Ethan Batraski
The Great Legacy Extinction: AI's $20T Takeover of Professional Services
A $20T sector dominated by human-driven, low-tech businesses where titans have built their brands on historical reputation and prestige rather than measurable performance. From elite law firms and accounting powerhouses to insurance conglomerates and management consulting dynasties, the professional services industry represents a staggering $20 trillion global market. This massive sector remains dominated by human-driven, low-tech businesses where titans have built their brands on historical reputation and prestige rather than measurable performance. They operate on centuries-old
4.1.2025
Ethan Batraski
The Titans Paper: Google's Next Transformer Breakthrough
Google Research just dropped a paper that fundamentally changes how we think about AI architecture, now with AI memory. While everyone’s obsessing over model size and test-time compute, Google Research just dropped a paper that fundamentally changes how we think about AI architecture. This isn’t just another research paper – it’s the next Transformer moment, meet Titans. The original Transformer paper solved a fundamental problem: how to process sequences without recurrence. DeepSeek showed us how to make the training of that architecture
2.12.2025
Morgan Hitzig
GenLogs: Building a New Freight Industry
An underdiscussed aspect of working in venture capital is responsibility. As an industry, we’re on the front lines of deciding what businesses should be built and why — of what the next economy looks like. If you told me that I’d wait 12 months after joining Venrock to make my first investment, I wouldn’t have believed you. But after spending time with fellow investors, marrying things I learned about what makes a great company with my own ideas, I quickly learned discretion, in venture capital, is the better part of valor. The responsibility I had to not only Venrock, but to society,
2.3.2025
Ethan Batraski
Why We Invested in Oumi: Open Source is How America Wins the AI Race
The next chapter in AI development won’t be written by a single company or country. It will be written by thousands of researchers, developers, and organizations working together on open platforms. This weekend, the world of AI just experienced a fork in history—part swift kick in the pants, part multi-year acceleration of AI research. In one weekend, history changed. We were steady as a freight train on a pre-DeepSeek timeline, dominated by a few companies with access to vast computational resources, ready to invest $500B in a historic (and somewhat comical)
1.29.2025
Ethan Batraski
Winners & Losers in the DeepSeek Era
In every breakthrough, when new facts emerge, there are winners and losers. In an era of DeepSeek, who wins and loses? DeekSeep r1 represents a significant leap in AI – bringing an order of magnitude improvement in cost efficiency and accessibility at frontier AI performance. It’s a fork in history in AI. But, it likely could only be built now, not a year or two ago, given its extensive reliance on prior investments and distillations from existing leading frontier models. Let’s remind ourselves what makes DeepSeek unique: DeepSeek r1 Overview: Cost
1.28.2025
News
NDIA
BUDGET MATTERS: Venture Capital Getting Bullish on Defense Tech
STAT News
Venture capitalist Bob Kocher on generative AI startups, Change Healthcare cyberattack
Business Insider
VCs are clamoring to back 'screaming hot' startups using AI for medical records
Business Insider
Healthcare startups are rushing to sell AI to hospital systems. But a new survey suggests many simply aren't ready for it.
KFF Health News
‘Behind the Times’: Washington Tries to Catch Up With AI’s Use in Health Care
Fortune
From unicorns to unicorpses: Why billion-dollar startups and even VC firms keep imploding
DevOps.com
2024 Infrastructure Tech Predictions
Fortune
Exclusive: Venrock ups its fund size for the first time in a decade, raising $650M for tenth fund
Fortune
AI will live up to the hype and more unicorns will lose their horns: 10 health care predictions for 2024 from top investors
InvestmentNews
Ex-Vanguard CEO Joins Venture Capital Firm to Guide Investments in Advisor Fintech