When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes. But there are some exceptions.
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Yesterday
Sam Altman-backed fusion startup Helion in talks with OpenAI; plus, the SEC dropped its four-year-old investigation into EV startup Faraday Future
Helion is reportedly negotiating a deal that would see it sell 12.5% of its power output to OpenAI. Also, after four years, and multiple subpoenas and depositions, the beleaguered EV startup, Faraday Futures, has dodged yet another bullet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ... Show More
7m 40s
Mar 23
AI startups are eating the venture industry and the returns, so far, are good; plus, Delve accused of misleading customers
AI startups accounted for 41% of the $128 billion in venture dollars raised by companies on Carta last year — a record-high annual share. Also, an anonymous Substack post accuses compliance startup Delve of “falsely” convincing “hundreds of customers they were compliant” with pri ... Show More
9m 57s
Dec 2017
Where VC's Will Invest in 2018: Blockchain, AI, Voice, Pets
Venture capital isn’t a monolith, but startup investors are compared to lemmings for a reason. Once a trend gets hot, every firm needs to make a play, or come up with a good excuse for missing out. (To be safe, if the firm does miss a trend, its partners should privately trash ta ... Show More
10m 14s
Dec 2024
TechStuff Looks at Three AI Startups
2024 has been a huge year for AI. But why should we focus only on the enormous companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon? We look at three startups that hope to make it huge in the AI space. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
41m 6s
Aug 2025
The state of VC within software and AI startups – with Peter Walker
Brought to You By:• WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS.• Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more.• Sonar — Code quality and code security for ALL code.—In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Peter Walker ... Show More
1h 19m
May 2025
Startups Ideas You Can Now Build With AI
There's never been a better time to start an AI company. Not just because there are new ideas, but because the tech finally makes old ones actually work.On the Lightcone, Garry, Harj, Diana, and Jared talk through the kinds of startups that are suddenly viable thanks to LLMs—from ... Show More
40m 46s
Oct 2025
Inside The MIT AI Study Everyone Misunderstood (And What It Means For Startups)
MIT's new State of AI in Business report went viral for claiming that 95% of enterprise AI projects fail. But the real story isn't that AI doesn't work — it's just big companies can't build it.In this episode of the Lightcone, Garry, Harj, Diana, and Jared break down what the stu ... Show More
21m 43s
Aug 2024
Why do some of Africa’s most promising start-ups fail?
There are loads of podcasts about entrepreneurship, setting up a business or start-up, being your own boss and making money. According to the American business magazine Forbes, up to 9 in 10 start-ups fail, and the number is thought to be even higher in Africa.BBC Africa’s busine ... Show More
14m 45s