Sophia Zhao

Special Episode of We The Builders from @HillValleyForum 2026: Conversation with David Friedberg (@friedberg) on rise and fall of empires, the state of US economy, robots as an economic platform, what has changed since the Winning AI Race Summit featuring President Trump, reindustrialization, the end of institutional education and of course the California bankruptcy. Timestamps: 01:21 - Shifting landscape between Silicon Valley and DC 02:51 - AI has become a political attack vector 04:46 - Late-stage empires and the impact of national debt 07:03 - Potential for AI to rewrite the story of US economy 08:26 - AI’s recent performance and productivity gains 10:03 - Bullish outlook on humanoid robots 11:16 - Robots as a platform for economic mobility 13:41 - Reindustrialization and energy production challenges 15:15 - The “functionally bankrupt” status of California 16:50 - The declining value of institutional education 18:46 - Personalized AI-driven tutoring as the future 20:01 - Emerging private sector models for education

Crypto holds the key to quantum resilience, yet this is often overlooked. At @plcapital we've made several bets in the space (denoted by an *) particularly around FHE. We consider FHE a bet on quantum resilience 🧵

@guohao_li Excited for this! 💫❤️

Introducing Eigent — the first multi-agent workforce on your desktop. Eigent is a team of AI agents collaborating to complete complex tasks in parallel. It is your long-term working partner with fullly customizable workers and MCPs. Public beta available to download for MacOS, Windows. 100% open-source on Github. Comment for 500 extra credits.

We The Builders EPISODE 1 is LIVE with @Farshchi at @Lux_Capital Shahin has invested in companies manufacturing in space (@VardaSpace), building autonomous transportation systems (@zoox), providing robots as a service (@goformic), automating industries (@CovariantAI), using space to revolutionize the Earth observation industry (@planet), 3D printing rockets (@relativityspace) and many more. The Jetsons Future I thought I would be living in 2025 is partly being built. We have a long way to go but this is exactly how we inspire the next generation. If someone from 1900 woke up and read this, they would call it science fiction. Thank you Shahin, for believing in and being a partner to these incredible companies and founders. Shahin is an incredibly kind soul, helpful, accessible and a role model for younger aspiring venture capitalists. From what I have personally observed and heard from friends building companies, he will cheer you on and have incredible empathy for the fact that you had the courage to build. In many cases, more than capital, that is what you need most. Highlights & Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 02:13 - Berkeley to Iran in teenage 05:01 - Adapting to different education systems 09:05 - Early transformative experiences 14:49 - Mentors and role models 18:20 - On breaking into research labs and flipping rejections 25:01 - Story of getting into grad school, applying for funding, and early research 32:41 - Going from research to venture capital 34:50 - Commercializing his research and starting a company 38:04 - Thoughts on ingredients of a good startup 45:11 - Where do the best founders come from 50:34 - Why PhDs are not equipped to commercialize 1:02:00 - Breakthrough innovation timeline 1:05:00 - Solving for shareholder demand 1:10:22 - How to think about what problem to solve 1:14:10 State of the education system

Catch @hyperbolic_labs BD Lead @JeremyHazan1 this Wednesday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM at Decentralized Drinks: Web3 & AI Founders & Funders Night. 🟣 RSVP: lu.ma/8uvhu33n

Raise a glass to the future of AI + Web3! If you're in the Bay Area, join us for an exclusive evening with @alumniventures, @spaceandtime, @pinai_io, @TheoriqAI, @ava_protocol and @hyperbolic_labs for insights into the future of web3 + AI. RSVP Now!👇lu.ma/8uvhu33n?tk=hE…

Raise a glass to the future of AI + Web3! 🍸 If you're in the Bay Area, join us for an exclusive evening with @alumniventures, @spaceandtime, and @TheoriqAI for cocktails, conversations, and insights into the future of blockchain and AI. RSVP Now! 👇 lu.ma/8uvhu33n

🚀 The 2025 Yale Blockchain Conference is here! 🚀 Join us for a premier gathering of industry leaders, top investors, Fortune 50 executives, Yale professors, cutting-edge founders, artists, and innovators as we explore the real-world impact of blockchain technology. This year’s theme, "Blockchain Applications Across Industries," seeks to highlight blockchain’s transformative role in healthcare, finance, supply chain, AI, art, law, gaming and more. We’ll also have a few surprises and special prize giveaways, so sign up below!

🚨 Compute Labs Secures APAC's 2nd Largest Nvidia B200s Cluster! As Bitcoin surpasses $100k, GPUs are the next big opportunity. Compute Labs is leading the charge with unmatched infrastructure ahead of Nvidia’s 2025 delivery delays. Read the full story: nl.mashable.com/business/10686…

🚧 introducing steel: an open-source browser api for ai agents we make it easy to give your agents web browsing abilities with their own dedicated browser in the cloud. no k8s, no chrome drivers, no proxy mgnt, no captchas, no infra headaches. get started with 100 free browser hours on us → steel dot dev

At Protocol VC we've invested in 16 DePIN projects & the @protocollabs network has incubated several more in addition to launching @Filecoin as a DePIN network. We believe DePIN's core potential lies in its ability to decentralize contributions to projects & unlock true scale

✨ Memento Of A Dialogue bridges time through on-chain stories. Each generative piece features a real Ethereum message, with the background shaped by mint time. Join this interactive dialogue between messenger, artist & collector. ⏳ #GenerativeArt #NFT

We are going to be in El Segundo tomorrow at 2pm. It’s time to build for the next frontier. One of my goals has been to highlight and support the best entrepreneurs of our time on a mission to solve the hardest problems. We are not from this planet. We have worked very hard to colonize it and in the process, humans have evolved as a species and come a long way. All of modern technology sector and Silicon Valley are only 50 odd years old. Internet, mobiles, computers, chips, social media - everything happened in the last 50 years. We have always underestimated what we can achieve in decades. We end up getting caught up in 5 year plans. I believe, in my lifetime, we are going to colonize another planet. Humans will land on another planet. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. We figured out how to colonize earth, we will figure out how to colonize another planet. Millennials and GenZ will be around to see it. I just don’t know if they’ll be 60 or 80 when they do. One of the questions me and all my friends building in space-tech get asked very frequently is, how does this benefit life on earth? My answer: Space colonization is not just about spaceships and rockets, we have to make significant advancements in robotics, food and agricultural tech, biotech, materials science, transportation, energy and future of software - AI, AGI, ASI - bits superpower atoms. All of this, benefits life on earth. Every new discovery, every new experiment, advancement, benefits life on earth. Having to reimagine how you would occupy a planet with all the hindsight and knowledge, it’s not just a generational opportunity to make a small dent in human history but it’s also the greatest economic opportunity of our time. We discovered ice and built usecases for it and we eventually invented refrigeration. We discovered fire and eventually invented heaters, stoves and combustion engines. Airplanes were invented only 120 years ago. Zoom out, think about the possibilities. If this makes you jump out of bed, if you feel shivers down your spine, if you feel adrenaline thinking about all this - you’re my kinda people. We saw a historic SpaceX launch a couple of days ago. We have companies who are working on manufacturing drugs in space. We have companies building micro nuclear reactors. What a time to be alive. More importantly, I am hosting the founders building these companies and future of our industry in the heart of El Segundo - the flag bearer of all progress in the world of atoms. You will hear from @DougBernauer , cofounder and CEO @RadiantNuclear , @WillBruey , cofounder & CEO of @VardaSpace Jason Dunn, cofounder and CEO of @outpostspace and @MadeInSpace and @johncoogan from @foundersfund

The Theoriq Incentivized Testnet is live—this is your chance to interact with our #AI Agents and Collectives! 💥👇 quests.theoriq.ai Explore, give feedback, and help shape the multi-agent future. This isn’t just a test—it’s the start of the Agentic Revolution. 🦾

This is too perfect 😂 twitter.com/btcmemecreator…

We are organizing a panel+meetup event with @JunoNetwork to discuss new security approaches for @cosmos during #SFBW22 . Speakers: @sunnya97 (@osmosis), @JTremback (@informalinc), @JakeHartnell, @dntse. Thanks @draper_u @alumniventures for the space. eventbrite.com/e/securing-cos…

Together with Professor Mayur Naik @AI4Code and @EduDAO , we are incorporating one audit contest to CIS 7000 at @Penn ! Students will compete with experienced auditors and top students from other schools on real smart contracts from @Xcarnival to earn both credits and rewards.

Please watch out for fake TG accounts impersonating me 🙏. My only TG account and user name is “nierfiti”.

Waiting for @playbigtime to drop the game 🚀🚀 the gameplay screenshot looks amazing 🤩🚀🚀#gaming #CryptoGaming #nft

When I started owning crypto I was definitely operating with a swing trader’s mindset. But I find myself slowly becoming a hodler starting early this year. Lol #Bitcoin #Ethereum #ToTheMoon