@8vc
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8VC is a leading technology investment firm based in Austin, Texas.
Austin, Texas
Joined September 2010
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When we first backed @peteflorence and @GeneralistAI, our thesis was simple: robotics was ready to move beyond narrow, task-specific systems toward general-purpose intelligence.
Our deepest conviction was in Pete and the team: world-class researchers with a rare focus on what actually ships, sells and compounds. Pete is as much a builder as a researcher.
In early August, @JTLonsdale visited Generalist and got a sneak preview of GEN-1.5. The model was still in development, but the early progress reinforced our confidence in the team and trajectory. We decided to double down in a much more meaningful way and lead Generalist's latest round.
A few days later, we recorded this @AmOptimistShow conversation.
In the weeks that followed, GEN-1.5 showed just how quickly the frontier was advancing. The model can learn a new physical task in seconds from a single demonstration, without fine-tuning, alongside emergent capabilities in generalization, improvisation, novel tool use and ambidexterity.
What we've seen since has only strengthened our belief that Generalist can be one of the defining companies bringing general intelligence into the physical world.
EPISODE 161: The Robotics GPT-3 Moment
@JTLonsdale sits down with @peteflorence
Pete and @GeneralistAI are changing everything we know about robotics:
-- robots trained on new tasks in seconds (seconds!)
-- self-taught ambidexterity & other breakthroughs
-- 10X more science and how the world will change
(00:00) Episode intro
(01:30) Bay Area to MIT and DeepMind
(03:55) Pete's epiphany: robots sitting still
(08:30) Why intelligence, not hardware, is the next frontier
(13:20) The GPT-3 era of robotics
(14:55) Why leave DeepMind?
(16:50) How to train robot brains
(18:30) Emergent ambidexterity
(20:40) LLMs vs robot world models
(23:50) GEN-0, GEN-1 & scaling laws in robotics
(27:28) 10x more science per year
(32:50) Skilled trades, reindustrialization & future of robots
America is pouring trillions into the data centers and power infrastructure required to win the AI race. But the finance teams supporting this buildout are drowning in complex, manual work.
@kos_ai_inc is building the AI finance team for this new industrial era -- reconciling invoices, contracts and accounts, with a complete audit trail behind every decision. Billions of dollars of data center invoices already run through Kos.
If America is going to build at the pace this moment demands, the systems supporting that buildout need to scale with it.
Proud to back @tanujt and @kos_ai_inc 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
China is winning the AI race.
So we raised $12M from @8vc to build thousands of new AI data centers in America.
Here's what will make the AI bubble pop:
Data centers are needed for AI. Every invoice to build a data center is hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of pages long.
The finance teams that need to approve these invoices are drowning.
The entire AI race is being bottlenecked by human approval. AI should fix this.
That's why we’re launching Kos.
Kos is a team of AI agents that work the way humans work. Tag Kos in Microsoft teams, or get on a Zoom call.
It doesn't hallucinate, and it has verifiable proof for it's work.
Kos is purpose built AI for Datacenter, Energy, and Manufacturing Finance. Think Harvey but instead of for law, it's specialized for Finance.
Book a demo here: kos.ai/
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We’re backed by the founders and C-Suite of billion dollar companies:
Keith D. Taylor (former Equinix CFO), Dave Ferdman (CyrusOne Founder), Heather Paduck (STACK Infrastructure CFO), Matthew DeNezza (former Crusoe CFO), and @sk7037 (Stanford, OpenAI).
Our institutional investors are @8VC, led by @AlexKolicich, XYZ (@fubini), MVP (Alex Li)
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One more thing, I made a huge notion doc on everything I learned building my last company (SpotAI) to >$100M in sales and funding.
I give away my secret framework to find the right market, my exact interview process, and how to close enterprise deals.
If you want it, just let me know and I'll shoot it over :)
8VC retweeted
UK finance teams have waited long enough.
Ramp is now live in the UK.
Sorry we’re late.
ramp.com/uk
8VC retweeted
Joined @EdLudlow to talk about AI progress, independent evaluation, and why I’m optimistic.
Some quick takes:
- We’re better at building AI than understanding it. Attention towards testing/evaluation matters more than slowing down.
- Our RSI Index projects models could match human researchers on the tasks we test by August 2027. Embedded evaluators can produce more accurate estimates based on internal systems.
- Public conflict masks cooperation. The labs, policymakers, and enterprises we work with want better evidence. I’ve seen enough to believe coordination is possible.
- Independence comes at a cost. We’ve rejected contracts that would compromise ours. The same group doing the testing shouldn’t also sell the solution.
- Evaluation should scale through better technology. If it becomes a bureaucratic moat for incumbent labs, we’ve failed.
- Market-based evaluation has a role with or without regulation. Competition pushes us to build better technology and keep up with the frontier.
8VC retweeted
I'm hiring 3-4 FDEs to work with me @Cognition on AI-native companies in Silicon Valley and New York. A few things that could make for an attractive candidate:
1) You studied CS and were actually good. Yes, AI has permanently changed the shape of engineering skills, but the important thing here is that you committed a time of your life to studying something and took pride in being good at it.
2) Ideally you've started a company and made money before. The company could have failed or been unprofitable - which is OK. The main thing here is that you've experienced the process of transacting with a customer.
3) You probably want to start a company again in the future. You're taking a job for now and know that it's temporary. This is also OK.
4) You're a natural at working with technical people in the SF and NY AI ecosystems. Perhaps you were a Fellow or Scholar with one of our investors (cc: @BainCapVC @8vc @generalcatalyst @soma_capital @kleinerperkins @accel @a16z). @zfellows is also an awesome cohort.
5) You don't want to have a boss and treat 1:1s as a nice-to-have. Your default mode is to just figure things out on your own.
There's probably more but these are a good start. You don't need to have all of these things, but it should feel obvious whether you are this general shape of person or not. If we have a mutual friend or you have a contact at one of our investors, warm intros are great and will guarantee a convo. If you don't have that, just email me ([email protected]) and I'll take a look.
8VC retweeted
We started Sequence (@seqholdings) with a clear conviction: the holding company of the next century will be a technology company that owns and operates businesses. Today is an important step in that journey.
We’re thrilled to announce that Sequence, along with the Dell Family Office and the Baldwin family and management team, have agreed to take The Baldwin Group private. I’m excited to partner with Trevor Baldwin and the broader team as we help extend Baldwin’s lead as the insurance firm of the future.
Read more here: ir.baldwin.com/news-releases…
8VC retweeted
Introducing SWE-2, our closest model yet to the frontier.
On leading evals, it scores on par with recent frontier models – at up to 70% lower cost.
We scaled RL to multiple trillions of parameters, with a refined recipe that pushes the Pareto curve on both capabilities & cost.
8VC retweeted
The free world has seriously underinvested in the weapons required to deter serious adversaries.
Covenant is fixing that. I’m in Dallas, TX today to help open our new factory.
They are building the long-range missile arsenal of the United States: deep-strike weapons produced at scale in Texas. Better missiles at scale, for a fraction of the cost.
This is how America restores deterrence 🇺🇸.
Today, Covenant is emerging from stealth and introducing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike capability designed for mass production, with deliveries beginning in the thousands in 2027.
We’ve raised $250 million, flown Anthem in more than 200 tests, and secured approximately $150 million in orders, including contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and key international allies.
We’re building Anthem at our 105,000-square-foot production facility in Dallas, alongside factories in Germany and Israel.
Covenant is backed by @a16z, @foundersfund, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @8vc, @aleph, and @AltimeterCap.
Deep precision strike is the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West, and we spent the last two years building Anthem to fill it.
Now we deliver at scale.
8VC retweeted
Today, Covenant is emerging from stealth and introducing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike capability designed for mass production, with deliveries beginning in the thousands in 2027.
We’ve raised $250 million, flown Anthem in more than 200 tests, and secured approximately $150 million in orders, including contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and key international allies.
We’re building Anthem at our 105,000-square-foot production facility in Dallas, alongside factories in Germany and Israel.
Covenant is backed by @a16z, @foundersfund, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @8vc, @aleph, and @AltimeterCap.
Deep precision strike is the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West, and we spent the last two years building Anthem to fill it.
Now we deliver at scale.
8VC retweeted
For a few years now @sthupukari has been the person I call when I'm trying to crystallize for myself where the product capabilities of this wave are heading
Excited for him to show what he's been working on for the past year, which I consider to be on the very frontier of what a cloud / multiplayer agent experience for entire organizations can look like
Introducing @indent, one coworker for your whole company
Indent is a single agent that is built to work with every member of your team, simultaneously. Instead of every one setting up their own agents, use Indent to build one together.
Try it at indent.com
8VC retweeted
Introducing @indent, one coworker for your whole company
Indent is a single agent that is built to work with every member of your team, simultaneously. Instead of every one setting up their own agents, use Indent to build one together.
Try it at indent.com
8VC retweeted
Congrats, guys!
We led Cognition’s previous round from @8VC at 25B, three months ago. Of course, in AI world, that’s like over a year ago.
Just amazing progress. Scott and team are hiring the world’s top talent, and building a trillion $+ co that’s helping the world to build.
8VC retweeted
Extraordinarily well deserved continuation of a generational run
8VC retweeted
.@AlexFrommeyer just announced the launch of our latest @8vc build co Stack Health, which means I can finally share easily the funnest brand we've had the privilege to explore. Fro requested 'Liquid Death for Insurance', and I think we delivered :)
10k portfolio companies later, @jmelaskyriazi and @metrics_co are in many ways just getting started.
Proud to build alongside them since the very beginning.
Last week, we announced that Standard Metrics raised a $20M Series B led by 8VC. I first met the team at 8VC back in early 2020 when I was still an investor, and we had immediate vision alignment around how software would transform the private markets in the decade to come.
The team at 8VC had experienced similar challenges around portfolio management as I had at Spark, and they built their own internal system. That system ended up turning into a company called Quaestor, which we renamed to Standard Metrics in 2022.
We grew that idea into a real platform, closed our Series A, and kept building. Then two years ago, AI made a bet obvious to us that wasn't obvious to everyone: portfolio management needed an AI-native rebuild. So that's what we did.
Last week, that bet got a lot more fuel behind it. We've grown 20X since our Series A, and we now support over 10,000 portfolio companies and 150 firms managing more than $400B in AUM on our platform. I'm incredibly grateful to our amazing team that has worked hard through market booms and busts to take us to where we are today.
I'll share a link to our blog post in the comments. Please reach out if this resonates with you, or if you want to talk about how the private markets will continue to evolve with AI in the years to come.
@metrics_co @8vc @JTLonsdale
From inception, @OutsetAI has been dedicated to maximizing and multiplying the human element of research. Their latest launch, Digital Twins, is the boldest and most elegant expression of their mission to date.
2023: we invented the AI interviewer.
2026: we invented the AI user.
Digital Twins by @OutsetAI is live today.
Accurately simulating humans is now possible. But it has done by building one-to-one synthetic twins anchored on real humans, not just asking a foundation model to regurgitate population level responses.
That's why we did it.
We reinvented the way companies understand their customers a few years ago. We built the most rigorous and high scale mechanism to capture and process customer data. And since then, we've captured millions of deep, multimodal human responses around the world.
The future of insights will be a combination of understanding and simulating human experience. We're doing both.
Proud to lead @LazarusEnergy's $16M seed, and accelerate supercritical CO₂ turbines for super critical industries: data centers & nuclear SMR.
@AtomsNotBits breaks down how Lazarus is attacking the power supply constraints standing between the 🇺🇸 and AI dominance:
EXCLUSIVE: 8VC leads $16M Lazarus round to build modular supercritical CO₂ turbines for America’s data center buildout.
Today, @LazarusEnergy, the Hawthorne-based startup, has secured an oversubscribed $16M seed round led by @8vc, with additional investment from Marlinspike, DST Global, Neuron Power Ventures, and @relentless_inv, as well as follow-up investment from @fiftyyears and @sidedoor_vc. The company is betting that a new turbine architecture can help solve one of the biggest constraints on America’s data center buildout, power.
Supercritical carbon dioxide could decide America’s AI sovereignty. CO₂ crosses into the supercritical phase above 31.1°C and 73.8 bar, where liquid and gas collapse into a single fluid with liquid-like density and gas-like flow.
It plays a special role in closed-loop Brayton cycle turbines, which could become core to data center power generation. Turbines are becoming increasingly important for data centers as power demand exceeds grid capacity and operators look for reliable on-site power. The traditional turbine market is behind, with wait times exceeding 5 to 7 years and OEMs even turning down new orders because capacity is maxed out.
Lazarus is attempting to shift the supply curve. The LA startup was founded by George Kitromelides (CEO) and Luke Malcolm (CTO), both formerly on the propulsion team at Anduril, alongside team members from Siemens Energy, Williams International, and Ursa Major. The startup is developing turbines that enable a forward-deployable power plant fitting inside a shipping container. “Supercritical CO₂ lets you reduce the size of your components significantly,” according to George Kitromelides (CEO), thus enabling the distributed form factor.
Traditional turbines are optimized for specific heat sources. Lazarus designed its system to be heat-source agnostic, allowing it to convert heat from nearly any major energy source into electricity. Lazarus has created a natural edge. It can serve today’s data center market with proven inputs like natural gas while remaining positioned for future heat sources like small modular reactors.
Deployment is another edge. Traditional turbine players can require months or years of construction to set up on-site, while Lazarus’ platform is fully assembled at its facility and requires zero on-site construction. In areas like nuclear, this can be key. Luke Malcolm (CTO) states, “SMRs are supposed to be compact, modular, deployable power. And when you build your compact reactor and then spend a year building all your steam infrastructure on-site, that kind of defeats the whole purpose.”
Lazarus is focused on two end markets, data centers as the beachhead market and small modular nuclear reactors as the secondary market, both with unique business models.
In the data center market, “The OEMs are straight up rejecting new orders. They’re turning customers away because they just can’t keep up with demand,” according to George Kitromelides (CEO). Lazarus wants to provide power-as-a-service in the data center market, where it would own and operate the asset instead of the data center operator incurring CapEx. Additionally, the own-and-operate/PPA model allows Lazarus to generate significantly more long-term revenue than a one-time equipment sale. Under a power purchase agreement (PPA), customers pay for the electricity generated by the system over time rather than purchasing the power infrastructure upfront. Lastly, behind-the-meter power is surging as data centers seek dedicated, off-grid generation to avoid grid delays and secure reliable power. Lazarus enables that by delivering compact on-site power systems built for data center demand.
On the nuclear side, Lazarus would integrate with SMR companies to supply the power cycle, with nuclear heat going into the Lazarus cycle and electricity coming out. This model would focus on selling units to reactor companies, followed by multi-year maintenance contracts.
Lazarus is developing a true picks-and-shovels play for the AI power gold rush. But the broader opportunity extends well beyond data centers. As the forward-deployed stack expands across compute, manufacturing, medical units, and logistics, compact containerized power could become critical infrastructure for Department of War installations, remote mining operations, disaster response, and any site where reliable power needs to move closer to the edge.
The team of six full-time engineers is focused on firing a 1-megawatt sub-module of its system by late this year or early next year. The system will be powered by natural gas. Additionally, the startup has secured an MOU with a nuclear customer and has received strong interest from the data center market.
ALT Source: Lazarus
The era of sovereign AI has arrived for Latin America, with @Primero_ai leading the charge.
Co-founder @jose_murillo_d offers a powerful articulation of the moment, what it means, and how he and his team are meeting it.
1/ Today, @Primero_ai is announcing its public launch and a $12m seed, one of the largest seed rounds in LatAm.
Primero is the AI transformation company for Latin America's largest enterprises.
Latin America is a cornerstone of the global economy. Today, the region has a cornerstone AI platform of its own.
@Primero_ai is sovereign AI for LatAm’s critical enterprises, with a unified ontology, customer-controlled models and data, and FDEs delivering world-class, locally fluent transformation.
Primero has built an exceptional talent foundation, with a founding team honed in top technical cultures and numerous ICPC, IMO, and IOI alumni.
We’re proud to pledge our support as they announce their $12M seed round (below).
