There's a reason @cognition keeps winning deals against companies 10x their size. @vvkgopalan sat down with @theodormarcu, @bryceehunt and @moritz_stephan (all former founders!) to discuss hiring philosophy, infinity stories, enterprise coding agents, and what it actually takes to compete. (00:00) Introduction (03:45) Cognition team & hiring philosophy (06:00) Infinity stories (13:15) Product surface area and future goals (17:20) Activation energy, experimentation, and customer-driven innovation (19:00) Adoption, operational changes, and ownership (22:05) Vibe coding hot takes (24:15) AI-first engineering organizations and managing AI agents (28:40) Future of software engineering roles and misconceptions about Devin (30:00) Model development, learnings, and Cognition's journey in vertical integration (38:10) What should you do as a new grad?

EPISODE 159: How AI Is About to Upend the $140B Customer Research Industry @JTLonsdale sits down with @AaronLCannon, founder & CEO of @OutsetAI Learn how AI can outperform humans in customer surveys, the new possibilities with real-time customer feedback, how Outset grew revenue 8X this past year, and more! (00:00) Episode intro (01:10) Aaron's entrepreneurial journey (06:00) How does AI-moderated research work? (09:25) Why people will talk to AI more than humans (13:40) How Outset landed Microsoft, Google & Uber (14:55) Are you replacing human jobs? (20:56) New possibilities for real-time product improvements (23:30) The pros and cons of synthetic research (28:00) Insane growth / how Outset 8X'd revenue (35:00) How AI is upending a $140B industry

Today, the FDA approved @OrcaBio's TREGZI cell therapy for adults with hematological malignancies (eg, cancer).  In Orca’s pivotal trial, TREGZI roughly doubled the rate of patients alive and free of serious chronic complications at one year.  Congratulations to the Orca team!

We’re already thinking about the next one. Stay tuned!

Find the artists/vendors on IG: studio.763, studio.trieu, 10thfloor.studio, nowplacesf, yumishowroom, pmaccay, djpatrick, tacossinceros, caffeine depot

Huge thanks to @denykhoung, @drcapsoul, LZ, Audrey, Hanna (ig @taiwanesenoodles), our local artists and makers, and @indent for helping bring it to life.

We wanted Pixel Eight Cafe to feel less like a networking event and more like an afternoon worth spending: a place to discover local SF artists, meet new people, and leave inspired.

Thank you to everyone who spent part of your busy Config week with us at Pixel Eight Cafe. It was great to see designers, artists, builders, and friends all in one place!

Had a very fun chat with the @TradedVC team Shared some current thoughts on building 8VC as a craft firm in an era of mega funds, stewardship over ownership, and why none of the bottlenecks left are technological traded.co/blog/how-8vc-s-ale…

EPISODE 158: Nima Ghamsari on the Power of AI Agents & Infinite Workforce @JTLonsdale sits down with @NGhamsari to cover some favorite stories from Palantir, why he's all-in on AI agents, @blendlabsinc's comeback story, and more. (00:00) Episode intro (01:45) Making millions playing poker to joining Palantir (06:00) Most important lessons from Palantir (07:30) Founding $BLND / understanding the mortgage industry (11:25) How to win over banks and risk-averse customers  (15:50) Blend's meteoric rise and fall  (19:00) Going all-in on AI agents / Blend's Act II  (22:55) efficient markets / is Blend undervalued today?  (26:50) Impact of AI on internal operations / increased productivity  (32:00) The future of SaaS  (36:20) The optimistic case for AI

Congratulations to the entire team at @DeepFission on today's IPO. We’re proud to have backed Liz, Rich, and friends since their seed, and to support them in bringing proven nuclear tech to new frontiers. 🇺🇸⚡️

Come check out what's going on during config on our muni-inspired microsite here: 8vc.com/pixeleight

We’re co-hosting two events for Config Week: ✦ Design × Research with @cognition — Tues 6/23, 6–9pm ✦ Pixel Eight Café with @indent — Thurs 6/25, 2–5pm Matcha, zines, local artists, vintage pop-ups, and a vinyl DJ for a mini creative market. More on our microsite below:

Working with close friends is one of the rare privileges this job gives you. Watching them go from idea to a real ~business~ is an even bigger one. Proud to call these guys friends. Excited for everyone to finally see what they've been building for the last two years.

Two US aviators went down near the Strait of Hormuz. DoW used an autonomous @Saronic Corsair to find and bring them home - the 1st drone rescue at sea in military history. This is why we build: to keep our troops safe. This was science fiction. American builders made it real 🇺🇸.

In the Summer of 2022 @MavrookasD asked @8vc's design team to mock up scenes of what it would look like to have an autonomous vessel rescue a warfighter in distress. Almost exactly 4 years later @Saronic is worth 9.25bn and is rescuing warfighters in distress. 🚀

Generalist CEO @peteflorence says robotics models are in a transition period similar to the step change between GPT-2 and GPT-3. They're "starting to cross over into levels of performance where these things are commercially viable for a number of different applications." "We think this is a crossover point where we have a general model starting to be able to hit levels of reliability, speed, and improvisational intelligence where we can start to get these things out there." "Very much like — you take a GPT-2-level model, you scale it to a GPT-3-level model, and certain types of commercial applications start to become viable."

AI is creating problems it still can’t solve. The same technology poised to automate millions of jobs still can’t reliably help people navigate SNAP — the food assistance program 40 million Americans depend on. We built the first benchmark to measure that. Partnering with Center for Civic Futures and @codeforamerica , we scored models on SNAP question scenarios which users would have to navigate, with expected response rubrics validated by policy experts to match practice considerations. The best model only scored 62%. Models handle federal questions like appeals and recertification reasonably well, but fall short on state-specific ones like replacing an EBT card. Benefits are administered by the states, meaning models are weakest where people need them most. The same technology poised to automate millions of jobs should at least help strengthen the social safety net for the people it could displace. As AI adoption proliferates into public services, governments need a reliable way to test these tools before deploying them.

In the 1980s, the US produced 80% of global enriched uranium. Today that number is zero -- and we rely on Russia instead! @ScottNolan & @GeneralMatter are solving this crisis; he’s jumpstarting America's nuclear renaissance, and makes us all more bullish on its scale & speed.

Robotics is going to get its Claude Code moment long before its ChatGPT moment. Everyone keeps waiting on the big general-purpose humanoid demo, the one that's supposed to make the whole thing click. But that's not how LLMs broke through. Coding got there first. It was narrow, hard, and mostly ignored. But it was the first place models got good enough to pay for, and that usage and data loop compounded into everything people point to now. Robotics has the same kind of wedge in front of it: dexterity. The precise manipulation that real work is made of, like plugging a cable into a socket, kitting, repackaging and assembly. It's the hardest unsolved problem in the field, and the first thing that actually turns into revenue. Whoever cracks that owns most of what comes after. Which is why we backed @GeneralistAI's $400M round. More here: 8vc.com/resources/announcing…

It takes a village, over half a billion in total funding, a lot of compute, and an incredible team to build general intelligence for the physical world. Join us: generalistai.com/careers