Maybe it's a good thing that we're not seeing too many AI unicorns | Equity Podcast

21 Aug 2024 (26 days ago)

AI Regulation and OpenAI Leadership Changes

A new AI regulation bill (Bill 1047) is making its way through the California state legislature. This bill aims to regulate AI at the model level and mandates safety testing for companies spending over 100 million dollars on training a "Frontier Model" in AI.
There is an ongoing debate about the need for federal regulation versus state regulation for AI. While state regulation could lead to a patchwork of different policies across the country, federal regulation would provide a single, unified set of rules.
Concerns exist regarding the potential for overregulation to stifle innovation and put the US behind other countries in AI development. However, there are also concerns about the risks of underregulation and the potential for disastrous consequences if AI systems are not properly tested and regulated.
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman left to join Anthropic, a competing AI company.
OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman announced an extended leave through the end of the year, and product manager Peter Deng also exited the company.

Clubhouse, a social networking app popular during the pandemic, has become less popular since the pandemic.
Two early employees of Clubhouse, who were among the first 20 employees, have started a new social networking app called Why? The app aims to address loneliness by combining messaging, networking, and dating features. (00:12:59)
Why? will include features such as question card games, a daily question prompt, a FaceTime-like feature, and a weekly prompt to encourage interaction between users.
Social media and messaging apps are challenging spaces to build in, with few new platforms achieving lasting success.

Lucid, a luxury EV maker, has received a \$1.5 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, increasing the fund's ownership in Lucid to 60%.
Lucid's sales are primarily in the US, but the company has a factory in Saudi Arabia and is seeing a growing share of revenue from the region.
There has been an uptick in mergers and acquisitions in the fintech industry, with companies like Panther and Stripe acquiring smaller firms. (00:26:52)
Stripe has been acquiring companies and is continuing to grow amidst competition.
Payoneer acquired Skuad, a company that helps businesses with onboarding, contract management, and other services in other countries.
Large companies are increasingly choosing to acquire companies with proven products and technology instead of building them in-house.

38 new unicorn companies were established in the US as of August 2023.
Seven of the new unicorns are in AI, five in healthcare, five in cybersecurity, five in SaaS and Cloud, four in Web3, and three in fintech. (00:23:31)