Meanwhile heads of state:

I have to attend an event at a club, and the organizers have sent out multiple warnings about the dress code. It's clearly a constant problem holding back the sea.

Award for best blog title on "Fintech and AI" goes to... @mattcharris

"Don't let Dad let you go to bed late." — Jessica's instructions to 11 yo on going to London

So sad to hear of Cormac McCarthy's passing. Here are two of my favorite articles about him. Rolling Stone profiled his relationship with @sfiscience And here, where his non-fiction ghost writing skills are exposed #Oneofakind #RIP

Of the Fintech 50 from Forbes: - 22 in Bay Area - 11 in NYC - 1 in Miami

related: the must have amenity to lure workers back to office in 2023...

Over the past few decades, developers have built systems like this for code : code review, testing, monitoring, isolation.

If everyone in a company will have the power to orchestrate software through a natural language API, they will also require equivalent tooling for application development.

Potential errors could be grave (imagine updating all Hubspot CRM records’ owner to a current user). Monitoring, testing, & rollback/undo buttons will be critical.

As models & controls improve, SaaS orchestration through natural-language APIs will massively improve productivity.

How would security leads ensure the workflow is executed by an authorized person, on permitted data, using sanctioned models, & the process complies with international data regulations? Second, English APIs (aka LLMs) are probabilistic. They err, just like humans.

"Find my top 10 expansion leads this week from Hubspot, then collect their logos, & for each one create an image in Adobe Firefly that puts the company’s logo on a racecar alongside my company’s logo as an attachment to the email.

Examples like thees illustrate conceptually how AI could unlock 1000x the GDP growth of the PC. This vision glosses over many important considerations. First, data security & data loss prevention.

Then draft an email to each prospect using data from their customer support tickets & save them in my drafts folder." That’s a level of automation rarely seen within the enterprise without custom coding. That workflow alone - if it worked - might save a day’s work.

What do all of these launches & many other similar ones have in common?

Anyone can write English to enter some input (e.g., “What are my top leads for this week?”) & receive an answer. When every major SaaS application has an English-language API, users of all kinds will be able to ask & receive answers of their applications.

That is a meaningful innovation. English language APIs allow for another layer of abstraction. Imagine being able to write :

What if Every SaaS App Spoke English? In the last month, The largest SaaS companies in the world have released English-language APIs. Hubspot launched ChatSpot. Zendesk AI automates customer support. Salesforce launched AI Cloud. Adobe’s released Firefly.

Trulia ($3.5B outcome) went public having raised $33M total (Seed, A, B, C). Keep that in mind if you're raising a $7M+ Seed...

This is pretty unprecedented territory. Multiple hotels and now a mall, defaulting on payments and simply giving back buildings to the debt holders. Do banks own most of this paper? Which ones?

Looking forward to this :) Collision Conf later this month in Toronto!

Maybe what AI eliminates is not programming jobs but middle management jobs, because companies can be so much smaller that they don't need so many layers of management.

Maybe 10x isn't in fact the norm now. It sounded on the high side to me. But if it isn't, just wait a year.

If that kind of increase in productivity were the norm, it would make starting a startup qualitatively different, because you could do with 8 programmers what would have taken 80, and a company with 8 programmers is much easier to fund and run than one with 80.

Talked to a programmer today who said AI coding tools made him about 10x more productive. Though 10 seems like a round number, this was an attempt at a precise estimate.

Progress in mind-reading: "Using just data from the MRI, the ANN could produce a rough summary of a story that the test subject was listening to, a description of a film they were watching, or the gist of a sentence they were imagining."

11 yo tries to explain to me why it wouldn't be a problem if you went back in time. Basically there are infinite timelines, so if you go back in time and change something, you're not changing the one you're in.

Sometimes the real world looks more AI-generated than images generated by AI.

"How can something be both very silly and very evil at the same time? The answer is that what’s going on is very silly, but the silliness is distracting us from very important things."

Ted Kaczynski was a user of an early proto-Twitter.

Remember when it was racist even to suggest that Covid could have leaked from a lab? Whereas now that seems to be the consensus view.

There will definitely continue to be remote-first companies. There were before Covid. It works for some businesses. And there will be types of jobs, like customer service, that will commonly be done remotely. But remote-first won't be the default.

Why were all these smart people fooled? Partly I think because remote work does work initially, if you start with a system already healthy from in-person work. (It's like communism in that respect.) And partly because it seemed to solve recruiting, which is always a bottleneck.

Bedrock Energy Snares $12M Series A

Eleos Raises $60M Series C

Iceland’s DTE names new CEO as company eyes Series B funding and market growth

Lithuanian startup targets enterprise AI needs with new $8M-funded orchestration platform

Clay, A Secret Weapon For Anthropic And OpenAI, Boosts Valuation To $1.3 Billion

Icelandic biotech company raises €26.5M in oversubscribed Series A to advance dementia and skin disease treatments

Finnish MailMoo closes pre-seed funding to drive growth and innovation in B2B video engagement

Lithuanian fintech ArcaPay’s growth surge leads to acquisition by Ebury, enhancing regional fintech landscape

Evenplay Secures New Financing

Addis Energy Inks $8.75M

Gravity Raises $13M Series A Round

Oshi Health Adds to Recent $60M Series C

FileCloud Nabs Strategic Growth Funding

INKA Entworks Scores $8.2M

Swedish startup joins forces with Sigma Technology for a greener education future

Highnote Receives $90M Series B Funding

Mitiga Lands $30M Series B Round

Precog Secures New Financing Round

Render Scoops Up $80M Series C Financing

LeapXpert Announces $20M Series B Round

Estonian Modash takes over Promoty to enhance influencer CRM tools for brands

Estonian startup secures €2.6 million to boost virtual power plant expansion

Latvian startup accelerates green energy production with new €2.5M investment

Siena’s €50M Fund II kicks off with Katana investment, strengthening CEE focus

Peregrine Health Raises $5M

r4 exits Stealth with $1M Seed Funding

MoxiWorks Secures Additional Capital

Instabase Announces $100M Series D

1Money Emerges With $20M+ Seed Round

Coram AI Lands $13.8M Series A Financing

Prophecy Announces $47M Series B Extension

Eve Receives $47M Series A Round

Netradyne Grabs $90M Series D Round

Teal Health Completes $10M Seed Round

Nilus Scoops Up $10M

Guidesly Raises $9.5M Series A Round

Swedish startup partners with Zara to expand livestream shopping in China

Hinge Bio Scores $30 Million Series A

Alium Launches With $7M Seed Funding

Colossal Secures $200M in Series C Funding

Thoras.ai Inks $5M Seed Financing Round

Rainbow Announces $8 Million Series A

Granata Bio Lands $15M Series A+

Reeco Raises $15M Series A Round

Swedish AI startup lands $15M in funding to accelerate DeepSea network development

Danish startup Morningscore secures funding to elevate AI SEO and broaden reach

The Snow League Pulls In $15M

SEEQC Scores Strategic Funding Round

Sydecar Receives $11M Series A Financing

Daash Intelligence Nabs $5.5M