Pivot to People: It’s Time to Build the New Economy

The Beginning of the End of Big Tech

From politicians to VC firms, everyone is falling out of love with the massive, money-oriented, global technology titans. In their place, we have the chance to build something open and trustworthy.

Philanthropy 2.0: What the Evolution of For-Profit Investment Tells Us About the Future of Giving

Gaps in philanthropic funding for era-defining science and discovery demand a new approach. In this piece, we look at how learning from venture capital is a game changer for catalytic philanthropy.

Philanthropy 2.0: What the Evolution of For-Profit Investment Tells Us About the Future of Giving

Gaps in philanthropic funding for era-defining science and discovery demand a new approach. In this piece, we look at how learning from venture capital is a game changer for catalytic philanthropy.

This Mess We’re In

ethics, open source, and free riding

Purpose Ventures - Purpose

Conventional VC is often at odds with the ambitions of purpose-driven entrepreneurs and their founding values and missions. These founders are interested in more than growth for growth’s sake. They want to build lasting, impactful businesses and preserve their mission in the future.

The Market Minute: No Porn Investments Please, Vice Clauses And How They’ve Evolved

As much as funding to startups is up and it seems like all sorts of companies are raising money, there’s still one thing stopping investment in certain companies: vice clauses.

The Race to Allocate One Trillion Dollars in Philanthropic Capital

Frontier Lab IPOs are coming, and philanthropy isn’t ready

Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism

The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.

Just back from a truly impactful few days at Asilomar for the Brain and Mind, hosted by the brilliant team at BrainMind. The spirit of the 1975 Recombinant DNA Conference felt palpable as we gathered… | Sean White

Just back from a truly impactful few days at Asilomar for the Brain and Mind, hosted by the brilliant team at BrainMind. The spirit of the 1975 Recombinant DNA Conference felt palpable as we gathered to chart ethical standards for the accelerating field of Neurotech. While our focus was on neuroethics, from investor diligence questions and board-level risk matrices to user/stakeholder engagement and toolkits for neuroentrepreneurs, the key themes shared a powerful parallel with AI Ethics: maintain and enhance human agency, combat misuse and mistrust, and acknowledge that innovation is moving faster than its guardrails. Both fields present novel challenges that demand we adapt our existing frameworks and principles to meet new challenges. At the heart of it all is human agency. Whether we're discussing neurodevices or large language models, our core responsibility as builders, executives, investors, and policymakers is to ensure people are informed, in control, and never burdened to fight for their own empowerment or autonomy. We have the fundamental responsibility to care about the people we serve. This commitment to responsible, human-centric development is fundamental to our work at Inflection AI. We're building with emotional intelligence at the core. Every product decision we make starts with a simple question: does this expand what people can do, or does it quietly shift the burden onto them? AI should work for the humans using it, amplifying judgment, not replacing it. Earning trust through transparency rather than demanding it through dependency. A special thank you to Diana Saville for once again outdoing herself at every event and to Michael McCullough, MD for his endless support of the ecosystem. And to all the Braingels who showed up and rolled up their sleeves! Let's translate the urgency from Asilomar into action and continue to drive positive change.

V_labs 4 Phases: Explore

The explore phase uncovers concrete venture opportunities by analyzing markets, customer needs, trends, and corporate capabilities for validation.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

Meet the AI OnlyFans: How one startup raised millions to build an ‘erotic companions’ platform | Kai Nicol-Schwarz

Meet the AI OnlyFans: How one startup raised millions to build an ‘erotic companions’ platform --- When AI erotic companion startup Oh raised a $4.5m funding round in January, it had something few in the shadowy new sector could boast. A roster of named investors, publicly backing the company. VCs are often bound by “vice clauses”, which prohibit firms from investing in controversial products like pornography or weapons. As a result, startups working on ethically contentious products often rely on angel investors and family offices to stay afloat. But Oh, which generates NSFW adult content and conversations with both fictional characters as well as bots based on real people, has tapped into a group of seemingly less squeamish investors: crypto VCs. It’s drawn backing from the likes of Tangent, Kosmos Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Bodhi Ventures and Tagus Capital. “Raising money for a business like this from non-crypto VCs is very difficult,” says Oh founder and CEO Nic Young, who positions the startup as a “decentralised platform” and offers payments via crypto. “A lot of crypto VCs don’t have vice clauses — it’s more liberal and free.” Oh wants to use those fresh funds to build the “AI OnlyFans”, with plans to roll out autonomous scantily clad bots that can market themselves on social media and direct message users with spicy conversation starters. The biggest challenge? Convincing enough users it’s not that weird turning to AI when you’re looking for romance. https://lnkd.in/eRF7a5Dn

The Antitrust Revolution, by Barry C. Lynn

Liberal democracy’s last stand against Big Tech

Highline Beta | Corporate Venture Studios & Venture Building

We build ventures and venture studios with corporate partners and family offices through rigorous process, entrepreneurial grit, and capital.