At Fully Connected, I talked with @LavanyaShu97869 about building AI startups: how to recruit top talent when Big Tech is offering massive packages, why mission still wins, and what founders should focus on right now. Thanks for having me.

RT @tbpn: We asked @DavidCahn6 (Partner at Sequoia) about $100M+ salaries for AI researchers. “The question is: what is the marginal benef….

Joining @tbpn today to talk about the AI talent race. Since our blog dropped Tuesday, news broke on Meta's $100M+ signing bonuses and there are fresh rumors of an NFDG acquisition. The pace has gone from fast to breakneck.

AI labs are starting to look like pro sports teams. Backed by deep-pocketed owners. Star players making 8-figure packages. Fierce, fluid battles for top talent.New “draft class" each year. Why talent — not compute — is now the AI bottleneck:.

Great to interview @chaselochmiller on Friday at #AIAscent about the AI industrial revolution. I've been following the "Steel, Servers, and Power" world closely, and Chase is at the absolute center. I learn something new every time we speak.

@amasad @Replit @sonyatweetybird Listen here: . YouTube: Apple: Spotify:

For more than a decade, @amasad has been working to unleash the next 1B software creators. With the rise of “vibe coding” and the growth of @Replit's user base to tens of millions of users, this vision is materializing. Thanks to @sonyatweetybird for having us on Training Data.

Sequoia Blog:

WSJ Story:

It’s been an absolute pleasure to partner with @AlonDror1 and @hamutalm. Alon is an elite Talpiot graduate, one of the top units in Israel. Hamutal previously ran Palantir’s Israel business. The Kela team that we’ve recruited over the last year is world class and growing.

Kela is building a modern defense prime based in Israel, with a vision of defending not just Israel, but the entire Western Alliance. Kela’s software platform and operational agility will enable Israel and its allies to better adapt in today’s fast-evolving defense landscape.

The thesis is simple: Israel is one of the only Western countries with a draft. Its cadre of “technowarriors” have built some of the most elite startups in the world. As conflict becomes ever-more tech native, could we redeploy these technowarriors back into the defense sector?.

Excited to share our launch of Kela Defense from stealth today, including a great profile in the @WSJ. As my first Sequoia investment, this company has been a huge focus for me over the last year. We’re excited to finally share what we’ve been working on.

Congrats to the W&B team @l2k @shawnup @vanpelt @lavanyaai!. Amazing to see the journey from <$1m ARR six years ago to more than 1M users and a pivotal place in the AI ecosystem in 2025.

Thanks to @l2k for hosting me on the Gradient Dissent podcast. We start on the recent Stargate and DeepSeek news, revisit the $600B question, and go deep on topics like how religion and AI intersect.

4/ I’ve been thinking and reading about these ideas for a while. With the DeepSeek correction yesterday, now feels like a good time to share: .

3/ The deeper problem: Our economic growth has been fueled by cheap money and economic gains from globalization (see Edward Chancellor, Peter Thiel, Ray Dalio). If AI doesn’t deliver on its trillion-dollar promise, will another bubble emerge—or will this be the reckoning?.

2/ The theory: Each bubble has "bailed out" the economy from the last. When one asset crashes, another rises to keep the economy afloat. But with AI under scrutiny post-DeepSeek, the cracks are showing.

New blog post:. 1/ America is in the "Age of Bubbles." From Dot-com to 2008 to today, we’ve been riding a wave of speculative booms. AI is the latest. But what happens when the bubble economy finally pops?.

I’m not convinced by the game theory of Stargate:. - OpenAI wants maximum CapEx.- Microsoft wants optimal CapEx (ROI matters for them). This will always be a natural tension. Outsourcing CapEx to Stargate doesn’t resolve this. It only moves the financial burden. Good chess.