All posts tagged: Founders Fund

Founders Fund launches game show starring Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, and other tech elites

Founders Fund launches game show starring Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, and other tech elites

Published by skeptic

Have you ever had the desire to see Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey square off over a moderately suspenseful card game? If so, you are in luck. Silicon Valley’s leaders are rushing to embrace the power of media for the purposes of marketing and political capital. Now, in a sign of the times, Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has launched its own game show. “MAFIA the GAME,” will apparently be an ongoing thing, where prominent tech luminaries get together and face off over a game of cards (the show is named after the party-game favorite). The spectacle is moderated by Pirate Wires editor Mike Solana (who is also the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund). The debut episode includes a who’s who of players — Sam Altman; Palmer Luckey; Bryan Johnson, the famed biohacker who will (according to him) live forever; and Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of encrypted chat app Signal. “I’m so f*cking bored with VC content,” Solana told Newcomer, which originally reported the show’s existence. “There has to …

Physical Intelligence is reportedly in talks to raise billion, again

Physical Intelligence is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion, again

Published by skeptic

Physical Intelligence, the two-year-old San Francisco robotics startup, is in discussions to raise about $1 billion in new funding at a valuation exceeding $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. The deal would effectively double the company’s $5.6 billion valuation in just four months. Founders Fund is set to participate with Lightspeed Venture Partners also in talks to invest alongside returning backers Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, Bloomberg reported. The deal is still in early stages and details could change, noted the outlet. TechCrunch visited Physical Intelligence’s headquarters in January, where co-founder Sergey Levine described the company’s ambition simply: “Think of it like ChatGPT, but for robots.” At the time, the company had raised just over $1 billion and employed about 80 people working to build general-purpose AI models that can power robots to perform a wide variety of tasks, from folding laundry to peeling vegetables. Co-founder Lachy Groom told TechCrunch the company has no timeline for commercialization, an unusual posture that its investors don’t seem to mind. “There’s no limit to how much money we can …

Founders Fund nears billion close for latest growth fund, sources say

Founders Fund nears $6 billion close for latest growth fund, sources say

Published by skeptic

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is nearing the close of its fourth growth fund, Founders Fund Growth IV, with $6 billion in capital commitments, per sources close to the firm. As with most of the firm’s fundraises, demand from outside investors exceeds the fund’s capacity, according to those sources. Additionally, about $1.5 billion of the capital is coming from the Founders Fund’s partners, one of the sources told TechCrunch. The fresh fundraise comes less than a year after Founders Fund closed its third growth fund, a $4.6 billion vehicle intended primarily for follow-on investments in its successful late-stage companies. The 21-year-old firm has an impressive portfolio of winning startups. Founders Fund was an early investor in AI cloud computing company Crusoe, workforce management platform Rippling, and fintechs Stripe and Ramp. The firm was also the first institutional investor in data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, and holds stakes in numerous other defense tech companies,, including SpaceX, Flock Safety, and Anduril, which Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens co-founded and that the firm backed from its first seed round. …

With AI, investor loyalty is (almost) dead: At least a dozen OpenAI VCs now also back Anthropic 

With AI, investor loyalty is (almost) dead: At least a dozen OpenAI VCs now also back Anthropic 

Published by skeptic

With OpenAI on the verge of finalizing a new $100 billion round, and Anthropic just closing its own monster $30 billion raise, one thing is clear: the concept of investor “loyalty” is only hanging on by a thread.  At least a dozen direct investors in OpenAI were announced as backers in Anthropic’s $30 billion raise earlier this month, including Founders Fund, Iconiq, Insight Partners, and Sequoia Capital.  Some dual investments are understandable if they come from the hedge fund or asset manager worlds, where their focus is still largely investing in public stocks (competitors or not). These include D1, Fidelity, and TPG.   One of these was a bit shocking. Affiliated funds of BlackRock joined in Anthropic’s $30 billion raise even though BlackRock’s senior managing director and board member Adebayo Ogunlesi is also on OpenAI’s board of directors.  In that world, it’s true that if various BlackRock funds get a chance to own OpenAI stock, they are likely to take it, never mind the personal association of a member of their senior leadership. (BlackRock runs every …

Avalanche thinks the fusion power industry should think smaller

Avalanche thinks the fusion power industry should think smaller

Published by skeptic

Nuclear fusion conjures images of massive reactors or banks of dozens of large lasers. Avalanche co-founder and CEO Robin Langtry thinks smaller is better.  For the last several years, Langtry and his colleagues at Avalanche have been working on what’s essentially a desktop version of nuclear fusion. “We’re using the small size to learn quickly and iterate quickly,” Langtry told TechCrunch. Fusion power promises to supply the world with large amounts of clean heat and electricity, if researchers and engineers can solve some vexing challenges. At its core, fusion power seeks to harness the power of the Sun. To do that, fusion startups must figure out how to heat and compress plasma for long enough that atoms inside the mix fuse, releasing energy in the process.  Fusion is a famously unforgiving industry. The physics is challenging, the materials science is cutting edge, and the power requirements can be gargantuan. Parts need to be machined with precision, and the scale is usually so large as to obviate rapid fire experimentation.  Some companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems …