People in AI

Tomasz Tunguz

Investor

General Partner at Theory Ventures

Author of 'What Does Pacing Mean?' essay examining five different interpretations of AI pacing proposals by industry and government actors.

Discussed AI as an '80-year overnight success' and argued this cycle is different from previous AI hype cycles due to reasoning, coding, agents, and self-improvement breakthroughs.

Eric Schmidt

Investor

Executive Chairman and CEO at Relativity Space

Former Google CEO delivered commencement address at University of Arizona emphasizing AI's transformative role, but was met with significant booing from the audience.

Gavin Baker

Investor

Investor at Atreides Management, LP

Quotes Larry Page as saying internally at Google he is willing to go bankrupt rather than lose the AI race.

Nat Friedman

Investor

Former CEO at GitHub

Former Github CEO hired by Meta to co-lead Meta Superintelligence Labs with Wang after Zuckerberg acquired his venture capital firm NFDG.

Wrote 'Situational Awareness' essay predicting economic growth rates of 30% per year and beyond in the decade ahead

Co-founder of Hugging Face, founded in 2016 with focus on open models hub.

Ben Horowitz

Investor

Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Co-founder of a16z who authored the announcement of the $1.1 billion Machine Age Fund for hardware and infrastructure.

Olivia Moore

Investor

Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Released the sixth edition of a16z's consumer AI Top 100 list tracking AI product adoption and usage trends.

Paul Graham

Investor

Founder at Y Combinator

Y Combinator founder and Altman's mentor who recruited him as president and later privately indicated Altman had been lying during his time there.

Martin Casado

Investor

Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

a16z general partner leading the infrastructure practice, co-author of the Machine Age Fund announcement.

Daniel Gross

Investor

AI Investor and Entrepreneur at Safe Superintelligence Inc

Former Safe Superintelligence CEO hired by Meta to lead its AI products division after Zuckerberg acquired his venture capital firm NFDG.

Co-founder and CEO of Figma announcing new AI-powered updates and agent workflows for design and code.

Billionaire founder of Palantir, which operates Maven Smart System integrating Anthropic's Claude.

Brad Gerstner

Investor

Founder and CEO at Altimeter Capital

Led Anthropic's $65 billion funding round, stating Claude's advancements have driven large-scale adoption among demanding organizations.

David George

Investor

General Partner, Head of Growth Fund at a16z

General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz who co-led Armadin's Series B funding, noting that AI is the biggest platform shift and Kevin Mandia has built an elite team.

Igor Babuschkin

Investor

Co-Founder & CEO at River AI

Co-founder of xAI and now CEO of River AI, raised $1.1 billion to build personally owned AI models.

Akshay Kothari

Investor

COO at Notion

Investor in The Browser Company through multiple funding rounds.

Made largest financial gift in education history to Carnegie Mellon to build tech-focused campus in Miami, signaling confidence in higher education despite AI disruption.

Sarah Guo

Investor

investor at Conviction Partners

Published essay on Substack discussing the distinction between legible and illegible work in AI, arguing that untrainable private-data work represents the defensible competitive position.

Committed $10 billion investment in Alphabet's equity offering, signaling confidence in AI infrastructure spending.

Chairman and CEO statement on Groq raising $650M for AI inference cloud expansion.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Investor

Venture Capitalist

AI coding startup founder and investor who critiqued Anthropic's wet lab plans via social media post.

Primary donor of Effective Altruist and AI Safety causes after Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest; first investor in Irregular and funds related EA organizations.

Erik Torenberg

Investor

General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Podcast participant discussing independence and specialization in AI development.

Michael Burry

Investor

Investor at Independent Fund Manager

Michael Burry, the investor known for calling the 2008 housing crash, called Etched 'serious competition' for NVIDIA based on its advanced inference chip and Nvidia talent recruitment.

Sequoia partner leading Etched Series C investment and highlighting the company's technical achievements.

Vinod Khosla

Investor

Founder at Khosla Ventures

Led General Intuition's $320M funding round, viewing emergence of intuition in AI world models as quantum leap comparable to reasoning in LLMs.

Sequoia partner Andrew Reed hosted Mati Staniszewski at AI Ascent 2026 to discuss ElevenLabs' audio AI business and voice as the future interface.

Anjney Midha

Investor

CEO and Founder at AMP

Founder and CEO of AMP (infrastructure company), former Discord developer platform lead, investor in Anthropic and Mistral, discusses compute optimization and frontier AI systems.

His fund is a major backer of FieldAI's $405M funding round at $2B valuation.

Elad Gil

Investor

Investor and Entrepreneur at No Priors

Backed Periodic Labs with investment in their $300M seed round.

Investor in The Browser Company through multiple funding rounds.

Investor in The Browser Company through multiple funding rounds.

Investor in The Browser Company through multiple funding rounds.

Founded Thrive Capital VC firm and spinout Thrive Holdings, which acquires companies to revitalize them with AI; partnered with OpenAI.

Built a full Monopoly recreation with Fable 5 where every property is an AI lab or startup, including complete rules and multiplayer support.

Pat Grady

Investor

Partner at Sequoia Capital

Sequoia partner who co-led Harvey's $200 million funding round and stated Harvey has become the platform on which legal work runs.

Sarah Wang

Investor

Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Co-leading $500M Series A investment in Mind Robotics, praising RJ Scaringe's end-to-end systems leadership and backing the team to build a generational robotics company.

Tanay Jaipuria

Investor

Partner at Wing

Wrote about the pattern of AI application companies becoming full-stack by vertically integrating either into the model layer or the human service layer.

Co-led Anthropic funding round, noting Claude is handling complex workflows for enterprises and learning how businesses operate.

Index Ventures investor leading Inherent's $50M seed round; articulated thesis on AI-native science paradigm.

David Cahn

Investor

Partner at Sequoia Capital

Sequoia investor who calculated that AI industry needs $3 trillion in revenue to justify $1.5 trillion in 2026 infrastructure spending.

Shark Tank investor and lead backer of Utah's 40,000-acre Stratos Project hyperscale AI data center.

Kimberly Tan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, led Dream's funding round and praised the company's world model approach to building design.

Nikunj Kothari

Investor

Investor

Investor quoted as saying AI has made uninvestable industries investable

Early investor who facilitated Altman's reinstatement and later lobbied against California AI safety legislation on OpenAI's behalf.

Sarah Tavel

Investor

Venture Partner at Benchmark

Explains why the future of consumer AI belongs to product thinkers who can create social experiences

Partner at Index Ventures who led Enigma's $71M seed round and commented on Jacobi and Niv being outsiders bringing originality to robotics.

Willem Van Lancker

Investor

Investor and Designer at Terrain

Says taste is a product of friction, earned through making and repeated discernment.

Adi Ganesh

Investor

Insight Partners

Invested in Promptfoo before its acquisition by OpenAI.

Former Johnson & Johnson CEO and ICONIQ partner investing in Enveda, viewing evolution-based drug discovery as having platform potential.

Alexis Ohanian

Investor

Co-founder at 776

Reddit co-founder associated with the 'dead internet theory' regarding bots and AI-generated content constituting majority of online activity.

Ali Partovi

Investor

Founder and CEO at Neo

Early investor in Cursor who ran a program to find the world's best coders; wrote one of Cursor's first checks.

Andrew Chen

Investor

Investor at a16z

Co-founder of Mind Lab who co-authored FireAct paper; joined from xAI.

Co-leading Crusoe's Series F funding round and commenting on the company's execution and frontier technology.

Dropbox co-founder who participated in Vercept's angel funding round.

Sequoia Capital partner who led Cymphony's Series A funding and commented on AI agents as the next major enterprise software shift.

Clifford Sosin

Investor

Investor at CAS Investment Partners

Sosin wrote about the limitations of intelligence and how machines fill gaps between facts in structured domains like coding but face limits with complex real-world phenomena.

Daisy Zhao

Investor

Andreessen Horowitz

Co-author of the article analyzing the top 100 Gen AI consumer apps

Dan Williams from Delta-v Capital led HiddenLayer's $100 million Series B funding round and commented on the company's platform.

Emily Zheng

Investor

Senior Analyst at Pitchbook

Senior analyst analyzing the acquisition as a precursor to SpaceX's anticipated IPO and consolidation strategy

Co-led Positron AI's Series C funding round and joined the company's board of directors.

George Petrocheilos

Investor

Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Catalio Capital Management

Lead investor in Enveda's $311M Series E round who joined Enveda's Board, investing at intersection of biotech and AI.

Georges Harik

Investor

Co-founder at SV Angel

Google's seventh employee and co-founder of Humans& who helped build Google's first advertising systems.

CEO of General Catalyst leading River AI's $1.1 billion funding round.

Stated that all the big AI labs are building RL environments in-house and are also looking at third-party vendors for high-quality environments.

Silicon Graphics and Netscape co-founder investing in and joining Positron AI's board as part of Series C-1 funding.

Described Eclipse's investment strategy focused on physical AI and the convergence of intelligence with the physical world.

CEO and founder of Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, partnering with OpenAI to embed frontier AI models into acquired companies.

Karim Atiyeh

Investor

Co-CEO at Ramp

Angel investor and customer of Prime Intellect; led effort to train Fast Ask subagent beating Opus on spreadsheet search.

Kelly Kovacs

Investor

GP at Zero Shot Fund at Zero Shot Fund

Previously founding partner at 01A growth-stage venture firm, now co-founder of Zero Shot venture fund.

Co-authored analysis of how distillation advantages Chinese open-model developers over American counterparts.

Interviewer at Emerson Collective's 2025 Demo Day who conducted the interview with Altman and Ive.

Investor at Kleiner Perkins participating in Granola's $125M Series C.

Marc Bhargava

Investor

Managing Director at General Catalyst

Managing Director at General Catalyst backing River AI's funding round.

Co-led Anthropic funding round, highlighting technological progress and commercial momentum in AI development.

Mark Cuban

Investor

Investor

Judging an AI startup competition during NFL Draft week with a $1.275M prize.

Mark Hatfield from Ten Eleven Ventures invested in HiddenLayer's Series B and commented on enterprise AI security adoption.

Actor advocating for likeness protection and trademark ownership in AI era; investor in Eleven Labs

Led Goldman Sachs' oversubscribed Series D funding round for Spectro Cloud's AI infrastructure platform.

Founded Air Street Capital in 2019 and leads the firm as solo GP, raising $232M for Fund III focused on AI-first companies.

Co-led Anthropic's Series H funding, praising the company's culture, mission alignment, and commercial momentum in AI.

Co-founder and investor in Vercept who is not joining Anthropic; expressed disappointment about the acquisition shutdown on LinkedIn.

Rundell discussed AMD's strategic investment in Spectro Cloud as inference workloads scale and AI infrastructure becomes critical.

Discussed Otter.ai's funding and called voice a biggest untapped opportunity in enterprise AI.

a16z investor co-leading Eka Robotics Series A and predicting superhuman performance in dexterous manipulation tasks.

Attributed the US-China AI gap narrowing to Chinese labs improving technical capabilities and optimizing for domestic hardware; questioned effectiveness of US chip export controls.

Former Meta COO who joined Nscale's Board of Directors bringing experience in scaling technology companies.

Serves on the advisory board of RAISE US nonprofit addressing AI job displacement.

Sumeet Singh

Investor

Founder and Managing Partner at Worldbuild

Predicted the future of AI and invested in companies like Sardine based on insights from deep research into AI trends.

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap on AI infrastructure trends.

Joined Positron AI's board of directors as part of Series C financing.

Tina He

Investor

Investor at Pace Capital

Wrote about businesses that will dominate when AI agents become primary users and what infrastructure AI cannot replace.

Leading Cognichip's $60 million funding round and joining the company's board.

Zheng Wang from Morgan Stanley invested in HiddenLayer's Series B and highlighted the importance of enterprise AI security.

Principal at Peak XV Partners, investor in Primer's $100 million Series C funding round.

Led additional investment in Tomorrow.io as part of Series F financing round.

Managing Director of Prosperity7 Ventures US; deepened investment in Upscale AI's Series A-1 round.

Financial analyst commenting on OpenAI's need for strong revenue growth and willingness to cut underperforming initiatives for IPO success.

Adrian Fenty

Investor

Leading Investor at MaC Venture Capital

Led the $2M seed funding round for Cypher AI and expressed excitement about the company rethinking the operating system for life science R&D.

Led the Series F funding round for Coralogix and commented on the company's positioning for the agentic era.

Panelist from Inspiren discussing vertical AI in senior care at SaaStr AI 2026.

Alex Lim, a partner at IVP, led Wabi's funding round and praised Eugenia Kuyda's vision for AI-human interaction.

Investor at Mila Ventures who led investment in Jetty and commented on the company's solution for enterprise AI deployment audit trails.

Managing Director at Schooner Capital leading investment round in Kewazo, a robotics and AI company for heavy industry.

Predicted the end of Google's search monopoly as AI-native search engines gain traction

Ali Afridi

Investor

Investor at Equal Ventures

Equal Ventures investor quoted on Chord enabling merchants to centralize systems and scale efficiently with AI.

OpenAI's former sales leader joins Acrew Capital as general partner and shares insights on AI startup moats and enterprise adoption.

Early-stage consumer fund investor discussing premium valuations for proven AI talent and second-time founders.

Amy Tam

Investor

Investor at Bloomberg Beta

Co-author of piece on research taste and its portability across domains as code implementation costs collapse.

Venture capitalist leading APAC fund focused on Indian Deep Tech startups in AI and semiconductors.

Credit rating agency official saying rising rates may not significantly impact borrower demand for AI infrastructure.

S32 CEO and General Partner co-leading Snorkel AI's Series E, backing frontier AI data infrastructure.

Analyst expressing strong appetite for Anthropic IPO despite market conditions.

Individual investor in humans& seed round

Partner at Black Operator Ventures mentioned as part of investor survey on AI labor impact.

Accel partner who led Legora's Series D funding round and discussed the shift to end-to-end AI agent workflows.

Led the $8.3M seed funding round for Graphon AI, which is building a pre-model intelligence layer for AI systems.

Managing partner at Greylock arguing the next trillion-dollar companies are still ahead in AI wave.

Early-stage VC investor discussing high valuations at Y Combinator Demo Day and seed funding trends for AI companies.

Author of "Where AI is Headed in 2026" in Foundation Capital

Co-author of article on enterprise leadership measuring AI results instead of benchmarks; brings experience building and deploying agentic AI at scale.

Bar Weiner

Investor

Co-author at Bessemer Venture Partners

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap.

Ben Mahdavi

Investor

Founder, Managing Partner at Trace Capital

Quiet Capital co-founder who launched Trace Capital, which led Tenstorrent's $1.5B funding round.

Former UK Defence Secretary joined as portfolio manager before Tekever Series D closed.

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap.

Recently argued about ChatGPT's impact on business models

Bill Trenchard

Investor

Partner at First Round Capital

Led the $11M seed investment in Proception, praising dexterous manipulation as a critical part of the humanoid robotics story.

Chairman of the Board at Fenris Creations, overseeing the company's transition to independence and partnership with Google DeepMind for AI research.

Bradley Horowitz

Investor

General Partner at Wisdom Ventures

Early investor in Anthropic; noted receiving daily share offers and investor enthusiasm for Anthropic as generational opportunity.

Brandon Nydick

Investor

Principal at Khosla Ventures

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap.

Venture investor who led Billables AI Series A funding and praised the team's vision for operational intelligence.

Cathie Wood

Investor

Chief Investment Officer and Founder at ARK Invest

CEO flagged near-term possibility of 'reality check' on AI valuations but pushed back on AI bubble fears

Managing partner of RPT Partners investor firm, announced to work with Cognition following Degnan's transition.

Angel investor in Monogram's $40M seed round.

Charly Mwangi

Investor

Partner at Eclipse

Former Tesla and Rivian executive now VC partner who traveled to China and observed China's manufacturing advantages but less impressive robot cognitive abilities.

Discussed the commoditization of AI infrastructure, predicting that foundation model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic will face margin erosion as bundling companies gain advantage.

Managing Director at Summit Partners who led Quantifind's $200M investment round and joined its board.

Said the next big thing will start out looking like a toy.

Chris Olsen commented on Vast Data as an emerging leader in AI infrastructure.

Led Accel's seed investment in Ciridae and commented on how the company combines AI talent with operational implementation to deliver production systems quickly.

Clark Tang

Investor

Partner at Altimeter Capital

Co-authored analysis on Nvidia building synthetic hyperscaler infrastructure for AI workloads with financing innovations.

Discussed QuantHealth's role in defining emerging category at intersection of AI and clinical development.

Dai Sakata is a Managing Director at SoftBank Group and emphasized the company's vision for physical AI by backing Gravis Robotics with a $200 million investment.

Participated in RevEng.AI Series A funding and commented on the strategic imperative of verifying compiled binaries as AI accelerates code generation.

Co-announced Andromeda, a $100m 10 exaflop GPU cluster exclusively for startups.

Dave Yuan

Investor

Founding Partner at Tidemark Capital

Growth equity investor backing legal tech companies, commenting that knowledge work is well-suited for generative AI.

Stated that today's tech giants stand on solid financial ground with fundamentals-driven valuations.

Advisory group VP noting IT budget concerns about uncontrolled Copilot Cowork spending and benefit uncertainty.

David Clark

Investor

Participant at VenCap International plc

VenCap participant in conversation exploring value capture and future of venture capital in AI.

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap on next-wave AI infrastructure.

VC investor at a16z who led Stilta's $10.5M funding round for its agentic AI patent litigation platform.

Led the $15M Series A funding round for RevEng.AI and discussed the strategic importance of software supply chain security.

a16z general partner leading the American Dynamism practice and hardware investments, co-author of Machine Age Fund announcement.

Investor participating in Telepatia's Series A round.

CapitalG investor backing Supabase's $150M funding round focused on AI infrastructure

Analyst noting usage-based billing could significantly increase token bills similar to Claude Code pricing shift.

Angel investor in Prime Intellect's $130M Series A funding round.

Dharmesh Thakker

Investor

General Partner at Battery Ventures

Battery Ventures partner joining Freehand's board, highlighting company's applied AI and customer ROI focus.

Co-founder and investor who co-led Capsa AI Series A, discussing purpose-built vertical AI for private capital.

Partner at investment firm that participated in Cerebras' $1.1 billion funding round

Duncan Davidson

Investor

Partner at Bullpen Capital

Venture capital investor asserting SpaceX data centers in space are the long-term play and that economic case is becoming viable.

Principal EA philanthropist behind Coefficient Giving and AI safety funding; significant investor in Anthropic.

Co-judge for the Forge AI Prize competition in Pittsburgh

Eileen Burbidge

Investor

Founding Partner at NFG Ventures

Quoted expressing optimism about AI despite market volatility and saying AI bubble is letting out air.

Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures; investor in Upscale AI's Series A-1 round.

Eric Bahn

Investor

Co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund

Predicted AI will have a big impact on enterprise workforce in 2026, expecting automation of both repetitive and logic-based roles.

Commented on software companies partnering with Anthropic as a positive development following the software sector selloff.

Investor and chief strategy adviser to Foundation Future Industries, promoting the company's military robotics vision.

Erin Price-Wright

Investor

General Partner in American Dynamism at Andreessen Horowitz

a16z partner leading hardware and U.S. manufacturing investments through American Dynamism practice.

Founder of venture capital firm commenting on renewed investor interest in Chinese AI companies following DeepSeek's rise.

First Private Equity speaker at AIE Security track.

Vice Chairman and CEO of Mirae Asset Venture Investment leading funding round for Rebellions.

Benchmark partner who led Gumloop's $50 million Series B round and demonstrated deep understanding of customer needs.

Head of investments at Prosus Group, which led Alan's €480M funding round for AI-driven prevention insurance.

Principal at Serena VC firm that led Koyeb's seed round, quoted on sovereign AI infrastructure in Europe.

Legendary venture capitalist who started blogging in 2003 and credits his writing with helping him win deals and hone investment judgment.

Investor noting Tenstorrent's unique advantage of designing both chip and software with video generation results beating benchmarks.

Investment Associate at Benson Capital backing Kewazo's industrial robotics expansion in Gulf Coast region.

Gili Raanan

Investor

Founder and General Partner at Cyberstarts

Backed Island from the beginning and commented on the team's execution in building a control plane for AI agents.

Received offer to buy Anthropic shares at $960 billion valuation; commented on Anthropic being in pole position for AI opportunity.

Co-authored AI Infrastructure Roadmap on AI infrastructure frontiers.

Led TENEX Series B funding round, praising the company's AI-native platform approach to managed security services.

NewRoad partner co-leading Freehand's $75M funding round, emphasizing measurable business outcomes and enterprise ROI.

Founder and CEO of BlueFive Capital; co-lead investor in CNTXT AI's Series A round.

Heath Ahrens

Investor

Technology Investor at Independent Investor

Technology investor who characterized the bid as a stunt far below Chrome's true value.

Analyst discussing market uncertainty affecting IPO sentiment and AI investment landscape.

Led $9 million seed round investment in Discovered Materials for AI-driven semiconductor materials discovery.

Investor at Hoxton Ventures discussing King's Cross's transformation from a crime-ridden area in the 1980s to the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom.

Ian Fogg

Investor

Research Director at CCS Insight

Explained Nvidia's acquisition as extension of strategy to support diverse AI models including open-weight options.

Ibrahim Ajami

Investor

Senior Partner, Head of Ventures at Mubadala Capital

Co-leading Crusoe's Series F funding round and highlighting the importance of AI compute infrastructure.

Jaan Tallin, founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, was among effective altruism community members who invested in Anthropic.

Backed Maven Robotics for its focus on industrial systems and real-world operational realities rather than pure research.

Jacob Effron

Investor

Host, Investor at Unsupervised Learning, RedPoint Ventures

Co-hosted the podcast episode discussing AI coding wars, startup dynamics, and market structure trends.

Commented on Anthropic's IPO prospects, warning that underperformance could create a cascading effect across the tech sector's AI investment landscape.

Jake Storm

Investor

General Partner at Felicis

Led Felicis's Series A investment in Runlayer, preempting the round.

James Cham

Investor

Venture Capitalist

Compared managing AI agents to managing RTS game like StarCraft versus managing first-person shooter gameplay.

Investment manager quoted in article discussing concerns about returns on proliferating AI infrastructure projects.

Jared Friedman

Investor

Partner at Y Combinator

Noted that most developer tools still don't support account signup via API, critical for Claude Code era.