Valthos aces A.I. Bio

Top News

• Valthos stands athwart AI bio risks: A new startup emerging from stealth argues that “it's faster to weaponize biology than to advance new cures” thanks to AI, but fear not, they have a solution. Called Valthos, the company just announced a $30 million round from OpenAI, Lux, and Founders Fund to provide governments with the tools they need to fend of biological threats that may bubble up from cutting-edge AI technologies. Later, Valthos claims, it will work on “adaptive, precision therapeutics”. Once it sorts biodefense, of course.

• Crypto companies want to be your bank: As the company behind the popular USDT stablecoin anticipates profits of around $15 billion this year, the blending of the traditional and decentralized financial worlds continues apace. Crypto.com is pursuing a banking license, Bloomberg reports, following in the footsteps of Circle, BitGo, and even Ripple. Once all but entirely separate from old-school finance, crypto companies have gone public, built technologies to bridge the fiat and decentralized worlds, pursued SPACs, and now want to put on the mantle of banking itself. Given today’s regulatory climate, the crypto companies are probably going to get their bank charters.

• Oracle to raise $38B worth of debt: All that OpenAI infra that Oracle is partnered to produce won’t come cheap. It’s so expensive that the database and cloud giant plans to raise just over $23 billion for a Texas data center and just under $15 billion for another in Wisconsin. Vantage Data Centers is handling their development, OpenAI is the root customer, and a host of banks have been enlisted to sell the notes.

TWiST 500

We’re adding one second-to-last tranche of startups to the TWiST500’s first iteration today, which means the door is all but closed on new names — for now, we’ll start cycling companies on and off in short order. But one company that might yet make the cut is Tensormesh.

TechCrunch reports that the young startup recently raised $4.5 million from Laude Ventures to monetize the LMCache utility that one of its co-founders launched and maintains. LMCache is an open-source tool that lowers compute requirements for some AI inference-related tasks. That means more compute per GPU, which the entire AI industry — Nvidia aside — would love to see.

I love startups that are predicated on open-source technology that they built before and now want to offer in a managed-service context. But I also have spent time chatting with TWIST500 member company Decart, a startup that made its early money by helping AI companies squeeze more compute out of their GPUs.

Decart is doing lots more than that now — full interview here — but its early profit from helping improve AI compute efficiency stuck with me. So, when Tensormesh started working along similar lines, I took note.

Today, Tensormesh is a small company. It’s far easier to add the supergiant private-market companies to the TWiST500 as they are all but sure bets at this point. But Tensormesh could find itself with the same company cohort lining up to be its customers, if Decart’s early results prove to be repeatable history. And if that works out, the company could become a household name in tech before you can snap your fingers. — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2197: Legendary investor Elad Gil joins us for the full episode this week! Jason, Elad, and Alex dig through the news that Amazon (internally) plans to hire fewer humans and build more robots, and try to guess just how many people will lose their jobs to machines and what we’ll do about it (if anything). PLUS Anthropic’s Dario Amodei responded to JCal’s bestie David Sacks, AI wearable makers Sesame emerged from stealth, and much more.

E2196: We’ve got a special Tuesday ep this week, in which Alex sits down with Magic School founder (and former school principal!) Adeel Khan. Though much of the media focus has been on students using AI to cheat on their homework, Khan argues that AI tools can make teachers much more effective, while keeping students more engaged and even inspired. He walks us through the promise and challenges of designing a virtual assistant teacher. PLUS a fascinating Gamma pitch from On the Fly Energy and Eric Glyman from Ramp joins us for a round of Founder Q&A!

E2195: Is AI a bubble, or is the market just extremely frothy? Jason suggests implosion is not imminent, and we’re merely going from macchiato levels back down to a flat white. Hear his reasoning on a brand-new TWiST. PLUS… Alex and Lon join for a discussion of AI slop and why people are so bad at recognizing it, and a preview of Jeremy Strong’s already-iconic performance as Mark Zuckerberg in the hotly-awaited “Social Network” sequel.

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Founder U is Coming to the MENA Region!

Our 12-week pre-accelerator—designed to help early-stage founders build and grow—kicks off this fall in Saudi Arabia. The first cohort launches in Riyadh on November 3rd, followed by in-person and virtual sessions throughout the program. Founders in MENA: this is your chance to turn your idea into a business and get world-class insights on building a successful startup. Apply today: https://mena.founder.university/

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