We raised $250M in Series C funding at a $2.2B valuation, led by a16z. Exa is a search lab organizing the web's data for agents.

I’m honored to share that @eigenhq has raised $15M from @Benchmark to build a mutual friend that’ll help us belong and grow, together.

I am super excited to share that @Starcloud_ has raised a $170M Series A at a $1.1bn valuation to fuel our development of data centers in space 🚀 The round comes after the successful deployment of our first satellite, Starcould-1, a few months ago, which had the first @NVIDIA H100 on board and was the first to train an LLM in space. The funds will be used to develop our third satellite, which aims to be cost-competitive with Earth-based data centers in terms of AI inference cost. The round was led by @Benchmark and @EQT Ventures, and we are excited to welcome Benchmark GP, @Chetanp Puttagunta, to our board. We are also excited to welcome other new investors, including the world's largest infrastructure fund, @Macquarie Capital, @SevenSevenSix 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣, Manhattan West, Adjacent, Carya, GSBackers, and Harpoon. We are very grateful for the continued support of existing investors, including @NFX, @NebularVC, @YCombinator, @FUSE_VC, @Soma_Capital, 3Capital Partners, Wyld VC, Tiny VC, and Taurus Ventures. Onwards!

Today, Sierra is releasing Ghostwriter, our agent for building agents. With Ghostwriter, you can create an AI agent for your customer experience — one that can chat, pick up the phone, speak dozens of languages, take action on your systems of record, and be protected with industry-leading guardrails — simply by having a conversation. No clicking, no forms, no menus. Codex and Claude Code have transformed how we build software, making it possible for software engineers to orchestrate and review the work rather than doing all the work themselves. We think the same transformation will happen for all software. Rather than every enterprise app having a web app for humans and an API for automation, every software platform’s UI will be an agent that can do the work on your behalf. I recorded a demo of my building and optimizing an agent with Ghostwriter so you can see how powerful and easy it is to use. It’s completely changed the way our early adopters build agents, and it’s changed the way I think about the software industry. Let me know what you think, and, if you’re interested in trying it out at your business, please reach out directly.

New @ThePeelPod with @chetanp We talk Manus, the history future of software, why incumbents should make big AI acquisitions, why investors are begging for AI companies to go public, and inside @Benchmark’s latest investing strategy. Thanks @Numeral and @FlexSuperApp for sponsoring this episode. 0:08 Inside the $2.5B Manus acquisition 6:24 Manus' three main use cases 11:08 Taking heat on Twitter 15:10 Starting to tweet about software in 2018 22:50 The history of application software 29:15 Benchmark’s 25x Fund 7 31:33 How incumbents got too dominant by 2020 31:48 Going all-in on AI software in 2022 39:31 Why Benchmark didn’t invest in the AI labs 40:48 How cloud companies beat on-prem incumbents 44:33 Why AI companies will beat legacy cloud incumbents 50:04 SaaS companies should make big AI acquisitions 57:35 Why incumbents have not bought more AI companies 1:04:43 Public markets are starving for AI companies 1:10:14 Inside Benchmark’s fund strategy 1:14:14 Benchmark’s history of non-traditional VC rounds 1:17:56 Is the 20% ownership model outdated? 1:19:20 Chetan’s rebirth as a consumer investor 1:22:39 What Benchmark looks for in founders 1:25:01 AI coding and AI software gross margins

This week, on Benchmark's new podcast Uncapped 😂, I sat down with @btaylor, founder of Sierra and Chairman of OpenAI. He's easily one of the most impressive people I’ve met in tech or in general. We talked about AI and the saaspocalypse, the unique considerations of building an AI native / agent company, whether young or experienced founders have the advantage right now, Codex and OpenAI ads, and much more. Learned a ton from Bret, hope you enjoy. (0:00) Intro (0:20) The Saaspocalypse and systems of record (12:34) Sierra's landscape (17:05) Outcome-based pricing (24:22) The rapid evolution of AI support technology (28:21) Young founders vs. experienced founders (34:12) What comes next beyond support (38:47) Codex and the future of software engineering (51:49) OpenAI and advertising (54:59) Working with investors and boards

I've been personally burning through billions of tokens a week for the past few months as a builder. Today I'm excited to announce Hyperagent, by Airtable. An agents platform where every session gets its own isolated, full computing environment in the cloud — no Mac Mini required. Real browser, code execution, image/video generation, data warehouse access, hundreds of integrations, and the ability to learn any new API as a skill. Deep domain expertise through skill learning. Teach the agent how your firm evaluates startups or how your team runs due diligence — now anyone on the team gets output that reflects your actual methodology, not a generic template. One-click deployment into Slack as intelligent coworkers. These aren't bots that wait to be @mentioned — they follow conversations, understand context, and act when relevant. And a command center to oversee and continuously improve your entire fleet of agents at scale. We're onboarding early users now. hyperagent.com

This week, on Benchmark's new podcast Uncapped 😂, I sat down with @btaylor, founder of Sierra and Chairman of OpenAI. He's easily one of the most impressive people I’ve met in tech or in general. We talked about AI and the saaspocalypse, the unique considerations of building an AI native / agent company, whether young or experienced founders have the advantage right now, Codex and OpenAI ads, and much more. Learned a ton from Bret, hope you enjoy. (0:00) Intro (0:20) The Saaspocalypse and systems of record (12:34) Sierra's landscape (17:05) Outcome-based pricing (24:22) The rapid evolution of AI support technology (28:21) Young founders vs. experienced founders (34:12) What comes next beyond support (38:47) Codex and the future of software engineering (51:49) OpenAI and advertising (54:59) Working with investors and boards

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.

Introducing Exa Instant: the first sub-200ms search engine. Faster than Google, it's custom built to power realtime AI products like chat and voice.