The Gradient: Perspectives on AI Nathan Benaich: The State of AI Report
Air Street's Value Proposition
- Air Street Capital helps ML founders refine their company narrative and strategy for broader appeal.
- They also assist with team building and hiring within the ML community.
Spinout Challenges
- Spinouts, formed from university inventions, face licensing challenges that limit investor access.
- They only have one exit route: the technology transfer office.
Spinout Deal Friction
- Long deal times and high equity take rates hinder spinout success.
- Some deals take over six months, deterring founders and investors.
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In episode 48 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nathan Benaich.
Nathan is Founder and General Partner at Air Street Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm focused on investing in AI-first technology and life sciences companies. Nathan runs a number of communities focused on AI including the Research and Applied AI Summit and leads Spinout.fyi to improve the creation of university spinouts. Together with investor Ian Hogarth, Nathan co-authors the State of AI Report.
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Outline:
* (00:00) Intro
* (02:40) Nathan’s interests in AI, life sciences, investing
* (04:10) Biotech and tech-bio companies
* (08:00) Why Nathan went into VC
* (10:15) Air Street Capital’s focus, investing in AI at an early stage
* (14:30) Why Nathan believes in specialism over generalism in AI, balancing consumer-focused ML with serious technical work
* (17:30) The European startup ecosystem
* (19:30) Spinouts and inventions born in academia
* (23:35) Spinout.fyi and issues with the European model
* (27:50) In the UK, only 4% of private AI companies are spinouts
* (30:00) Solutions
* (32:55) Origins of the State of AI Report
* (35:00) Looking back on Nathan’s 2021 predictions: Anthropic and JAX
* (39:00) AI semiconductors and the difficult reality
* (42:45) Nathan’s perspectives on AI safety/alignment
* (46:00) Long-termism and debates, safety research as an input into improving capabilities
* (49:50) Decentralization and the commercialization of open-source AI (Stability AI, Eleuther AI, etc.)
* (53:00) Second-order applications of diffusion models—chemistry, small molecule design, genome editors
* (59:00) Semiconductor restrictions and geopolitics
* (1:03:45) This year’s State of AI predictions
* (1:04:30) Trouble in semiconductor startup land
* (1:08:40) Predictions for AGI startups
* (1:14:20) How regulation of AGI startups might look
* (1:16:40) Nathan’s advice for founders, investors, and researchers
* (1:19:00) Outro
Links:
* Rewriting the European spinout playbook
* Other sources mentioned
* Bridging the Gap: the case for an Incompletely Theorized Agreement on AI policy
* Choking Off China’s Access to the Future of AI
* China's New AI Governance Initiatives Shouldn't Be Ignored
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