenAI where he was VP of Research from 2019 to 2025. Then he left to pursue “types of research that are hard to do at OpenAI.” This week on Unsupervised Learning, I sat down with Jerry to discuss where AI research is headed and what he learned from seven years at the forefront of the field. - Why he left OpenAI after helping create some of its biggest breakthroughs - Why Jerry updated his AGI timeline after building reasoning models - The real limits of scaling reinforcement learning - Why Anthropic has done so well in coding - Inside OpenAI's pivotal decisions - What makes great AI researchers Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:26 Scaling Paradigms in AI 3:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning 11:48 AGI Timelines 18:36 Converging Labs and Economic Forces 25:05 Jerry's Departure from OpenAI 31:18 Pivotal Decisions in OpenAI's Journey 35:06 Balancing Research and Product Development 38:42 The Future of AI Coding 41:33 Specialization vs. Generalization in AI 48:47 Hiring and Building Research Teams 55:21 Quickfire Listen here: YouTube: youtu.be/XtPZGVpbzOE Spotify: bit.ly/4brrgTE Apple: bit.ly/4a2zjnc

.@MillionInt helped drive o1, o3, and Codex at OpenAI where he was VP of Research from 2019 to 2025. Then he left to pursue “types of research that are hard to do at OpenAI.” This week on Unsupervised Learning, I sat down with Jerry to discuss where AI research is headed and what he learned from seven years at the forefront of the field. - Why he left OpenAI after helping create some of its biggest breakthroughs - Why Jerry updated his AGI timeline after building reasoning models - The real limits of scaling reinforcement learning - Why Anthropic has done so well in coding - Inside OpenAI's pivotal decisions - What makes great AI researchers Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:26 Scaling Paradigms in AI 3:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning 11:48 AGI Timelines 18:36 Converging Labs and Economic Forces 25:05 Jerry's Departure from OpenAI 31:18 Pivotal Decisions in OpenAI's Journey 35:06 Balancing Research and Product Development 38:42 The Future of AI Coding 41:33 Specialization vs. Generalization in AI 48:47 Hiring and Building Research Teams 55:21 Quickfire Listen here: YouTube: youtu.be/XtPZGVpbzOE Spotify: bit.ly/4brrgTE Apple: bit.ly/4a2zjnc

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Exclusive: A weeks-old startup led by OpenAI's former vp of research is aiming to raise up to $1 billion to develop a new kind of AI. Read more from @Steph_Palazzolo and @WayneMa 👇 thein.fo/3NJ8RYt

.@MillionInt helped drive o1, o3, and Codex at OpenAI where he was VP of Research from 2019 to 2025. Then he left to pursue “types of research that are hard to do at OpenAI.” This week on Unsupervised Learning, I sat down with Jerry to discuss where AI research is headed and what he learned from seven years at the forefront of the field. - Why he left OpenAI after helping create some of its biggest breakthroughs - Why Jerry updated his AGI timeline after building reasoning models - The real limits of scaling reinforcement learning - Why Anthropic has done so well in coding - Inside OpenAI's pivotal decisions - What makes great AI researchers Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:26 Scaling Paradigms in AI 3:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning 11:48 AGI Timelines 18:36 Converging Labs and Economic Forces 25:05 Jerry's Departure from OpenAI 31:18 Pivotal Decisions in OpenAI's Journey 35:06 Balancing Research and Product Development 38:42 The Future of AI Coding 41:33 Specialization vs. Generalization in AI 48:47 Hiring and Building Research Teams 55:21 Quickfire Listen here: YouTube: youtu.be/XtPZGVpbzOE Spotify: bit.ly/4brrgTE Apple: bit.ly/4a2zjnc

Project Eleven Raises $20M to Prepare Digital Asset Infrastructure for the Quantum Era Project Eleven, the leader in post-quantum security and migration for digital assets, today announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Fin Capital, Variant, Quantonation, Nebular, Formation, Lattice Fund, Satstreet Ventures, Nascent Ventures, and Balaji Srinivasan. The round comes as post-quantum cryptography becomes a planning priority for government and industry. Advances in quantum computing could eventually weaken elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), the public-key standard used by networks such as Bitcoin, prompting a staged transition across an ecosystem that secures more than $4 trillion in digital assets. Project Eleven is building the tools to make complex, multi-year migrations practical for networks and institutions, including readiness assessments, migration test environments, and deployment sequencing. “As quantum capabilities advance, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We can’t afford to ignore this existential risk posed to the digital asset ecosystem,” said Alex Pruden, CEO and Co-Founder of Project Eleven. “Trillions in value depend on these cryptographic assumptions. Networks like Bitcoin take years to upgrade because they’re governed cautiously by design. We’re focused on making the transition practical now, so the industry can migrate deliberately instead of improvising under pressure.” “Useful quantum computing is the biggest and most complex threat public blockchains have ever faced,” said Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures. “Project Eleven is building the practical bridge from research to real-world deployment.” Project Eleven is collaborating with the Solana Foundation and other leading protocols and Layer 1 ecosystems on post-quantum readiness planning and technical work. The company raised a $6 million seed round in June 2025 led by Variant and Quantonation, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation. Project Eleven plans to unveil its next major product release in early 2026, adding capabilities for institutions, protocols, and end users looking to future-proof long-lived cryptographic systems. 🤝 @CastleIslandVC @nic_carter @cbventures @Fin_Capital_VC @variantfund @Quantonation @Nebularvc @formation_vc @lattice_fund @Satstreet @nascent @balajis 🤝 @apruden08 @conordeegan @graememoore @Dr_DAO_ @nuggimane 🤝