Historic news for music and for San Francisco! I couldn’t have put it any better than @itselimchan herself - “It’s freaking amazing” thetimes.com/culture/classic…

I’m so fucking proud of this team. They took an extraordinarily difficult technical swing with wafer-scale and connected on the first try. Then they spent years grinding through packaging, cooling, compilers, frameworks, early customers, and everything else required to turn a technical breakthrough into a real company — swinging and missing and learning and trying again. Most importantly, they stayed clear-eyed about what they had (a technical marvel) and what they didn’t (enough advantage in training), saw the opportunity emerging in inference, and adapted. That kind of persistence — not to be confused with stubbornness — is incredibly hard to describe, but absolutely essential in the unstable substrate of AI. The requirements of AI today will not be the requirements of AI tomorrow. But this team will keep figuring it out. And I’m here for it.

That it is!

I’m really excited to share that I’m joining Benchmark. The past two years as a full time investor have been the most rewarding of my career. I really love venture capital, which is not something I ever imagined I’d say when I was kid, but here we are. I love new ideas and being part of a team with a mission. I love getting to be there for people who are struggling towards goals they really care about. I love learning from people who are better CEOs than I ever was. I love the texture of the work, the competition, and the way the job lets you invest in relationships. I love it so much that I’ve even turned into a little venture nerd with a podcast who goes around harassing great investors and founders, trying to learn as much as I can as fast as possible. I’ve certainly learned what I care most about, and what kind of investor I want to be. What I’ve realized is that I love investing at the Series A, when there’s enough going on that an investor can be useful but not so much that you can’t have an impact. I think there are many amazing ways to practice venture, it’s just the way that most speaks to me. And as I came to realize that, I started to think about how to best set myself up to do that craft as well as possible. It became clear to me there is nowhere better for this than Benchmark; the way they’re structured, their principles, their overall approach to investing, and their track record all create an environment that I believe will let me do my best work as an investor and help founders the most I possibly can. As I’ve gotten to know the team at Benchmark I’ve come to admire so much about each of them. Peter is truly playing his own game. A lot of what he says sounds like poetry at first, but as the ideas roll around in your head for a while you realize how much depth they have. I first heard about Eric many years ago from my friend Saji at Benchling while I was building Lattice, who described him as the most amazing board member and attributed him with a lot of the company’s success. That’s the kind of partner I want to be one day. Chetan is brilliant and truly thinks for himself; I’ve realized over time what a courageous guy he is. And then there’s my friend Ev, whose skills complement mine and who I just love to be around. I can’t wait to have him as a partner in crime. When given the chance to work with this group I just knew I had to go. One of my motivating north stars with Alt Capital was to build a firm and be a partner that I most would have wanted as an entrepreneur. Although I haven’t gotten everywhere I want to be yet, I’m proud of the work so far. And now I’m excited to build on that work at Benchmark, where I hope to increase my rate of learning and get armed with the power of a partnership so I can help founders reach their dreams even more. Thank you to the companies who’ve let me invest with them at Alt Cap. I’m keeping all my board seats and supporting everyone just the same as before. Thank you to the LPs who’ve backed me as well. I am so excited about the portfolio we have and am grateful I can stick with all those companies. And finally thank you to my teammates, Bala, Vivek, and Nate. Bala took a bet on me and started investing with me before it was remotely obvious, and we’ve been able to grow so much figuring it out together as investors. I credit Nate with helping Alt start feeling like a firm. He joined us from First Round over a year ago and made everything run smoothly. And while Vivek joined just a little while ago, even in the short time we’ve worked together he’s had a meaningful impact on how we think and invest. They’re all joining Benchmark with me. So pumped for this chapter.

New episode of Uncapped with the full Benchmark partnership. They're arguably the best early stage venture firm of all time and have retained a model and approach that very few others have. I learned a ton, hope you enjoy.

Max and the entire Legora team are building one of the most spectacular AI applications in the world today. They’ve accomplished so much since our seed in Mar 2024 and launch in Oct 2024. Listen to this excellent podcast.

Manus was acquired by Meta. This remarkable group of people created a product that was the fastest ever to go $0 to $100M ARR and changed how consumers used AI to get things done. It was an extraordinary privilege for me and Benchmark to have invested in this incredible company pre-launch earlier this year and to have been on the board with Red and Pan. To @Red_Xiao_, Pan, @peakji, @hidecloud, CZ, and Henry: thank you! You are an amazing group of founders with a unique combination of brilliance, resilience, grit, vision, execution, and kindness. You’ve built one of the greatest technical teams in the world. You and your team will do great things at Meta. There’s so much more to share about this company and I’m sure we will over time. For now, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling of awe and gratitude. Thank you!

A remarkable team building a remarkable AI application. They've set a new speed record for $0 to $100M ARR in 8 months. They are not only the best technical team in Singapore, but one of the best in the world. Thrilled to have backed this sensational group of people pre-launch.

Today, @everettrandle joins Benchmark as our newest General Partner. Benchmark was founded in 1995 by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in their 30s. It has been re-founded by the same phenotype many times in the last 30 years. Benchmark has held fast to a simple truth: exceptional teams are built by those who place collective success above individual recognition. We seek partners who resist the industry's pull toward diluted relationships, who maintain direct, unmediated connections with founders, and who approach this work not as a career but as a decades-long calling. We’ve known Ev as a fellow venture capitalist for years and it was the consistent praise from entrepreneurs that truly set him apart. Time and again, founders told us: "Ev is my first call when working through challenges," "His collaboration comes from genuine humility," "He delivers the highest return on my cap table," and "His Midwestern approach, excellence without ego, is inspiring." Most compelling was how deeply founders connected with Ev's authentic commitment to serving them and their missions. Ev's track record of investing in Rippling, Huntress, SpaceX, Mirage, Flock Safety, Stord, Chainguard, and others demonstrates exceptional judgment. But beyond the track record, he brings insatiable curiosity, genuine intellectual humility, and a quiet competitive fire that elevates everyone around him. At Benchmark, our structure remains intentionally flat: equal partners, each with identical authority, responsibility, and ownership. When we encounter someone who embodies the gravity of a founder of Benchmark, the recognition is immediate and mutual. Welcome to Benchmark, Ev. – Chetan, Eric, Peter

I have written my first book! A passion project of almost 10 years, Runnin' Down a Dream aims to give people both the motivation & the methods for thriving in a career they actually love. Put a lot of heart and soul into this - hope you ❤️ it. Pre-order: a.co/d/5APYleb

Congratulations to Benchmark’s @erikyw26 for having his paper accepted to NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego! Benchmark is hosting an incredible dinner in San Diego on 12/4 with the brightest researchers & engineers in AI working on the frontier. Reach out to Erik if you’d like to join!

Witnessing @btaylor, @claybavor, and the team take @SierraPlatform from @benchmark's founding Series A in May 2023 to a $10B valuation today is a true 6-sigma event. It's the perfect entrepreneurial storm: generational founders meeting humanity's AI inflection point with a product that delivers immediate value with limitless potential to grow. Find every opportunity to use their products, work with their team, and learn from their strategy. Proverbial master-class in excellence.

We’re thrilled to welcome @GeorgeHuSF to Benchmark as a Venture Partner! George has an extraordinary track record across Salesforce and Twilio. We’ve collaborated with George for years and he’s a remarkable partner to founders as they scale their companies.

Thrilled to welcome @erikyw26 to Benchmark as a researcher-in-residence before he starts his PhD at Oxford. Excited for Erik to help us and our broader portfolio connect with the forefront of AI research!

The man is too humble to say it but everything @victoralazarte touches turns to gold. As a Founder, he scaled Wildlife Studios to 4B downloads. Bootstrapped. As an angel, he was the first ever investor in Brex (latest valuation $12.3BN) As a VC with @benchmark he led rounds in HeyGen ($60M ARR) and Mercor ($100M ARR in 11 months). This is a masterclass from the man with the Midas touch. My 7 key takeaways 👇

I’m nonpartisan, and imho the federal govt does some good things and some bad things. I’m close enough to the climate work at NOAA to say with confidence that it’s one of the best things the federal govt does. It provides a huge bang for the buck. Shutting it down would be a really, really bad idea

I really enjoyed having this discussion about the current state of AI and the implications for private and public market investing with Patrick and Modest. Hope you have a chance to listen!

We're thrilled to announce the election of attorney and philanthropist Pia Cohler to the Innocence Project's Board of Directors. For the past seven years, Pia has volunteered at the Innocence Project. Join us in welcoming her: innocenceproject.org/attorne…

.@ChanZuckerberg @humancellatlas celebrate a major milestone toward assembling the first draft of the atlas. chanzuckerberg.com/newsroom/…

Congratulations to everyone @KKR_Co for being named one of America's ten best companies, alongside Nvidia, Alphabet, Intuit, Vertex Pharma, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, ServiceNow, and American Express!