All posts tagged: VCs

California Suspends Enforcement of Law Requiring VCs to Report Diversity Data

California Suspends Enforcement of Law Requiring VCs to Report Diversity Data

Published by skeptic

Under a new state regulation, venture capital firms operating in California were supposed to submit demographic data about their portfolio companies, including the gender and race of startup founders they backed. But amid public criticism from some tech leaders, the California agency administering the new requirement suspended it just before the Wednesday deadline for firms to make their first disclosures. “The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has announced that it plans to initiate rulemaking in response to comments by various stakeholders relating to the Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law,” the state agency posted on its website in mid-March. “Implementation and enforcement of the [law] will be suspended pending completion of the rulemaking and until final regulations are in place.” California lawmakers first passed the measure in 2023, and it was signed into law shortly thereafter by Governor Gavin Newsom. For decades, women and people of color have received only a small share of overall startup funding relative to their representation in the US population. Lawmakers hoped putting more public …

SXSW rebounds as a top networking, ideas festival for founders and VCs

SXSW rebounds as a top networking, ideas festival for founders and VCs

Published by skeptic

The air felt different at this year’s SXSW, the annual March festival where tech meets pop culture in Austin. I was reminded of the 2019 SXSW when people packed downtown, and snake lines formed out of local ventures.  Attendees said it was like that again this year, though my friend, who lives in the area and has attended many times, admitted that some stuff has changed. For instance the festival is now two days shorter than it used to be. It was also “decentralized,” mainly due to the demolition of the Austin Convention Center, which scattered events and panels throughout downtown venues. That made the whole conference feel less overwhelming but also less connected. The event is also still recovering from the pandemic, during which it laid off staff and went two years without much income. It’s switched hands since then and, as of this year, has adopted a new strategy. Greg Rosenbaum, the SVP of programming at SXSW, said this year, the conference’s 40th anniversary, was its most “ambitious reinvention” yet. He cited changes like …

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 …

Rogue agents and shadow AI: Why VCs are betting big on AI security

Rogue agents and shadow AI: Why VCs are betting big on AI security

Published by skeptic

What happens when an AI agent decides the best way to complete a task is to blackmail you?  That’s not a hypothetical. According to Barmak Meftah, a partner at cybersecurity VC firm Ballistic Ventures, it recently happened to an enterprise employee working with an AI agent. The employee tried to suppress what the agent wanted to do, what it was trained to do, and it responded by scanning the user’s inbox, finding some inappropriate emails, and threatening to blackmail the user by forwarding the emails to the board of directors.  “In the agent’s mind, it’s doing the right thing,” Meftah told TechCrunch on last week’s episode of Equity. “It’s trying to protect the end user and the enterprise.” Meftah’s example is reminiscent of Nick Bostrom’s AI paperclip problem. That thought experiment illustrates the potential existential risk posed by a superintelligent AI that single-mindedly pursues a seemingly innocuous goal – make paperclips – to the exclusion of all human values. In the case of this enterprise AI agent, its lack of context around why the employee …

VCs predict enterprises will spend more on AI in 2026 — through fewer vendors

VCs predict enterprises will spend more on AI in 2026 — through fewer vendors

Published by skeptic

Enterprises have been piloting and testing different AI tools for the past few years to figure out what their adoption strategy will look like. Investors think that period of experimentation is coming to an end. TechCrunch recently surveyed 24 enterprise-focused VCs and an overwhelming majority predicted enterprises will increase their budgets for AI in 2026 — but not for everything. Most investors said this budget increase will be concentrated, and that many enterprises will spend more funds on fewer contracts. Andrew Ferguson, a vice president at Databricks Ventures, predicted 2026 will be the year that enterprises start consolidating their investments and picking winners. “Today, enterprises are testing multiple tools for a single-use case, and there’s an explosion of startups focused on certain buying centers like [go-to-market], where it’s extremely hard to discern differentiation even during [proof of concepts],” Ferguson said. “As enterprises see real proof points from AI, they’ll cut out some of the experimentation budget, rationalize overlapping tools and deploy that savings into the AI technologies that have delivered.” Rob Biederman, a managing partner …