9 Photos and videos
When we explain to someone what it means to be a Genius founder, not many founders exemplify the definition as naturally and wholeheartedly as Markie.
We met Markie well before Poetic - while she was dropping out of college and building her first AI consultancy. Beyond just the work in front of her, she always cared deeply about her purpose, tapping into her most creative possible source of energy, and always asking the why behind everything she does (evident in her @traestephens co-authored essay titled 'Choose Good Quests'). We knew with certainty we wanted to partner with her on her own lifelong quest as soon as she was ready for it.
And then came Poetic.
We committed the first check back in 2023 - and every day since, Markie and the Poetic team continues to choose good quests. We are honored to support those quests every single day.
Congrats on an amazing launch, @PoeticHQ
CC: @markiewagner @LM_Braswell @gefkovicz
Jun 10
Introducing @PoeticHQ: a new AI system that executes complex multi-hour tasks with 99% accuracy and 10x fewer tokens than agents.
We raised $50M at $500M from Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, First Harmonic, and Genius Ventures to build AI that does complex work inside Fortune 500 companies without hallucination.
While code is too brittle, agents are too unpredictable. The work that runs the global economy - anti-money laundering, fraud investigations, underwriting - needs extreme accuracy.
So we built a new kind of software that pairs the flexibility of AI with the predictability of code.
When the world stays the same, Poetic runs fixed code: fast, cheap, identical every time. When the world changes, Poetic uses AI to regenerate its approach and find its way back to the objective.
In one year, we went from zero to an eight-figure run rate as a team of four.
Since then, we’ve scaled the team and executed the highest-stakes processes at AIG, SoFi, and Chime. At SoFi, a large US bank, Poetic reached 99% quality on fraud investigations in five weeks.
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A brilliant view on @PoeticHQ from our good friend Packy.
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The @UlyssesInc team is truly one of a kind.
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We had the pleasure of meeting this incredible trio before they embarked on their inevitable quest to build Trajectory
We committed the first check, introduced them to our friends at @conviction (@mvernal) and the rest is history.
May 27
Today, @MichaelElabd, @QuantumArjun, and I are excited to announce Trajectory.
We are a research lab and product company building the platform for Continual Learning.
Our platform unlocks the signal already sitting in product usage, so companies can continuously post-train large-scale agentic models that outperform the frontier. @trajectorylabs
We’ve raised $15M from @Conviction, @BessemerVP, @radicalvcfund, @jeffdean, @drfeifei and more.
We’re partnering with some of the best AI-native companies: @ClayRunHQ @Harvey, @DecagonAI, @mercor_ai, @RogoAI to power their agentic systems, some of which we are already in production with.
We’ve brought together a world class research team from DeepMind, OpenAI, Apple, Meta Superintelligence, Amazon AGI, Scale AI, and an elite product team from Stripe and Figma.
AI will never again start on day one. Every correction, every retry, every edit will make products smarter. This is Continual Learning.
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Ben Taft retweeted
May 22
Ben & Adam are some of my favorite people
May 22
Day zero believers in the future of agentic payments. @benmtaft and @gefkovicz backed Natural from the start with a clear vision of where the world was headed. Grateful to have them on board.
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Congrats to @matansf and @FactoryAI on their Series A
World class focus & execution from a world class team.
@_geniusventures is a proud early investor!
18 Jun 2024
THE MACHINE THAT BUILDS THE MACHINE
Today we are excited to announce the latest updates from Factory and the next steps in our mission to Bring Autonomy to Software Engineering.
Droids are autonomous systems that solve problems for engineers. Not just in demos. Not just in simple repositories. In complex, production settings. Testing, debugging, refactoring, migrating, reviewing, documenting — world class organizations are accelerating their software development with Factory’s Droids.
In addition to building out the Droid Fleet, we have some other exciting updates to share:
- New SOTA benchmarks. 31.67% on SWE-bench Lite. 19.27% on SWE-bench Full.
- New Fundraising. $15M Series A led by Sequoia Capital.
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Founder empathy is so important - it’s clear who has it and who doesn’t
5 Jun 2024
I get such a visceral negative reaction when VCs speak disparagingly about companies.
We al know most startups them don’t work, there’s lots of luck involved, and people are giving it their all…every time I hear it I just want to say “why don’t you try” 😂
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Congratulations to my friend Zach and the launch of his important company, Base Power 🔋⚡️
One of my most exciting angel investments to date!
7 May 2024
I am excited to publicly launch @basepowerco with my co-founder @JLopas and the rest of our team.
We started Base to make power more affordable and reliable, by building the foundation for the energy transition - starting with distributed battery storage
basepowercompany.com
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Coincidentally just 6 weeks prior to October 7th, I finished producing a short film about my Russian Jewish parents' intense immigration story.
The entire sentiment of the film was contrasting how unthinkably terrible it was growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union versus how safe & amazing it is to grow up Jewish in the US today.
Obviously – things have taken a drastic turn in the past few months.
Watching the film now, it is *devastating* to watch how so many of freedoms we were just celebrating as a family (e.g. the grandkids openly going to temple or proudly wearing the Star of David) have been radically eviscerated in the wake of the recent escalation in nationwide anti-semitism.
This film was originally only meant to serve as a private family heirloom that our kids' kids' kids would watch to celebrate what my parents did for our legacy, but going back and watching it now we realize how important of a tool this film is to underscore how quickly anti-semitism is being re-introduced to our society. So we made the choice to share it with the world today.
It is 6 minutes long, please give it a watch and a share.
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I'm CCing some friends and thought leaders in the tech community who have been using their platform to fight anti-semitism. I've been quietly appreciating you from afar – this is both a thank you and a request to share this video further.
@shaunmmaguire @SethGRosenberg @JTLonsdale @wolfejosh @davidmarcus @msuster @BillAckman @harryvalner @artlevy @mikeeisenberg
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Charlie is a beast:
-Son of immigrants
-Grew up on an Apple Orchard
-Dropped out of Cornell to build tech for farmers
Now a Thiel Fellow and backed by some awesome people (@generalcatalyst @joshuabrowder etc)
We are stoked to support you @charliewu
CC: @_geniusventures
28 Mar 2024
Excited to finally announce our $3.8M raise for Orchard Robotics 🍎, through a seed round led by General Catalyst and a pre-seed led by Contrary.
Read more in our press release below, and our exclusive in TechCrunch!
Honored to be working with @bonatsos @max_rimpel @generalcatalyst, @jchen623 @etarczynski @contrary, @lpolovets @humbavc, @aneelr @soma_capital, @wesleybarrow @CorrelationVC, @vufund, @benmtaft @gefkovicz @_geniusventures, @howard, @joshuabrowder, @RoryOReilly, @vishnaga, @ho_justin, @chrisvnicholson, @StashPomichter, @ukumarkhanna, @itsthomson, @briandela as we bring precision crop management to every farmer, helping them grow more food for the world, much more profitably, efficiently, and sustainably than ever before. 💪
techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/or…
globenewswire.com/news-relea…
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Ben Taft retweeted
28 Mar 2024
My testimony at the Tennessee Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee
0:00 Intro
0:17 My testimony
4:15 Questions from the committee
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Such is the circle of life
30 Jan 2024
Today at @tryramp, we’re excited to announce our acquisition of @VenueHQ
Backed by @Sequoia, they successfully built intuitive Procurement, saving customers from manual processes and wasteful spend. We’re taking Procurement to the next level together 🧵 ramp.com/blog/ramp-procureme…
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Ben Taft retweeted
29 Jan 2024
the chiefs win the super bowl. kelce passes the trophy to taylor before promptly getting down on one knee and proposing. 2 months pass and she announces her pregnancy. marriages and birth rates skyrocket. the CCP collapses. amazon moves HQ to kansas city. the S&P500 hits 9000
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Ben Taft retweeted
12 Jan 2024
8090 is a special name for us:
Kerem and I run the VC firm, 8090 Industries. We don’t do enterprise software. We focus on leading the next Industrial Revolution - our name pays homage to history’s greatest industrialists during the 1880s and 1890s: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, Morgan.
Since 2020, we’ve deployed over $200M in energy, industrials and national security.
Meet the portfolio pioneering a new industrial age:
@oklo: micro-nuclear reactors powered by nuclear waste. @jakedewitte @caorilne
@regentcraft: all-electric sea-gliders. @billythalheimer
@Cemvita: next-gen Koch Industries. microbes using CO2 to produce a billion gallons of SAF and chemicals @Mojikarimi
@isotopefactory: SpaceX for radioisotopes producing fuels for nuclear fusion. @AtomicEiden
@QuaiseEnergy: unlocking terawatt-scale geothermal energy by drilling more than 12 miles deep using millimeter waves.
@EmrodEnergy: long-distance power transmission without wires.
@VardaSpace: In-space manufacturing.
Armada: incubated out of SpaceX to bring edge compute and connectivity to industrial sectors operating in the world’s farthest remote areas. @danwrightSF @Prag_Armada
@atomic_inc: ushering in a new dawn in automated manufacturing. @aphysicist
Gold Hydrogen: abundant clean hydrogen for less than a $1/kg using microbes and abandoned oil wells
@OrbitFab: Gas stations in space. @_DanielFaber_
@circ_earth: world leader in fashion textile recycling. @pmajeranowski
Timeback: humanoid robots for defense and manufacturing
@GalvanickCo: bringing cyber security to critical infrastructure. @JoshuaSteinman
Maple Materials: onshoring graphite production for battery anodes 5x cheaper than China using CO2 instead of fossil fuels. @DavidDeak
@InfraclearInc: Palantir for the $4 Trillion global infrastructure industry
@InfiniumCo: industrial electrochemistry using climate emissions to decarbonize and power heavy transportation fleets. @RobertSchuetzle
@AetherDiamonds: diamonds made from CO2. @ryanshearmanNYC
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Absolutely fired up to back @matanSF and the @factoryAI_ team. 10/10 team & vision 🤝
2 Nov 2023
Factory is bringing autonomy to software engineering.
Excited to announce our $5M fundraise, led by @sequoia (@shaunmmaguire) and @Lux_Capital (@breeves08)
Read more here:
factory.ai/blog
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