Benchmark hires Jack Altman, the founder of Alt Capital and Lattice, as its fifth general partner; three Alt Capital team members will join him at Benchmark
Benchmark on Tuesday said it had hired Jack Altman, the founder of early-stage firm Alt Capital and HR software company Lattice, as its fifth general partner.
Source: Benchmark's 2020 fund is now worth 10x+ and 2024 fund is 3x what investors put in, based on cash distributions and the paper value of its investments
Natasha Mascarenhas /Bloomberg:
Benchmark hires Jack Altman, the founder of Alt Capital and Lattice, as its fifth general partner; three Alt Capital team members will join him at Benchmark
Benchmark on Tuesday said it had hired Jack Altman, the founder of early-stage firm Alt Capital and HR software company Lattice, as its fifth general partner.
The US DOJ releasing emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kicks off a renewed flurry of acrimonious social posts and lurid news coverage
The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million documents and photos related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Newly-released emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kick off a renewed flurry of acrimonious social posts and lurid news coverage
The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million documents and photos related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Sunday Robotics unveils Memo, a fully autonomous home robot capable of tasks like making espresso and loading a dishwasher, and plans to launch in beta in 2026
Sunday Robotics has a new way to train robots to do common household tasks. The startup plans to put its fully autonomous robots in homes next year.
Pattern, an e-commerce firm that resells goods on online marketplaces, files for a US IPO, reporting net income of $32.1M on revenue of $1.1B for H1 2025
Bloomberg :
In a meeting with GOP lawmakers, Donald Trump proposed taxing carried interest as ordinary income, a policy that could sharply increase the tax bill for VCs
On Thursday, President Trump asked Republican lawmakers to end tax breaks on carried interest. — The tax break allows private equity …
Bookkeeping startup Bench, which raised $100M+ including from Shopify, closes down effective immediately; several employees say Bench also laid off staff
it's reputation-ending Leadership means accountability Rohit Mittal / @rohitdotmittal : Does anyone know how to go about buying Bench's assets? I'm sure investors have counsel to s...
Source: Databricks tells investors it aims to raise $7B to $9B at a ~$61B valuation, to cash out employees that hold RSUs and cover the staff taxes it would owe
Cory Weinberg / The Information : X: @bryce , @alex , @josephjacks_ , and @eastdakota X: Bryce Roberts / @bryce : Zero reason for companies with high demand for their stock to go ...
VC firm CRV plans to return $275M from its $500M Select fund, citing worsening market conditions and high startup valuations relative to their potential payoff
CRV, based in Silicon Valley, plans to return to investors $275 million because the market for mature start-ups has soured.
Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products
and what we don't X: @swyx : Ok after some reading whining about the broken founding employee contract I actually did some research: - Adept stock is getting bought at par - Inflec...
Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products
and what we don't X: @swyx : Ok after some reading whining about the broken founding employee contract I actually did some research: - Adept stock is getting bought at par - Inflec...
Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and some employees, are joining Google; Google has signed a non-exclusive agreement to use its tech
In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed startup.
Sources: Tiger raised ~$2.2B for its latest fund, well short of the $6B target and its smallest fundraising haul in about a decade, after raising a $12.7B fund
Hema Parmar / Bloomberg :
Carta plans to close its liquidity services business, which matched private company stock buyers and sellers, as people will “worry that we are using the data”
Carta has decided to close its liquidity services business, which matched buyers and sellers of private company stock, Axios has learned.
Ilya Sutskever and over 700 out of ~770 OpenAI staffers sign a letter saying they may quit and join Sam Altman unless the board resigns and reinstates Altman
- Majority of OpenAI employees sign letter seeking new board — Board member Ilya Sutskever is among the signatories
Microsoft isn't a clear winner in OpenAI chaos, as its ~$11B investment is in danger, building AI systems has reputational risks, and talent might not stay
Matthew Prince / @eastdakota :
Sources: Sam Altman's exit followed a “misalignment” between OpenAI's profit and nonprofit adherents; some may view the company's development speed as too risky
that AGI could kill all of humanity Louise Matsakis / @lmatsakis : The Information reports that Ilya told OpenAI employees that “this was the board doing its duty to the mission of...
OpenAI memo: Sam Altman's firing wasn't due to “malfeasance” or related to financial, business, safety, or security practices but a “breakdown in communication”
Team - after yesterday's announcement, which took us all by surprise, we have had multiple conversations …