The initiative, called "Find One, Launch One, Ramp One," introduced goals, prizes, and other incentives for Amazon's huge cloud-support teams across North America.
The ultimate aim was to sell more of the company's new AI offerings. Sales architects, customer success managers, and other roles were recruited into the broad push.
"This is a great time to partner with our sales teams for this #OneTeam effort," AWS explained in an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.
These AWS staffers were asked to find at least one sales opportunity each month for Q, Amazon's AI assistant, and Bedrock, the company's AI platform.
Then, the initiative asked employees to launch one Bedrock or Q customer workload.
The final requirement, the "Ramp One" part, pushed teams to generate real revenue from these workloads.
AWS created a leaderboard for everyone to see the top performers. With December 1 as the deadline, the company dangled prizes, including an evening of pizza and wine at an executive's home (with guitar playing as a possibility).
A race for AI supremacy
This initiative is just one example of AWS trying to squeeze more out of its massive sales and support teams to be more competitive in AI. There's more pressure and urgency to sell AI products, along with new incentives, according to several internal documents and more than a dozen current and former AWS employees.
Messaging from AWS CEO Matt Garman, previously the cloud unit's top sales executive, is to move even faster, these people said. They asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
Much is at stake for Amazon. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, alongside a slew of smaller startups, are all vying for AI supremacy. Though Amazon is a cloud pioneer and has worked on AI for years, it is now at risk of ceding a chance to become the main platform where developers build new AI products and tools.
More pressure
The revamped sales push is part of the company's response to these challenges. As the leading cloud provider, AWS has thousands of valuable customer relationships that it can leverage to get its new AI offerings out into the world.
Many AWS sales teams have new performance targets tied to AI products.
One team has to hit a specific number of customer engagements that focus on AWS's generative AI products, for instance.
There are also new sales targets for revenue driven by genAI products, along with AI customer win rates and a goal based on the number of genAI demos run, according to one of the internal Amazon documents.
Another AWS team tracks the number of AI-related certifications achieved by employees and how many other contributions staff have made to AI projects, one of the people said.
Hitting these goals is important for Amazon employees because that can result in higher performance ratings, a key factor in getting a raise or promotion.
More employees encouraged to sell AI
Even roles that traditionally don't involve actively selling products are feeling pressure to find AI sales opportunities, according to Amazon employees who spoke with BI and internal documents.
AWS software consultants, who mostly work on implementing cloud services, are now encouraged to find sales opportunities, blurring the line between consultants and traditional salespeople.
The "Find One, Launch One, Ramp One" initiative includes AWS sales architects. These staffers traditionally work with AWS salespeople to craft the right cloud service for each customer. Now, they're being incentivized to get more involved in actual selling and are being measured on the results of these efforts.
"Customers are interested in learning how to use GenAI capabilities to innovate, scale, and transform their businesses, and we are responding to this need by ensuring our teams are equipped to speak with customers about how to succeed with our entire set of GenAI solutions," an AWS spokesperson told BI.
"There is nothing new or abnormal about setting sales goals," the spokesperson added in a statement. They also stressed that AWS sales architects are not "sellers," and their job is to "help customers design solutions to meet their business goals."
There are "no blurred lines," and roles and expectations are "clear," the spokesperson also said.
Selling versus reducing customer costs
One particular concern among some AWS salespeople revolves around the company's history of saving cloud customers money.
Some staffers told BI that they now feel the company is force-feeding customers AI products to buy, even if they don't need them. The people said this represents a shift in AWS's sales culture, which has mostly looked for opportunities to reduce customers' IT costs over the years.
In some cases, salespeople have also been asked to boost the attendance of external AWS events. Several recent AWS-hosted AI events saw low attendance records, and salespeople were told to find ways to increase the number of registrations by reaching out to customers, some of the people said.
AWS's spokesperson said customer attendance has "exceeded our expectations for a lot of our AI events," and the number of participants at the re:Invent annual conference "more than doubled."
The spokesperson also said the notion that Amazon has moved away from its goal of saving customers money is "false." The company always starts with "the outcomes our customers are trying to achieve and works backwards from there."
A hammer and a nail
Garman, Amazon's cloud boss, hinted at some of these issues during an internal fireside chat held in June, according to a recording obtained by BI. He said there are sales opportunities for AWS in "every single conversation" with a customer, but AWS has to ensure those customers get real value out of their spending.
"Too often we go talk to customers to tell them what we've built, which is not the same thing as talking to customers," Garman said. "Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean the problem the customer has is the nail."
AWS's spokesperson said the company is "customer-obsessed" and always tries to consider decisions "from our customers' perspectives, like their ROI." Some of AWS's competitors don't take that approach, and it's a "notable contrast," the spokesperson added, pointing to this BI story about a Microsoft customer complaining about subpar AI features.
More pressure but also more rewards
Amazon is also doling out bonuses and other forms of potentially higher pay for AI sales success.
AWS recently announced that salespeople will receive a $1,000 performance bonus for the first 25 Amazon Q licenses they sell and retain for 3 consecutive months with a given customer, according to an internal memo seen by BI. The maximum payout is $20,000 per customer.
For Bedrock, Amazon pays salespeople a bonus of $5,000 for small customers and $10,000 for bigger customers when they "achieve 3 consecutive months of specified Bedrock incremental usage in 2024," the memo explained.
Some AWS teams are discussing higher pay for AI specialists. Sales architects, for example, in AI-related roles across fields including security and networking could get a higher salary than generalists, one of the people said.
AWS's spokesperson told BI that every major tech company provides similar sales incentives. Amazon continually evaluates compensation against the market, the spokesperson added.
Fear of losing to Microsoft
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Inside AWS, there's a general concern that Amazon was caught off guard by the sudden emergence of generative AI and is playing catch-up to its rivals, most notably Microsoft, according to the people who spoke with BI.
Some Amazon employees are worried that Q is losing some customers to Microsoft's Copilot because of a lack of certain AI features, BI previously reported.
Microsoft has an advantage because of its wide range of popular business applications, including the 365 productivity suite. That makes it potentially easier for Microsoft to show customers how AI can improve their productivity, some of the Amazon employees told BI. AWS, meanwhile, has struggled to build a strong application business, despite years of trying.
AWS's spokesperson challenged that by noting that AWS has several successful software applications for companies, including Amazon Connect, Bedrock, and SageMaker. The spokesperson also said Amazon Q launched in April and is already seeing robust growth.
It's "no secret that generative AI is an extremely competitive space," the spokesperson added. "However, AWS is the leader in cloud and customer adoption of our AI innovation is fueling much of our continued growth. AWS has more generative AI services than any other cloud provider, which is why our AI services alone have a multibillion-dollar run rate."
More Speed
A major AWS reorganization earlier this year hasn't helped the AI sales effort, according to some of the people who spoke with BI.
The big change switched AWS to more of an industry focus rather than a regional one. That caused confusion inside the company, and some large customers lost their point of contact, the people explained. AWS is still figuring out how to run as a more cohesive group, resulting in a slower sales cycle, they added.
AWS's spokesperson said it's "inaccurate" to say its sales process has slowed, adding that year-over-year revenue growth accelerated again in the most recent quarter, and the business is now on pace to surpass $100 billion in sales this year.
In his June fireside chat, Garman stressed the importance of speed and urged employees to "go faster."
"Speed really matters," Garman said. "And it doesn't necessarily mean work more hours. It means how do we make decisions faster?"
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They tested spacesuits, radiation exposure, and Starlink space-laser communications for Mars travel.
SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew successfully returned to Earth on Sunday, bringing Elon Musk one step closer to his dream of settling Mars.
The five-day mission saw the four commercial astronauts complete a list of historic firsts: They traveled further than anyone has gone in more than 50 years, since the last Apollo missions. The two female crew members, in particular, set the record for the farthest any woman has traveled in space.
They donned new SpaceX spacesuits that had never been tested in orbit, opened their ship to the vacuum of space, and conducted the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
On top of that, they exposed themselves to high levels of space radiation, much higher than what astronauts aboard the International Space Station undergo in the same time period. And they endured a fiery plummet back to Earth.
An image of the spacecraft as it was about to land.
SpaceX/X
If you ask Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded and commanded the mission, it was also in the name of raising funds for childhood-cancer research at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
As he previously told Business Insider, before his first flight with SpaceX in 2021, he wanted to "take care of some of the problems that we have here on Earth, so we earn the right to go and explore among the stars."
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California.
SpaceX/Business Wire via AP Photo
But the technical aspects of the mission — the spacewalk, the spacesuits, the laser Starlink communication, flying through a radiation belt — were critical tests of technologies SpaceX will need in order to fly humans to the red planet.
Isaacman's future plans fit the Mars bill, too. He's planning two more Polaris missions and says the third one will ditch Crew Dragon for Starship. That's the Statue-of-Liberty-sized mega-rocket SpaceX is developing in South Texas for the express purpose of colonizing Mars.
Mars trailblazers return home
As the Crew Dragon hurtled back toward Earth, plowing through the atmosphere, superheated plasma roared at the edges of its protective heat shield.
Isaacman had done this before, but it was the first spaceflight for the three other crew members: a former US Air Force pilot named Scott Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
They felt a jerk as the spaceship deployed parachutes to drift down into the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas. It bobbed in the waves, looking like a toasted marshmallow, until a ship hauled it on board and SpaceX workers helped the crew off.
A screenshot from a SpaceX livestream of the crew's return.
Jared Isaacman stands at the hatch of Crew Dragon during the world's first commercial spacewalk.
SpaceX
The crew spent 48 hours slowly depressurizing their spacecraft so that they could open the hatch to the vacuum of space, sending Isaacman and Gillis out to gaze over Earth and conduct a few mobility exercises.
They were testing SpaceX's new extravehicular spacesuits, designed for the purpose of leaving a spacecraft to conduct maintenance or repairs — an ability that future Mars-bound people will need, since the journey takes months.
"It might be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit," but someday someone may even wear a version of these spacesuits "walking on Mars," Isaacman said in a prelaunch briefing in August.
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis show off their spacesuits and their spaceship.
SpaceX
"There's going to be an armada of Starships arriving on Mars at some point in the future," he added. "Those people are going to have to be able to get out of it and walk around and do important things."
Radiation on the way to Mars
Polaris Dawn also tackled another big challenge for crewed Mars missions: extreme radiation exposure. People traveling to Mars would be exposed to immense amounts of space radiation for months.
So the Crew Dragon spacecraft flew through two donuts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, called the Van Allen belts. The crew conducted tests and measurements to see how it affected their bodies.
A view from the Crew Dragon spaceship far from Earth.
SpaceX
"If we get to Mars someday, we'd love to be able to come back and be healthy enough to tell people about it," Isaacman said in August.
Other medical experiments on the mission checked their eyes, veins, and airways, to help SpaceX better understand the impacts of long-distance spaceflight.
Communications for Mars
Polaris Dawn also tested laser-based communications using Starlink, the network of internet satellites that SpaceX has built throughout Earth's orbit.
The commercial astronauts posted on X mid-mission, saying they'd uploaded their photos there using Starlink internet.
Hello Earth - We are so grateful for all the support! Please enjoy two recent photos from our mission and stay tuned for our next message 🎶Sent to you from space over a beam of Starlink laser light 🛰️ - Crew of Polaris Dawn pic.twitter.com/KkeZw1yAoT
Those space lasers lay the groundwork for future communications with deep-space missions — that is, as the Polaris website says, "for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond."
Isaacman seems to be vested in making that happen.
"I'd certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars and venturing out and exploring our solar system," he said ahead of the launch.
These households could start to see signs of relief if the Fed moves to cut interest rates next week.
As the summer comes to a close, it seems that most of the worst-case economic scenarios have been avoided.
The relief was apparent during the most recent earnings cycle as retailers reported sales that held up surprisingly well in spite of concerns about a sharper slowdown.
Share prices for Walmart and Costco continue to reach all-time highs as inflation-weary consumers flock to value-oriented retailers, and investors largely forgave home improvement suppliers for soft sales during the quarter.
Given rising home values, strong employment figures, a booming stock market, and cooling inflation, US household finances appear to be in a remarkably good spot.
But Americans are not a monolith, as Jefferies consumer strategist Carey Kaufman pointed out in a note to clients Tuesday.
"The U.S. consumer is three consumers," he wrote: the top fifth of the income scale, the bottom fifth, and the middle three-fifths.
Heading into the autumn, a considerable number of those in the bottom quintile appear to be running on borrowed time.
Telling signs from spending at auto parts and dollar stores
In contrast to the rosy outlook from stores that serve relatively large (and growing) shares of middle- and upper-income customers, auto parts and dollar store retailers are telling a more complicated story among their core customers who have lower household incomes.
"When times are good, our core customer normally works her 30- to 40-hour a week job, but also has a secondary job that she normally works 15 to 25 hours in. What she told us in Q2 was that is going away or has gone away," Dollar General CEO Ted Vasos said earlier this month at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference.
Vasos said that reduction in earnings, coupled with higher prices from years of inflation, has put increased pressure on lower-income households. If things continue according to historical trends, those concerns begin to get more serious for middle and upper-income segments as well.
"When things start to move south in the economy, our core customer feels it first," Vasos said. "We usually see it before most retailers start to feel it."
Dollar Tree, which owns Family Dollar, reported similar consumer headwinds during its quarterly earnings this month.
Auto parts stores are another retail category that is especially tuned in to what's happening at the lower ends of the economic scale.
Much of their consumer-facing business is driven by helping people keep their cars and trucks running smoothly, Mizuho analyst David Bellinger told Business Insider.
"That's the lower end consumer who works on their car out of economic necessity," he said. "So maybe if they don't have to make a fix, they could delay a few months. That's kind of what's happening now."
Advance Auto Parts CFO Ryan Grimsland said during the company's earnings call last month that DIY customers are deferring "maintenance that you would typically want to see," like skipping an oil change or ignoring a check-engine light.
That can help extend the household budget for a time, but as Genuine Parts CEO Will Stengel put it earlier this month, "there's only so long you can defer an issue."
And repairs aren't the only auto-related expense seeing cut-backs. Ally Financial this week reported worse than expected loan performance in July and August.
"Our borrower is struggling with high inflation and cost of living, and now more recently, a weakening employment picture," Ally CFO Russell Hutchinson said, according to Reuters.
One thing that deferred maintenance and missed payments have in common is they are both problems that get more expensive with time. Nobody wants to be stranded on the side of the road or hounded by collections agents, but more people are finding themselves hoping to make it one day or week at a time.
Indeed, as Dollar General's Vasos observed, paychecks aren't going as far as they once did.
"What we noticed was an even tighter core consumer at the very last week of each of the months in Q2," he said. "While that's always a tighter week of the month for our core consumer, it was by far the weakest."
The expected interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week won't solve these difficulties overnight, but it could signal that improvement is in sight.
Interest rate effects take a while to work through the economy, Bellinger noted, as big purchases are financed, working hours are scheduled, and business activity ticks back up.
Still, with any luck, the creeping sense of economic anxiety might begin to subside, not just for the middle class, but for the households that have borne the real brunt of America's war on inflation.
Ashley Mason insisted on a prenup to protect her business and assets before marriage.
Mason believes contracts are essential in both business and personal relationships.
The couple spent a year drafting the prenup, ensuring mutual protection of their assets.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation withAshley Mason, a 27-year-old business owner in Massachusetts. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I started my marketing agency in 2016. I worked hard to build it from scratch and told myself that if I got married, I wanted to protect this asset at all costs.
I heard stories from other entrepreneurs about how they built a business, got married without a prenup, and later divorced. Some had to hand over money and partial business ownership to their ex-spouse.
I spent so much time building my business that I couldn't imagine losing some of it in a divorce. I promised myself that when I met my future partner, we'd sign a prenup before we married.
Getting a prenup before marriage was a non-negotiable for me
After meeting my fiancé in 2018, we talked about prenups several times before getting engaged. You hear stories of people being offended by the idea of a prenup, but my fiancé didn't care at all. He's ambitious and works for his dad's plumbing business. He was totally fine with it.
I believe contracts are essential in business and relationships. It might not sound romantic to compare love to business, but when you're about to enter a legal marriage with someone, I believe it's best to have a contract outlining worst-case scenario terms.
Before I work with a client, we sign a contract that protects us if something goes wrong. I would never do business with someone without that legal protection because it could end in a costly lawsuit. That's why it makes sense from a personal perspective, too.
I have more assets than just my business and money in bank accounts
I often hear people say they don't need a prenup because they don't have any assets except their cash or investment accounts. That's not the case for me. With my own money, I've purchased assets like a car and a 16-acre property.
While I'm excited to share my money and assets with my partner and plan to split our bills and expenses, I still want to protect my assets if something happens. The only way to do that legally is by having a detailed prenup.
Plus, a prenup isn't one-sided. It protects my fiancé, too, and he can add in what assets he wants to protect.
We spent a year working on our prenup
My fiancé and I got engaged in November 2022 and set a wedding date for October 2024. Seven months after getting engaged, I suggested we start the prenup process.
We first audited all our assets in and out of our bank accounts. For example, my fiancé owns a truck, snowmobiles, and Jet Skis. We listed all his items and their values. Then, we discussed how we'd split things if we broke up.
We decided what's mine is mine, and what's his is his. Anything we own jointly, like the house we own together, will be split 50-50. We didn't disagree on anything during this process.
My fiancé decided not to get his own attorney
While I chose to hire a lawyer, my fiancé decided not to hire his own. He felt that since we were on the same page, it didn't make sense for him to pay for an attorney when he was willing to sign the prenup that my lawyer and I would draft.
This is allowed in Massachusetts; however, my lawyer did share that if we were to get a divorce, the judge might rule more in his favor. I was OK with that risk.
I found a lawyer through a colleague's recommendation. Over the past year, we've had about five meetings.
There was a lot of back-and-forth because our assets changed during that time. After every meeting, I'd share with my fiancé what the lawyer and I talked about or added to the prenup draft. As of July 11th, 2024, the prenup is signed and notarized, which makes it final.
I paid around $5,000 for the prenup but view that as an investment in my future
My fiancé offered to split the cost of the prenup with me, but I felt it wasn't fair for him to pay. Since I drafted the prenup more favorably, I thought it was right to take on the cost.
My prenup cost around $5,000. It might seem like a lot, but I was happy to spend a little bit of money now to potentially save in the long run.
The most complicated part was figuring out alimony
At first, I was set on not giving any alimony, which is financial support that will allow your ex-spouse to maintain the lifestyle they had while married to you. My attorney advised me that if a judge sees that in your prenup, it can be seen as unfair to the other party.
We decided to include alimony terms in the prenup since I make around 40% more than my partner a year. My fiancé and I agreed on a tiered system based on the number of years we've been together. For example, if we've been together for five years, there wouldn't be alimony, but at 10 years, a certain percentage would be given, and so on.
Prenups aren't just for rich people
There's a stigma around getting a prenup that if you get one, it's because you're superrich. That's not true, but at 27, nobody I know has a prenup. I couldn't turn to friends for advice, so I researched independently.
We're just a few weeks away from the wedding, and now that the prenup is signed, I feel like we can focus on what's next for us. Eventually we want to have kids and buy more houses together. We have a strong relationship, and we're entering marriage knowing we're on the same page now and will be in the future.
Want to share your story? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@businessinsider.com.
According to Bloomberg's rich list, only 15 people on the planet have a $100 billion-plus net worth. Jim's siblings, Rob and Alice, rank 16th and 17th with net worths of $98.3 billion and $97.7 billion each, meaning they'll likely join him soon.
Jim's fortune has swelled by about $28 billion this year to $101 billion, fueled by a 50% rise in Walmart stock to a record high. The three Waltons have also received over $15 billion each from stock sales and dividends over the years, per Bloomberg.
The likes of Musk, Bezos, and now Jim Walton command $100 billion-plus net worths because they own vast amounts of stock in some of the world's most valuable companies.
Walmart founder Sam Walton shrewdly gave 20% of his future retail empire to each of his four children over 70 years ago, in 1953. By organizing his business as a family partnership and giving his kids their stakes when he only owned a couple of stores, instead of handing down his wealth after he died a billionaire in 1992, he saved them a fortune in estate taxes.
Jim, 76, has led several of Walmart's businesses over the years, including a bank and a community newspaper. After his brother, John T., died in 2005, Jim replaced him on Walmart's board and remained a director until he retired in 2016.
The late John T. left the bulk of his fortune to his son Lukas, now the world's 45th wealthiest person with a $34.9 billion net worth, and wife Christy, the 128th richest with $15.7 billion.
The five wealthiest Waltons are together worth nearly $350 billion — a figure that dwarfs Coca-Cola's market value of $306 billion.
Walmart has grown from a single five-and-dime store in Bentonville, Arkansas, into a retail behemoth that generates $600 billion in net sales a year, employs 1.6 million Americans or roughly 1% of the US workforce, and ranks among the world's largest companies with a market value of $634 billion.
The corporate titan has benefited from resilient consumer spending during a period of historic inflation and surging interest rates. Its stock has jumped this year as investors bet on prices to stabilize, rates to fall, and the US economy to escape a recession.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris squared off in mid-September.
Spencer Platt and Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in an increasingly tense fight for the White House.
Stocks broadly have climbed under each party's leadership, but certain sectors may fare differently.
Oppenheimer shared an election investing playbook, including seven stocks set to hold up either way.
Last night's contentious debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris brought the looming presidential election fully into the mainstream, even for those who've been trying to block it out.
However, strategists at Oppenheimer Research believe those who ignore the election — and the implications that electing Trump or Harris may bring — do so at their peril.
Like "Big Short" investor Steve Eisman and investment firms including Bernstein, Oppenheimer's top minds recognize that the outcome of this fall's elections could be a crucial catalyst for some sectors and a crippling headwind for others, even if the broader market is fine either way.
"This playbook is intended to help investors navigate trading dynamics around the elections," Oppenheimer strategists wrote in a September 9 note. "Over the longer term, we expect stocks' behavior will more likely be a function of broader market/industry-level trends and individual company performance."
7 stocks that can succeed, no matter who wins this fall
Anyone antsy about this fall's elections should target two types of stocks that Oppenheimer researchers believe will hold up no matter what, provided that economic growth continues: business development companies, and semiconductor firms.
So-called BDCs, which invest in the debt or equity of smaller companies, are more reliant on a healthy economy and labor market than the particular policies of Republicans or Democrats. Any party that can keep this economic expansion going would be celebrated by these firms.
"We don't think the BDCs would benefit from a sweep by either party as BDCs try to diversify their portfolio in order to lower risk," Oppenheimer strategists wrote. "BDCs focus on US companies, so policies that promote domestic growth would benefit the group."
Oppenheimer highlighted a quintet of companies with a track record of minimal credit losses and solid returns on equity, given that credit risk is often the chief downfall of BDCs.
The firm also spotlighted a pair of chipmakers, given heightened interest in artificial intelligence.
Democrats and Republicans seem to have similar policies regarding China, as they've taken steps to limit that country's access to high-end US chips due to national security concerns. Therefore, a victory by either party may have a similar outcome for this industry.
"We expect US foreign policy toward China to become more restrictive over the next four years, irrespective of who wins the election," Oppenheimer strategists wrote. "Related, the Biden administration passed the CHIPS Act in 2022 to provide $53 billion in funding to assist in the development and manufacturing of domestic semiconductors. Both parties are likely to support continued investments in a domestic semiconductor ecosystem."
Below are seven stocks with an outperform rating from Oppenheimer analysts and can survive regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats emerge victorious this fall. Along with each company is its ticker, market capitalization, group, price target, upside, and thesis.
Thesis: "We estimate that Ares can earn an 11% return on equity, and given an estimated cost of equity capital of 9.75%, we calculate a fair value of $22.00/share, or 1.1x book value."
Thesis: "We estimate that Golub can earn a 10% ROE, and given an estimated cost of equity capital of 9%, we calculate a fair value of $17.00/share, or 1.1x book value."
Thesis: "We estimate that OBDC can earn a 9.5% ROE, and given an estimated cost of equity capital of 9%, we calculate a fair value of $16.00/share, or 1.04x book value."
Source: Oppenheimer
5. Sixth Street Specialty Lending
Google
Ticker: TSLX
Market cap: $2B
Group: Business Development Companies
Price target and upside: $23; 9.2%
Thesis: "We estimate TSLX can earn a 12% ROE, and given an estimated cost of equity capital of 9%, we calculate a fair value of $23.00, or 1.34x book value."
Thesis: "We see NVDA as the best-positioned semiconductor name in artificial intelligence. NVDA dominates the AI accelerator market with their current generation Hopper GPUs (H100 and H200). We expect NVDA to retain/expand its market leadership with the launch of its Blackwell architecture and rack-scale NVL36 and NVL72 SKUs later this year. … We expect NVDA's market position to continue whether Republicans or Democrats sweep the election."
Thesis: "The second-largest volume producer of AI accelerators, after NVDA, AVGO has produced GOOG's TPU for the last decade-plus. The chipmaker holds more than 75% share in the burgeoning custom compute accelerator market, supporting ASIC development projects at the world's largest CSPs/enterprises."
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images; Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI
The 2024 race is too close to call ahead of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's first debate.
Harris enters the debate with clear momentum, but Trump has held strong in the small number of battlegrounds.
Tuesday night's debate could upend an already chaotic race.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will share the stage for the first time Tuesday night, providing voters a look at the two major presidential candidates together after a summer of near-unprecedented upheaval.
Trump appears to have begun to slow Harris' rise, which began after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. She has dwarfed the former president's fundraising numbers, held raucous rallies, and, most importantly, cut into his polling lead. But a closely watched New York Times-Siena poll on Sunday showed why, in many cases, Trump remains a slight favorite.
Polling in most of the battleground states show margins that are too close to call. At this point in 2016, Trump was further behind Hillary Clinton. And in both that race and in 2020, pollsters underestimated his support. Trump's also holding strong in Pennsylvania, the most important battleground in the election.
The debate offers both sides a chance to upend the razor-thin race. Harris will face her largest audience yet since securing her historic nomination. Tens of millions of Americans historically watch these face-offs. More than 51 million Americans tuned into June's debate, the earliest ever, which featured a 2020 rematch that polling had long shown the nation was dreading. In both 2016 and 2020, only the Super Bowl garnered higher ratings.
"So it's like the NFL and the debates by a country mile are the most viewed things and so all of these people are tuning in, and the research is definitive that voters learn a lot from the debates and they leave the debates confident that they know about the campaign to meaningfully participate in politics," said Ben Warner, professor of political communication at the University of Missouri.
Warner said that the ageless Washington parlor game of how much debates truly matter overshadows what he and other researchers have found: that everyday Americans rely on debates to inform their opinions about the candidates.
"You can say, 'Are they really learning the nuances of the policy differences between the candidates?'" Warned said. "I think what's more important is how they feel about the candidates as people, they feel like they know what the candidates stand for, and they are comfortable making an informed decision between the candidates."
Trump will likely confront Harris over her shifting views.
This will also be Harris's most unscripted moment so far. Trump and his allies have unsuccessfully tried to goad her into holding more news conferences. They've also pointed out that her website had no policy positions until Sunday evening.
"Kamala has been in a total bubble, she's done half an interview and has otherwise faced no unscripted moments whatsoever," Matt Wolking, who served as deputy communications director for Trump's 2020 bid, total Business Insider.
Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, sat for a joint interview with CNN's Dana Bash, but outside that appearance, the vice president has had few interactions with the press. In comparison, Trump has held multiple news conferences and is trying to appeal to younger men through lengthy interviews with podcast hosts. At the same time, Harris has abandoned many of her most progressive views that she took during her failed 2020 Democratic presidential primary run. Trump's allies hope he calls out what they see as disingenuous flip-flops.
"She's not really quite sure what she believes that's why she is pretty evasive to answering questions on policy, policy positions that she has supported in the past and supposedly what she does not support now," Wolking said. "I think her embracing two or three of Trump's positions makes her seem like a chameleon."
Trump tore into Harris after she followed him, promising not to tax tips, a policy pushed by the powerful Culinary Union in Nevada. Harris also hasn't offered much explanation for her changing views. When Bash asked her about it, the vice president repeatedly declared that while some stances may have shifted, "my values have not changed."
A Democratic pollster cautions Harris should be careful in how she responds.
Since replacing Biden, Harris' team has embraced a more snarky and trolling tone aimed at getting under Trump's skin. Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith said that Harris needs to make sure that the lasting moment from the debate isn't a one-liner but rather an imprint of what she would do in office.
"Voters are always, ten times out of ten, more interested in hearing Kamala Harris talk about she is going to do and plans to do than anything else whether it is a zingy rebuttal, or an attack on Donald Trump, or anything else that could come out of Kamala Harris' mouth," Roth Smith, lead pollster for the Reid Hoffman-backed Blueprint, told Business Insider.
Roth Smith's polling has found that voters would prefer Harris continue to state her views "in relatively broad terms." He cautioned against getting too bogged down in policy specifics.
"It doesn't matter who is asking you whether it is the good faith actors or the bad faith actors, it would be a mistake for Kamala Harris and the Harris campaign to 60 days out to become a campaign of policy white papers instead of a campaign of priorities, energy, directional focus," Roth Smith. "They seem to understand that and I hope we will see that in the debate."
Harris has been dismissive of Trump's personal attacks herself, but Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik says he'll be watching very carefully how the former president handles her. Trump has a long history of attacking female foes in particularly caustic ways, which have underlined and exacerbated his struggle to appeal to women more broadly.
"I think it's particularly relevant in this election given how Trump treats women in general and how Trump treats Black women in particular," Sosnik said. "To me, that dynamic will be one of the most important to watch."
Sosnik emphasized that viewers might react differently to Trump's actions than in 2016 when he famously loomed behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during their town hall debate. Candidates are required to stay behind their podiums during Tuesday's debate, but that won't stop Trump from hurling lines like when he called Clinton a "nasty woman," an attack Democrats later fashioned into a badge of honor.
"The world is different now than it was eight years ago in a lot of ways, including the behavior he exhibited in 2016 I think he could get away with a lot more then than he can now in terms of offending people, some males but for sure women voters," Sosnik said.
The race is so close that even a small post-debate bump could be massive.
Tuesday's debate will mark the first time Harris and Trump will be in the same room together. It was supposed to be the second debate between Trump and Biden, but the president's disastrous debate performance set off a downward spiral that culminated in his decision to drop out. With perhaps the exception of the Nixon-Kennedy debate, no other presidential debate will loom larger in history.
The Harris-Trump debate will struggle to live up to that. But the sheer closeness of the race, means that their debate will matter — perhaps, far more than usual.
"I could show you over time that way more times than not, none of those three things matter in terms of the outcome of the election," Sosnik said about how the vice presidential selection, the conventions, and the debates rarely loom large. "In this election, all three probably mattered. The debates, for sure, have mattered and will matter."
Elon Musk might be doing his best to ruin Twitter, err X, but people still flock there during big news events.
DADO RUVIC/Reuters
A former Twitter employee in Ireland won about $600,000 for unfair dismissal.
Twitter assumed his resignation after he didn't respond to an email telling workers to commit to a "hardcore" culture — or quit.
HR and legal experts told BI what lessons the case holds about communicating with your employer.
Gary Rooney had worked at Twitter for nearly a decade.
He was director of "source to pay," a procurement role, in Twitter's European headquarters in Dublin when Elon Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion in October 2022.
Within weeks of taking over Twitter, Musk sent a now-infamous email to the entire workforce, asking them to commit to an "extremely hardcore" work schedule or resign.
"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," the billionaire wrote in the email.
Anyone who didn't click yes on a link in the email to "be part of the new Twitter" by the next day would receive three months' severance.
Rooney fell into that group. But rather than leaving quietly, he brought a case to Ireland's Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), claiming unfair dismissal. He won and was awarded around $600,000.
Recently released documents detail the WRC's decision, revealing new details about Rooney's case and Twitter's HR practices under Musk's direction.
Rooney saw the email but did not respond. Three days later, he received a second email from HR acknowledging his "decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer."
"At no time have I indicated to Twitter that I am resigning my position," he replied, a week later, according to the WRC's report. The company told him that not clicking yes was "treated as you having served notice to resign your employment."
Resignation by omission
It may not seem like common practice to terminate an employee without speaking to them, but no-show resignations aren't unheard of, said Robyn Hopper, an HR knowledge advisor at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Employee handbooks explain when termination may be considered a voluntary resignation. The issue is that many employees tend not to read company policies or handbooks until it's too late, said Stefanie Camfield, director of HR at Engage PEO.
Twitter was rebranded X, another change introduced by its new owner Elon Musk.
Noah Berger/AP Photo
Camfield said the other factor to be aware of is that many US companies do not offer a written employment contract to workers, and their position in a company is mostly "at-will."
"At-will means an employer or the employee can end the employment relationship for any reason or no reason, so long as it's not unlawful," she said.
If anything is disputed, the courts generally place the employee in a position of less strength.
For example, an employer can terminate an employee without notice if they fail to show up for work. They assume the employee has decided to resign and just hasn't told them yet, Camfield said. This is known as job abandonment.
How long the employee has depends, but most companies that Camfield works with set a three day rule.
Communication
Camfield said Twitter's handling of the situation was hampered by unclear communication and informal language.
"The employee wasn't really given clear terms on the changes to the terms of their employment. They were just told Twitter 2.0, that's not clarity.
"What stood out to me is that there's a question about whether the statement that was sent to the employee could be construed as the employee resigning by not checking yes," said Camfied. "There's not anything that actually evidences that the employee resigned."
However, she thought that the employee could have responded in some manner on the day, even if they did not agree with what was being presented to them.
Ending an employment relationship generally deserves face-to-face or at least personalized conversations, she said. But phone calls are often time-consuming and need to be scheduled. Particularly for a large workforce, it's just not feasible to individually call all employees.
Hopper pointed out that sometimes HR has their hands tied and is acting on orders from upper management.
"Some employers have a requirement that if an employee is resigning, and it is written as an email or text, they will call an employee to make sure that what was received is legitimate," she said. "But there is no law that I am aware of that states that an employee or employer cannot use email or other communication."
Hybrid and remote work has also created a new challenge for HR professionals, particularly with employees spread across regions with different regulations, Hopper said.
Your Slack messages aren't private
The WRC decision report shows that on the day Rooney received Musk's email, he messaged a colleague on Slack, saying: "Hey – wanted to let you know im going. I need to step away for my own sake. I'm deeply troubled by whats going on here these days."
In another message, he wrote: "Iv made the decision not to press the yes button, and wanted to drop in a goodbye here."
Twitter used these messages and others as evidence that he intended to leave the company. The WRC found the slack messages had "no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the Complainant's employment."
Even though Rooney won his case, experts told BI that it should serve as a reminder to all employees about the risks of using internal messaging systems.
Slack is a great tool for communication in the hybrid world, said Camfield.
Slack
Employers often have the right to monitor and preserve data on Slack. They primarily use it to ensure company policies are being followed, said Camfield, but it can be used however they see fit — including as evidence in a lawsuit, as Twitter did in this case.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, she added.
"This messaging tends to encourage employees to talk more frequently and more casually. And it can lead to inappropriate conversations."
Slack messages could just as easily be used as evidence in a sexual harassment case, Camfield said.
Slack is still a great tool for keeping teams connected in the age of hybrid work. However, employers need to train employees to understand that company policies extend to Slack and that their information is not private, she said.
Google faces a landmark antitrust trial over its alleged digital ad market monopoly.
The DOJ and 17 states allege Google used acquisitions and ad auction tactics illegally.
A breakup could reshape the $691 billion online ad market, boosting rivals like The Trade Desk.
Google executives and lawyers are headed to the Eastern District of Virginia Courthouse on Monday to face a landmark antitrust trial that could result in the breakup of its business.
That outcome would be a boon for Google's adtech rivals but wouldn't necessarily provide an instant panacea for the publishers and advertisers that have come to depend on its services.
The case, brought by the US Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general, alleges that Google used acquisitions and anticompetitive ad auction tactics to build an illegal monopoly of the digital ad market.
The trial is focused on the open web display ad market and the tools that power the ad auctions that happen in the milliseconds it takes for a webpage to load.
Google owns an ad server that publishers use to manage their ad inventory, buying tools that advertisers use to purchase ads, and an ad exchange that connects the two. It owns the most popular of all three technologies, which the DOJ alleges helped the company impede rivals, inflate advertising costs, and reduce revenue for publishers.
The trial is set to last multiple weeks, and Google will likely appeal if the judge doesn't rule in its favor. That means it could be months before the real ramifications of the case are known.
Still, the case is being closely watched by all members of the online ad ecosystem, which is expected to reach some $691 billion in spending this year. The DOJ and the states are seeking a breakup of Google's adtech business. Such a move would not only transform the online advertising landscape. It would be the "biggest forced corporate shake-up since Microsoft unbundled the Internet Explorer browser in 2000," Macquarie media tech analyst Tim Nollen wrote in a recent research note.
Business Insider interviewed analysts, legal experts, and adtech insiders to explore how the industry would shape up if Google is declawed. Google on Sunday published a blog post that said it intends to show in court how advertisers and publishers choose to use its adtech because it "simple, affordable, and effective."
A Google breakup would be a major boost for rival adtech firms like The Trade Desk and Magnite
It's hard to find an adtech company that isn't gunning for Google to lose this case.
The DOJ wants the judge to rule that Google needs to separate its publisher adtech — the DoubleClick for Publishers ad server and its Google AdExchange — from its advertiser adtech, namely its Google Ads and Display & Video 360 ad-buying platforms.
The US Department of Justice
The argument goes that by owning the entire adtech stack, Google has access to a huge pool of ad inventory that it can tie to demand on its ad-buying platforms. That setup means most publishers select Google as their ad server, the complaint argues.
Plus, Google has troves of user data from its logged-in users on platforms like Chrome and Gmail. Combined, that gives Google wide visibility across the entire auction process, the ability to refine its bids accordingly, and a way to self-preference its own ad inventory tech, the complaint says.
Many industry experts think that untethering Google's supply and demand side would level the playing field for competing tech companies with big advertising businesses, such as Meta and Amazon, as well as pureplay adtech firms. That, in turn, could boost innovation in the space, reducing costs for advertisers and increasing revenue for publishers, some experts say.
"[Demand-side platforms] like The Trade Desk, [supply-side platforms] like Magnite and PubMatic, specialist ad tech services like Criteo, and companies supporting alternative IDs and data collaboration like LiveRamp, all should see a better competitive landscape without the heavy hands of Google scooping up so much of the business itself, and for its own purposes (YouTube)," Macquarie's Nollen wrote in a recent research note.
Separately, a divestiture could encourage more transparency and traceability of data flows within the online ad ecosystem, Elettra Bietti, assistant professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, told Business Insider.
"Transparency, in turn, could lead to better regulation of surveillance and behavioral advertising, which is currently a significant concern for privacy advocates," she added.
A DOJ win isn't necessarily good news for all publishers and advertisers
Google and its lawyers are expected to argue in court that a breakup of its adtech stack would harm publishers and advertisers and make it more difficult for the company to invest in important research in areas like artificial intelligence.
The barrier to entry to start advertising on Google Ads is incredibly low, which is part of the reason why it has attracted so many small business advertisers.
Mark Jamison, director and professor of the Public Utility Research Center and director of the Digital Markets Initiative at the University of Florida, has said a breakup of Google and the resulting free-for-all from lower quality adtech players could result in higher ad prices and lower quality ads.
"Absent evidence that Google is artificially restricting the quantity or quantity of ads, and that consumers would accept more ads, a breakup of Google's business will harm small businesses by removing their preferred advertising channel," he told Business Insider.
One publisher tech executive, who asked for anonymity to preserve business relationships, said while many in the publishing community are unhappy with some of Google's historical actions, a breakup might not be the best outcome.
This executive said that if Google sold off its sell-side business, its DV360 ad-buying platform might not have any incentive to continue spending on the open web and instead just direct even more ad dollars to Google's own platforms. Separately, they said that while a separation of Google's ad server and its ad exchange would be good for competition in the adtech market, it might drive ad server costs up for publishers.
Google's ad server is "a loss leader, they make all their money in AdX," the exec said, referring to Google's ad exchange that connects buyers and sellers.
Global regulators have Google in their sights, too
Any unraveling of Google's ad empire would be complex.
A separate adtech company would still likely be worth billions, meaning any potential suitor with enough capital to acquire it would encounter its own competition issues. It's more likely that it would be spun off into a separate company. But then there's also the technical challenge of untangling assets that, by design, have become so intertwined.
Either way, experts generally think Google will probably come away from this trial with a bloody nose as regulators are increasingly taking a dim view of its advertising practices. The company recently lost a separate search ads antitrust trial.
Over the pond, the European Union said last year it might look to break up Google's adtech business. And just last Friday, the UK's competition watchdog said its investigation into Google's adtech practices had provisionally found Google had abused its dominant positions in operating its publisher ad server and ad buying tools. In a statement, Google said it disagreed with the CMA's findings, which it said were based on "flawed interpretations of the ad tech sector."
"It's a bad month to be a monopolist," wrote Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence at adtech watchdog Check My Ads.
Relationship: Primary has no financial interest in Abridge. IVP is an investor in Abridge.
Total funding: $212.5 million
What it does: Abridge's generative AI tech transcribes patient-doctor interactions and documents those visits in electronic health records.
Why it's on the list: In February, Abridge raised a $150 million Series C round to continue developing its tech and relieve clinicians' administrative burdens as healthcare's labor crisis continues. Narayen and Bass highlighted Abridge's partnership with EHR giant Epic, which could help the startup gain more traction with hospitals this year.
"Abridge has a lot of the necessary ingredients (capital, early commercial traction, strong ecosystem partners, high caliber team) to support provider workflows, help improve communication with patients while also serving as a scaled GenAI business, that could spur additional investment in the space," Bass said.
Air Space Intelligence
Renata Quintini is the cofounder and managing director of Renegade Partners.
Total funding: $222.28 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: AI-powered operating system for aerospace and defense
Why it's on the list: "Their platform helps the world's most complex air operations make better, faster, and more data driven decisions," Quintini said. "ASI had already established itself as the market leader with domestic airlines, working with several major US carriers in mission-critical capacities." The startup has also made progress this year toward "larger scale deployments with the DoD," Quintini said, opening up a US-based engineering hub and hiring talent for this endeavor, she added.
AliveCor: helps people remotely manage their heart health
Alex Morgan
Khosla Ventures
Startup: AliveCor
Recommended by: Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures
Relationship: Khosla is an investor in AliveCor.
Total funding: $350 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: AliveCor helps people remotely manage their heart health with connected devices like personal electrocardiograms.
Why it's on the list: In June, AliveCor launched its FDA-approved AI, which can detect 35 cardiac conditions including heart attacks. That AI will be powered by its new pocket-sized ECG to measure the electrical impulses of a patient's heart.
"Because the device is compact and easy to use, this new device can be used in places that don't already have ECG machines on hand, and in particular, will accelerate decision-making around heart attacks," Morgan said.
Braintrust: Infrastructure stack for enterprise AI
Astasia Myers and Vivek Ramaswami
Total funding: $8.3 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Braintrust is the infrastructure stack for enterprise AI products. The company helps enterprise customers through the AI development process, supporting with evaluations, logging, data management, and prompting. Braintrust also provides customers with access to top AI models via an API.
Why it's on the list: Braintrust is "critical infrastructure for leading technology companies like Zapier, Coda, Airtable, and Instacart" and "boosts AI accuracy by over 30%," said Narayen.
"The founder and CEO Ankur Goyal is a second-time founder who sold his last company to Figma, where he then led AI," said Riley. "The speed at which he and the team have shipped products and the mindshare they have developed amongst leading builders in the AI community is truly unique."
Cake AI: an integrated platform for running the full AI stack
Tobias Citron
Primary
Startup: Cake AI
Recommended by: Tobias Citron, Primary
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: Undisclosed
What it does: An integrated platform for running the full AI stack
Why it's on the list: Cake offers a library of ready-to-install components designed specifically for generative AI that allow developers to build and rebuild their AI infrastructure quickly and securely.
From cloud providers to hardware to vector databases to large language models, Cake helps companies navigate the complex universe of AI tools and services and easily stitch them together into efficient systems. Though it may be less sexy than developing state of the art models, Cake is helping companies do the messy work of actually deploying AI.
"One of the fastest growing companies in the Primary portfolio," said Citron.
Clay: AI sales and marketing
Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures
Cowboy Ventures
Startup: Clay
Recommended by: Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $66 million, according to Pitchbook.
What it does: It helps teams enrich their data, automate personalizing outreach, and implement any idea for a go-to-market strategy.
Why it's on the list: Clay just raised a new round of funding from Sequoia and Meritech, valuing the company at $500 million.
"Clay allows users to run AI prompts on each cell within a spreadsheet, focusing on GTM," said Lee "Clay has consolidated onto one platform a process that used to require go-to-market teams to subscribe to many expensive data sources and write custom code."
Cranium: security and compliance for generative AI
Kyle York
York IE
Startup: Cranium
Recommended by: Kyle York, York IE
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $32 million, according to Pitchbook.
What it does: Allows organizations to ensure the security and compliance of their AI and GenAI systems.
Why it's on the list: Cranium was developed within KPMG's startup studio and was eventually spun out. Last year, the company raised $25 million from Telstra Ventures with participation from KPMG.
"They are on an incredible journey emerging from stealth in 2023 and spinning out of KPMG and securing $25M in Series A in October," York said.
Connect the Dots: Relationship management platform for sales teams
Scott Beechuk
Norwest Venture Partners
Startup: Connect the Dots
Recommended by: Scott Beechuk, Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: Undisclosed.
What it does: Connect the Dots is an AI-powered relationship management platform for sales teams. Its AI maps generate a list of warm introductions for sales development representatives, business development representatives, and account executives.
Why it's on the list: "Software buyers are exhausted with cold inbound emails and calls -- relationship-based selling is the future of B2B sales," said Beechuk. The company's "professional relationship graph uses AI to determine 'who really knows who' in your network and chooses the best path into each buyer," said Beechuk. It generates ROI for customers within the first month of purchase, said Beechuk.
Continua AI: always-on, deeply integrated LLMs
S. "Soma" Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group
Madrona Venture Group
Startup: Continua AI
Recommended by: S. Somasegar, Madrona
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: Undisclosed
What it does: Continua AI is developing what it calls "always-on, deeply integrated LLMs" to create personal AI assistants that augment individual productivity and help with everything from generating new ideas to recalling forgotten information.
Why it's on the list: Continua is led by David Petrou, a longtime Google software engineer who has been steeped in AI for decades and who helped deploy machine learning capabilities on Android devices.
'Continua is redefining traditional search companies and leveraging LLMs to revolutionize how people interact with information, services, and each other," said Somasegar.
What it does: Cove operates AI-driven coworking spaces.
Why it's on the list:
Backed by Thrive Capital and Elad Gil, Cove's founding team worked on the trust and safety team at Meta.
"With its infinite canvas designed for collaboration, Cove offers consumers one of the most powerful thought partners and exploration experiences they've ever seen, which can be seamlessly applied across a broad range of projects and tasks," Clark said.
Datology: companies identify the best data to train and fine tune their AI models
Astasia Myers and Jon Chu.
Felicis; Khosla Ventures
Startup: Datology
Recommended by: Astasia Myers, Felicis and Jon Chu, Khosla Ventures
Relationship: Felicis is an investor, Khosla has no financial interest
Total funding: $57 million, according to Pitchbook.
What it does: Datology helps companies identify the best data to train and fine tune their AI models.
Why it's on the list:
Earlier this year, Datalogy raised $46 million in new funding led by Felicis, with Elad Gil, M12, the Amazon Alexa fund, Amplify and Radical Ventures participating.
Datology is helping to solve a core problem in the development large AI models, how to find and curate the best data for your particular task. "Models are what they eat. And Datology helps companies feed their ML models the best data," said Chu.
Datology can help developers sift through petabytes of unlabeled data without humans in the loop, pulling out the raw material needed to turn an underperforming model into a more powerful technology.
Datavolo: helps generative AI models access unstructured data
Dave Zilberman
Northwest Venture Partners
Startup: Datavolo
Recommended by: Dave Zilberman, Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $21 million, according to the company.
What it does: Datavolo helps customers access all their data, including the unstructured files that large language models rely on, and build secure multimodal data pipelines.
Why it's on the list:Investors are buzzing about the "picks and shovels" that make artificial intelligence more powerful and easier for people to use. Datavolo does just that.
"Most data pipeline solutions and gen AI models are based on structured data sets, but there's a plethora of unstructured data that's not being captured and used for model training," said Zilberman, who invests in enterprise and infrastructure. "Datavolo leverages an open-source solution called NiFi that the founders established many years ago, but now used for gen AI."
Decagon: Enterprise customer support agents
Corinne Riley
Greylock
Startup: Decagon
Recommended by: Corinne Riley, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $35 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does:Decagon builds AI agents for customer support automation. Decagon's AI agents can respond to a range of support requests based on enterprise customers' workflows and data sources. The company also recommends improvements based on its AI-powered analytics.
Why it's on the list: "Unlike many companies in the customer support space, Decagon moves past the traditional chatbot," said Riley. The company takes a " very differentiated AI-first approach which has allowed them to achieve early customer wins." Decagon works with companies like Rippling, Eventbrite, Motion, and Vanta.
Distributional: Automated AI testing
Scott Beechuk
Norwest Venture Partners
Startup: Distributional
Recommended by: Scott Beechuk, Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $11 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Distributional is a testing and evaluation platform for enterprise AI. The company strives to make AI safe and reliable by automating AI testing.
Why it's on the list: "The Continuous Integration pipeline for software is not designed for modern AI code development," said Beechuk. "Distributional is building a developer-focused system to automate the testing of AI code to help developers stay within guardrails that are important to their business."
Enveda Biosciences: leveraging AI to discover and develop new drugs from plants
Ben Hemani
Bison Ventures
Startup: Enveda Biosciences
Recommended by: Ben Hemani, Bison Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $230 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Enveda is leveraging AI to discover and develop new drugs from plants.
Why it's on the list: In June, Enveda grew its war chest with another $55 million in funding from new investors, including Microsoft. It plans to use the funds to invest further in research and development and to advance several drug candidates to clinical trials later this year.
"The company is led by a visionary founder, Dr. Viswa Colluru, who brings rare experience in building a true AI-enabled biotech platform from his time at Recursion," Hemani said.
Ezra: uses AI with full-body MRI scans
Sara Deshpande
Maven Ventures
Startup: Ezra
Recommended by: Sara Deshpande, Maven Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $41 million, according to Pitchbook.
What it does: Ezra's AI tech pairs with full-body MRI scans for early detection of health conditions like cancer.
Why it's on the list: Deshpande highlighted Ezra's focus on preventive care, a rarity in the US healthcare system, and personalized access to health data.
Ezra's tech is making MRI scans faster, too — the scans currently take thirty minutes, and CEO Emi Gal told Business Insider in February at the time of Ezra's $21 million Series B raise that the company is aiming to get that down to 10 minutes. Deshpande noted that the accuracy of Ezra's tech should continue to improve over time.
Finally: uses AI to provide automated bookkeeping
Fiat Ventures managing partner Marcos Fernandez.
Fiat Ventures
Startup: Finally
Recommended by: Marcos Fernandez, Fiat Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $108.2 million, per Pitchbook.
What it does: Finally uses AI to provide automated bookkeeping software.
Why it's on the list:
Miami-based Finally recently raised $10 million in new funding and signing on 1,000 new businesses a month.
"Finally has had incredible traction, growth and product development," Fernandez said. "The opportunity to provide a full-stack solution for the millions of SMBs in the United States gives Finally a clear path to becoming a Decacorn in the coming years."
Gamma: AI-powered content creation tool for enterprise
122 West Ventures co-founder AJ Solimine
122 West Ventures
Startup: Gamma
Recommended by: AJ Solimine, Script Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $21.5 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Gamma is an AI-powered content creation tool for enterprise customers. The tool enables users to create presentations, websites, and documents quickly.
"In just a few short years, Gamma has already amassed 18M+ users, 60M+ gammas created, and is profitable," said Solimine. "They are revolutionizing how individuals and businesses take ideas, create powerful content, and share it with colleagues and the world."
Glean: an AI platform for a company's data
BoldSTART Ventures general partner Ed Sim
Boldstart Ventures
Startup: Glean
Recommended by: Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $356 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Enterprise AI platform for all a company's data.
Glean just raised $200 million from Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed, and was reportedly valued at $2.2 billion. Customers include Sony Electronics and Databricks.
Why it's on the list: "An early leader in the space, growing quickly with a highly differentiated product preserving the privacy and security of enterprise data while providing a ChatGPT- like experience to end users," Sim said.
Greenlite: automates compliance for enterprise fintech using AI
Seth Rosenberg.
Greylock
Startup: Greenlite
Recommended by: Seth Rosenberg, Greylock
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $4.8 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Automates compliance for enterprise fintechs and banks using AI.
Why it's on the list: "Greenlite has seen exceptional customer demands with enterprise banks and fintechs, and has proven one of the few enterprise-grade applications for generative AI — automating tedious compliance workflows like alert handling, periodic reviews and document processing, improving efficiency and reducing human error," Rosenberg said.
Haize Labs: automatic stress testing of large language models
Tobias Citron
Primary
Startup: Haize Labs
Recommended by: Tobias Citron, Primary
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: Undisclosed.
What it does: Automatic stress testing of large language models.
Why it's on the list: Haize promises to "robustify" any large language model through automated red-teaming that continuously stress tests and identifies vulnerabilities. As AI models become more powerful and perform tasks on a scale an order of magnitude beyond what a human mind alone can contain, the question of how to make sure they're secure becomes increasingly difficult to answer.
"[It's a] novel technology and [Haize had] an amazing launch, led by a super smart founder with ambitions to build a generational company," said Citron.
HeyGen: uses generative AI to create videos
Alex Kayyal
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Startup: HeyGen
Recommended by: Alex Kayyal, Lightspeed
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $65.6 million, according to Pitchbook.
What it does: Uses generative AI to create videos.
Why it's on the list: HeyGen recently raised $60 million in a new round of funding, which valued the startup at more than $500 million.
"Content creation is being democratized by AI," said Kayyal. "HeyGen has built a truly incredible product that allows for mass personalization of video content at scale. The growth the company is experiencing is truly unprecedented."
Intenseye: an AI-powered health and safety platform
Alex Kayyal
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Startup: Intenseye
Recommended by: Alex Kayyal, Lightspeed
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $94 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: An AI-powered health and safety platform that uses computer vision to prevent workplace accidents.
Why it's on the list: Earlier this year, Intenseye raised $64 million led by Lightspeed.
"Nearly 3 million people die every year from workplace accidents," said Kayyal. "Intenseye is now processing over 20 billion images daily to in real-time to prevent such accidents, for companies like Heineken, Siemens, Unilever and AngloAmerican."
InWorld AI: AI gaming
Moritz Baier-Lentz.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Startup: InWorld AI
Recommended by: Moritz Baier-Lentz, Lightspeed
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $120 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: AI engine for gaming.
Why it's on the list: AI gaming startup InWorld AI raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation last year. Other investors include Meta and Disney. The company boasts a huge roster of partnerships and customers, including Microsoft Xbox, Nvidia, Sony, Epic Games, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Roblox.
This is the "best-funded and highest-valued AI gaming startup globally," according to Baier-Lentz, who adds InWorld is "using AI not only to make video games cheaper or easier to produce, but to create completely novel, previously impossible player experiences."
Langchain: helps developers construct LLM-powered apps
Navin Chaddha and Dave Munichiello.
Mayfield; GV
Startup: Langchain
Recommended by: Navin Chaddha, Mayfield, and Dave Munichiello, GV
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $35 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Langchain is a platform that helps developers construct LLM-powered apps.
Why it's on the list:
Earlier this year, Langchain raised $25 million in funding led by Sequoia at a $200 million valuation.
LangChain has over 100K developers using its products to build AI apps. They are getting over 5 million monthly downloads, and over 50,000 apps have been built on their framework, Chadda explained.
LangChain's open framework benefits from the force of the community; it keeps pace with the cutting edge, so that companies can too. With 100+ tool integrations, 60+ models supported, and easy adoption of the latest cognitive architectures, LangChain gives companies choice, flexibility, and a build-kit to move fast, said Chaddha.
Total funding: $9.4 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Decision intelligence software that helps supply chain organizations build custom AI applications.
Why it's on the list: "I believe that all critical supply chain decisions will be made with best in class data science and AI going forward, but in order to do so, companies will need the tools to make that easy," said Fredericks. "Lyric levels the playing field by making it faster, cheaper and easier than ever to make AI applications work for supply chain."
Modal: helps customers deploy code and large language models in the cloud
Jerry Chen
Greylock
Startup: Modal
Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $23 million, according to the company.
What it does: Modal helps customers deploy code and large language models in the cloud, eliminating their need to set up cumbersome and costly infrastructure.
Why it's on the list: Engineers at Ramp, Substack, and Suno use Modal to run some of their most data-intensive projects, while finance chiefs love it because customers pay only for the compute power they use. Chen calls Modal's solution "the next-generation infrastructure cloud."
"Modal has won a new generation of developers not only in AI but cloud and data in general where they need to scale up and run large batch jobs or queues," Chen said.
Modular: helps streamline the process of developing and deploying AI systems
Dave Munichiello
GV
Startup: Modular
Recommended by: Dave Munichiello, GV
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $130 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Modular's system helps streamline the process of developing and deploying AI systems.
Why it's on the list:
Last year, Modular raised $100 million in fresh funding led by General Catalyst, with GV, SV Angel, Greylock and Factory participating.
"Modular is the fastest way to run AI, period," said Munichiello. The company's MAX framework helps generative AI systems run more efficiently and more smoothly, allowing developers to get the most out of their hardware and their cloud providers.
"With their vision for making AI accessible for all developers, Modular's co-founding team has attracted the best software compiler and AI infrastructure talent across the industry," added Munichiello.
Mutiny: an AI platform for sales and marketing
Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures
Cowboy Ventures
Startup: Mutiny
Recommended by: Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $72 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: An account-based AI platform that helps companies unify sales and marketing to generate pipeline and revenue from their target accounts at scale.
Why it's on the list:
In 2022, Mutiny raised $50 million co-led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners at a $600 million valuation, according to TechCrunch. The startup has also raised funding from Sequoia Capital and Cowboy, and customers include Snowflake, 6sense, and Qualtrics.
"Most marketing teams can't play a meaningful role in breaking through to target accounts because the 1:1 marketing strategies that work don't scale, and what scales doesn't work," Lee said.
"Mutiny leverages AI to help B2B companies generate pipeline and revenue from their target accounts through AI-powered personalized experiences, 1:1 microsites, and account intelligence - which is more important than ever in the current software consolidation cycle / market and budget environment."
Norm AI: an AI tool for compliance officers
Felicis founder and managing partner Aydin Senkut
Felicis
Startup: Norm AI
Recommended by: Aydin Senkut, Felicis
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $38 million, according to the company.
What it does: Norm AI is the pocket tool of compliance officers. It uses generative artificial intelligence to identify and mitigate risks and automate some regulatory tasks.
Why it's on the list: Norm AI brings together top lawyers, general counsels, regulatory gurus, and technologists with the mission of making life easier for chief compliance officers.
"Compliance is an area that sorely needs AI solutions, and Norm is one of the most promising teams in this space," Senkut said. "They are pioneering research on how to get LLMs to follow the rules and be more reliable, privacy-enhanced, and able to follow specific legal guidance."
Nox: a personalized AI assistant
Ann Miura-Ko, cofounder and partner at Floodgate
Why it's on the list: Founder Molly Cantillon dropped out of Stanford at 20 to develop Nox.
"Nox is a personal AI company that is your personal assistant – garnering all the context needed to make you the most effective, proactive and productive in your day-to-day life," said Miura-Ko. "We are at an interesting inflection point at the intersection of data and AI especially with our own personal data. Molly, [Nox's founder] has captured the ability to seamlessly understand the consumer with all of the necessary context to fulfill daily tasks.
Overland AI: autonomous navigation for off-road vehicles
Chris Morales is a defense tech partner at Point 72 Ventures.
Point 72 Ventures
Startup: Overland AI
Recommended by: Chris Morales, Point72 Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $10.1 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Developer of autonomous navigation for off-road autonomous vehicles, specifically for defense.
Why it's on the list: The startup was founded just last year, but it's already gaining traction with the Department of Defense, which has awarded it several contracts, Morales said. Overland's autonomy software called OverDrive, was designed to control uncrewed vehicles in any terrain and "purpose-built for defense applications," Morales said. "Through its work with DARPA and the U.S. Army, Overland AI is building intelligent capabilities to power modern ground operations, now and for decades to come," he added.
Protect AI: security for AI and machine learning
BoldSTART Ventures general partner Ed Sim
Boldstart Ventures
Startup: Protect AI
Recommended by: Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $48.5 million, according to Pitchbook
What it does: Security for AI and machine learning
Why it's on the list: Last year, Protect AI raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures and others. Prior to founding Protect AI, co-founders Ian Swanson and Daryan Dehghanpisheh worked at AWS and Oracle.
"Protect AI is the platform for AI and ML Security. Protect AI is the broadest and most comprehensive platform to secure your AI. It enables you to see, know, and manage security risks to defend against unique AI security threats, and embrace MLSecOps for a safer AI-powered world," said Sim.
"Amazing team, amazing product, ramping up customer base quickly," Sim said. "This is one of the most important areas of AI."
Sakana AI: an AI research lab
Basis Set Ventures founder Xuezhao Lan
Basis Set Ventures
Startup: Sakana AI
Recommended by: Lan Xuezhao, Basis Set Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $155 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Sakana is an AI research lab building a foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence.
Why it's on the list:
Founded by two former Google AI researchers, Sakana was recently rumored to be valued at $1 billion in a new funding round.
"This is one of the strongest research teams out there building for the next-gen, nature-inspired AI in Asia," Xuezhao said.
Sema4.ai: building enterprise AI agents
Navin Chaddha is the managing partner of venture capital fund Mayfield.
Total funding: $54 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Sema4.ai is building enterprise AI agents that can reason, collaborate, and act.
Why it's on the list:
During its launch out of stealth, the company announced $30.5 million in funding from Mayfield and Benchmark, along with the acquisition of open-source automation leader, Robocorp.
Sema4.ai says it's trying to close the "automation gap" within companies, whereby skilled knowledge workers have to fill the gaps left by AI-powered systems that are "all talk, no action."
The company is developing AI agents that can move beyond simple repetitive tasks and actually solve real-world problems, taking into account the unique context of the organization and working seamlessly with existing teams. "The company paves the way for enterprises to realize the full potential of AI," says Chaddha.
Seven AI: uses AI to find and investigate cybersecurity threats
Jason Risch
Greylock
Startup: Seven AI
Recommended by: Jason Risch, Greylock
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $36 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Uses an AI agentic approach to hunt and investigate cyber threats in a security operations center.
Why it's on the list:
Seven AI recently raised $26 million from Greylock, and was reportedly valued at over $100 million.
"Seven AI uses an AI agentic approach to hunt and investigate cyber threats in a security operations center (SOC). GenAI is transforming the attack landscape, allowing attackers to probe defenses and replicate attacks at a scale not seen before. Fighting this level of AI requires AI," said Risch.
"There is a significant shortage of cybersecurity professionals in the US and globally, leaving security operations teams understaffed to deal with the inundation of alerts - timely and effective triage is nearly impossible manually," Risch said.
Slang.ai: uses conversational AI to improve customer service
Brian Hollins and Satya Patel
Recommended by: Brian Hollins, Collide Capital and Satya Patel, Homebrew
Relationship: Investors
Total funding: $20.57 million, according to PitchBook
What it does:Slang.ai uses conversational AI to improve customer service.
Why it's on the list:
Hundreds of restaurants are using Slang's technology to power their phones, according to Fast Company. The startup's backers include Homebrew, Stage 2 Capital, Wing VC, Underscore VC, Active Capital and Collide Capital.
"There are tailwinds around small businesses needing voice support but not being able to afford it," Hollins said. The founder is incredible, and he is effectively creating the SquareSpace for voice, so you can turn it on in a week instead of months, at a fraction of the cost."
SmarterDx: uses AI to drive revenue for hospital systems
Ann Miura-Ko is a top seed investor.
Courtesy
Startup: SmarterDx
Recommended by: Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $71 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: SmarterDx is a clinical AI company that discovers, delivers and drives revenue and care for hospital systems.
Why it's on the list: "SmarterDx's clinical AI is solving an issue that has been complex for many years in healthcare," said TK.
"Their technology's ability to unlock 'found' revenue becomes a no-brainer for hospital systems. The team, led by Michael Gao, also makes us incredibly excited for a company that is still just getting started. Mike and Josh are not just technologists but also former clinical leaders – enabling them to bring a first-hand experience that hospital systems appreciate."
Superwhisper: uses AI to convert speech into text
Hustle Fund co-founder Elizabeth Yin
Hustle Fund
Startup: Superwhisper
Recommended by: Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: Not disclosed
What it does: Superwhisper's app uses AI to convert speech into text.
Why it's on the list:
Yin said Superwhisper's AI capabilities for offline audio transcription and copyediting can dramatically speed up the writing process. "What used to take me hours to write a blog post, I can now do in less than 30 minutes with a combination of talking and proofreading the article Superwhisper creates," she said.
Typeface AI: multi-modal generative AI tools
S. "Soma" Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group
Madrona Venture Group
Startup: Typeface AI
Recommended by: S. Somasegar, Madrona
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $165 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Typeface develops multi-modal generative AI tools to create customer-facing content that aligns with a company's brand identity and voice.
Why it's on the list: Since its founding in 2022, the company has soared to a billion-dollar valuation and built partnerships with some of tech's biggest companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Somasegar calls it "truly one of the first generative AI companies for the enterprise."
Unstructured: extracts and transforms enterprise data
Vivek Ramaswami
Madrona
Startup: Unstructured
Recommended by: Vivek Ramaswami, Madrona
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $68 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Unstructured is an open-source product that makes messy, unstructured data available for use in LLMs and vector databases.
Why it's on the list:
Unstructured's open source product is well-loved by developers at large and small companies like MongoDB, Langchain, Weaviate and many others, says Ramaswami.
"Unstructured takes the 80% of data that lives in messy, complex, hard-to-use formats (think PDFs, CSVs, HTML etc) and makes that data accessible for use inside LLMs and vector databases," he said.
"They are quickly getting adoption within enterprises and become a key part of the AI developer stack. The reason it is special in 2024 is because every enterprise is trying to figure out how best to leverage its proprietary data for use in LLMs, and Unstructured is helping make that happen."
Vannever Labs: analyzing battlefield data
Larsen Jensen, founder and general partner of Harpoon Ventures.
Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures
Startup: Vannevar Labs
Recommended by: Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $91.1 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: The startup develops AI-powered tools that analyze battlefield data.
Why it's on the list: " In 2024, Vannevar continues to innovate with AI-driven, defense-industry-focused software suites, expanding its deployment across military bases and focusing on team growth to support advanced AI-driven products for battlefield intelligence and operational security, aiming to enhance real-time decision-making and counter-threat capabilities to bolster national security," Jensen said.
Total funding: $24.87 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Windborne Systems is building a AI-powered weather forecasting program that accounts for climate change.
Why it's on the list:
Founded by a team of Stanford graduates, Windborne recently raised $15 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures.
"I think Windborne is exciting because it is tackling a massive problem in a manner which could be incredibly cost-effective and scalable," Patel said. "There are massive uses for more accurate weather data, across agriculture, transportation, insurance, defense and almost every other industry."
Zyphra: building state space models for AI
Ben Hemani
Bison Ventures
Startup: Zyphra
Recommended by: Ben Hemani, Bison Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: Undisclosed
What it does: Zyphra is working toward a future of personalized artificial intelligence by building smaller, more efficient models for simple use cases.
Why it's on the list: The startup made waves this past spring by releasing Zamba, an SSM-hybrid foundation model that Zyphra says can run locally on almost any device. The team, which includes former employees of Google DeepMind, StabilityAI, Neuralink, and Nvidia, is now developing a multimodal edge intelligence platform and an on-device personal AI.
"Every major AI company is focused on using off-the-shelf technology to create bigger and bigger models with little regard for cost and energy usage," said Hemani, whose firm Bison Ventures participated in Zyphra's seed round of funding. "Zyphra has been able to demonstrate that you can have a model as powerful as GPT-4o literally in the palm of your hand."
