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Patent systems are first-to-file. It's produced a quiet two-tier system: well-funded companies file in 48 hours. Everyone else waits weeks. Today we're announcing @fearn_ai's $5.5M seed to end that gap. 🧵

Patent systems are first-to-file. It's produced a quiet two-tier system: well-funded companies file in 48 hours. Everyone else waits weeks. Today we're announcing @fearn_ai's $5.5M seed to end that gap. 🧵

We put 12 of our favorite people in a room @sama @zoink @bryan_johnson @PalmerLuckey @cyantist @traestephens And made them play the diabolical game of deception, Mafia And filmed it all live with @micsolana as the moderator Good fun :)

I want to fund a space warfighting prime. Space is a unique domain. It's huge, hostile, and fragile — so we need tech that can help America secure outer space *while preserving the domain itself.* If you're thinking about the future of space and defense, please get in touch.

What are @ndrewlee 's favourite books? I spoke to him during the @a16z @speedrun alumni day. In between conversations about his predictions for speedrun 007 batch, distribution being the moat, he dropped two of his favourite reads: The Mahjong Project by Nicole Wong and Mark Twain – the biography by Ron Chernow. He's a huge fan of audio learning. So, find the SUN links to his picks in the comments. Chat with him about his favs if you see him. Plug and play! 🌞

Great seeing @ndrewlee of @speedrun last week. For the uninitiated: Speedrun is a16z's pre-seed accelerator — 12 weeks in San Francisco, sub-1% acceptance rate, up to $1M per company. One of the sharpest early-stage programs running right now, and increasingly the place AI-native founders are starting from. @trustfundvc and Speedrun co-invested in @usebrief (a16z sr005). Glad to be in alongside them. Here's to cooking up more together!

30 of the 70 companies in our last @speedrun batch had founders born outside the US and if we keep doing our job – and we will – that number is only going up: * founders building products teams internationally * builders stuck in an H-1B job ready to accelerate their slope * students here on F-1 who are ready to take a shot at their startup idea Speedrun Global Founders is our answer >> our end-to-end approach to guiding founders through visas, customs, housing, banking, and building local SF community, while enabling founders from all over the globe to participate in Speedrun we also have the coolest hat in venture - maybe thats a lame flex, but i honestly challenge you to show me better vc drip you might catch a few of our founders wearing them today. come through Global Founders and I’ll bring you one 🫡 -apply below my friends-

I didn't walk into a16z speedrun with a moonshot. I walked out with one. Orbital is building AI data centers in space. This is one of the most important infrastructure bets of this generation: compute is hitting physical walls on Earth that are solvable in space. Launch costs are collapsing, solar is free, space is an infinite heatsink. Before Orbital, I founded Spin to build and deploy physical infrastructure at speed - 250,000 vehicles across 100 cities, garage to $100M in revenue, 1,800 employees, acquired by Ford. I recruited the engineering team, led hardware design, stood up manufacturing, and navigated city-by-city regulation at a pace most people told me was impossible. After I left, I kept coming back to the same question: what's the next physical infrastructure problem this big, this inevitable, this early? I didn't have the answer when I applied to speedrun. @speedrun backed me anyway - a founder chasing the next problem. Deep gratitude to @andrewchen, @ndrewlee, @Tocelot, @Chen, @JoshLu , @_CallMeMacy, @tkexpress11, @custo_lejla, @tmhammer, @SamiraBehrouzan, @EmlynThompsonLAMacy for being the earliest believers. And to the broader @a16z network - media reach, advisor bench, and peer group that unblocks problems in hours, not months. A slice of that reach this week - thanks to @Forbes, @washingtonpost, @TheRegister, @FortuneMagazine, @WSJ, @axios, and @StrictlyVC for telling the story. If you're a founder looking for your version of this moment: the next @speedrun cohort (SR007) starts in July, applications open this week.

ok - dropping big dates/news for a16z speedrun: - starting TODAY, founders can apply for the 2026 program that runs July 27 to Oct 11 in SF here's the link: speedrun007.a16z.com/ac - we will be investing up to $1M and funding 70 companies over the next few weeks - But there's also $5M in credits/tokens/etc from AWS/GCP/Open AI/Azure/NVIDIA/Deel/Stripe/etc. You'll also work with our amazing operating team (GTM, talent, brand, people, and more), and join our community of elite founders - we offer a Global Founders Program for international founders, to help with visas, banking support, relo recommendations - yes you can be solo (but better if you're further along, and have built a team). No you don't have to have an idea yet. Yes you have to know how to build (even if you're not technical) - Also, in other news: speedun is officially moving full-time to SF. (prev it alternated SF/LA) this is for all the obv reasons - we've continued to have an insane lineup of speakers, including the founders of Carta / DoorDash / Twilio / Figma / Zynga / Airtable / Twitch / and of course, lunch/dinners with Marc/Ben alongside a16z team - and much more - the deadline for applying is May 17!