Excited to announce our discussion group leaders for Breaking the Bank @annielamont (@oakhcft) @phazlehurst (@synctera) @_PegahEbrahimi (@FPVventures) @VCRebecca (@CanvasVC) @latifperacha (@M13Company) @secondrob (@vinylequity) @sidfix (@finsterai) + Chris Dean (Treasury Prime) & Saisi Peter (Casap)

Alphabet was too fat and happy to lead the generative AI revolution, or so said the conventional tech wisdom a year ago. The company looked like it had been caught off-guard by ChatGPT, and didn’t have the competitive culture and mindset needed to win in the “age of efficiency.” Google researchers might have come up with the “transformers” architecture that paved the way for the current AI mania, but most left the company years ago. Its early AI deployments drew mockery for overly woke and inaccurate results. Its search monopoly suddenly looked vulnerable. A government antitrust suit threatened its advertising money-machine. Microsoft, meanwhile, had built a tight partnership with the new tech darling, OpenAI. A revived Meta was drawing plaudits for its operational rigor. Nvidia, not long ago a middle-tier chip-maker, was now touted as the standard-bearer for the new AI era, with a market cap to match. But Alphabet this week showed emphatically that it is ceding technology leadership to no one, and indeed is poised to reap some substantial rewards for its steady commitment to costly basic research. The first announcement came Monday, when Google detailed a breakthrough in quantum computing: its new Willow chip overcomes a long-standing problem with error rates, bringing a technology that promises exponential increases in computing power much closer to reality. On Tuesday, Alphabet’s Waymo unit saw longtime rival Cruise fold its tent, underscoring its wide lead in autonomous vehicles. Waymo continues to expand its real-live robotaxi service to new cities while GM’s Cruise backpedals and Tesla’s much-hyped effort remains on the drawing board. On Wednesday came a major update of Google’s flagship Gemini AI model — twice as fast as the previous one—alongside a host of initiatives around agents and related AI services. The new offerings will boost the “AI Overviews” that Google now delivers alongside many search results, a feature that looked at first like a scraped-together catch-up play but has proven quite successful. Alphabet now looks remarkably well-positioned for what promises to be a pivotal 2025. The stock is up more than 11% since Monday and nearly 45% for the year — a cool $600 billion increase in market cap.