8VC is a leading technology investment firm based in Austin, Texas.
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When we first backed @peteflorence and @GeneralistAI, our thesis was simple: robotics was ready to move beyond narrow, task-specific systems toward general-purpose intelligence.
Our deepest conviction was in Pete and the team: world-class researchers with a rare focus on what actually ships, sells and compounds. Pete is as much a builder as a researcher.
In early August, @JTLonsdale visited Generalist and got a sneak preview of GEN-1.5. The model was still in development, but the early progress reinforced our confidence in the team and trajectory. We decided to double down in a much more meaningful way and lead Generalist's latest round.
A few days later, we recorded this @AmOptimistShow conversation.
In the weeks that followed, GEN-1.5 showed just how quickly the frontier was advancing. The model can learn a new physical task in seconds from a single demonstration, without fine-tuning, alongside emergent capabilities in generalization, improvisation, novel tool use and ambidexterity.
What we've seen since has only strengthened our belief that Generalist can be one of the defining companies bringing general intelligence into the physical world.
EPISODE 161: The Robotics GPT-3 Moment
@JTLonsdale sits down with @peteflorence
Pete and @GeneralistAI are changing everything we know about robotics:
-- robots trained on new tasks in seconds (seconds!)
-- self-taught ambidexterity & other breakthroughs
-- 10X more science and how the world will change
(00:00) Episode intro
(01:30) Bay Area to MIT and DeepMind
(03:55) Pete's epiphany: robots sitting still
(08:30) Why intelligence, not hardware, is the next frontier
(13:20) The GPT-3 era of robotics
(14:55) Why leave DeepMind?
(16:50) How to train robot brains
(18:30) Emergent ambidexterity
(20:40) LLMs vs robot world models
(23:50) GEN-0, GEN-1 & scaling laws in robotics
(27:28) 10x more science per year
(32:50) Skilled trades, reindustrialization & future of robots
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8VC retweeted
Cognition has crossed $1B in annualized revenue run rate.
This milestone belongs to our customers. Here's how a few of them are building with Devin.
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Wildfires spread indiscriminately.
Prime Minute is betting on precision to stop wildfires in their tracks—and transform public resilience.
Proud to join our friends at @EclipseVentures in backing this urgently needed company.
@Inc’s @chlobo_ilo details how they’re building it:
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AI and robotics are advancing faster than most predicted, opening up categories of companies that would have sounded like science fiction only a few years ago. @vvkgopalan has pushed our team to believe the future will arrive faster than consensus expects, and he has repeatedly been right. I’m excited to announce that Vivek has been promoted to Partner, six years after joining @8VC from Yale.
Vivek has earned the trust of exceptional researchers, engineers, and founders across AI and robotics, helping us partner with ambitious companies including @GeneralistAI, @BedrockRobotics, @edra_ai, @withsableai, @ValsAI, Bobyard and more. He genuinely loves the craft of company-building, helping founders pursue the maximally ambitious version of what they can build.
Vivek and I recently sat down with @GeneralistAI founder @peteflorence to discuss recent breakthroughs in general-purpose robotics. Listen to our conversation below.
Proud to call Vivek our Partner. To the frontier!
EPISODE 161: The Robotics GPT-3 Moment
@JTLonsdale sits down with @peteflorence
Pete and @GeneralistAI are changing everything we know about robotics:
-- robots trained on new tasks in seconds (seconds!)
-- self-taught ambidexterity & other breakthroughs
-- 10X more science and how the world will change
(00:00) Episode intro
(01:30) Bay Area to MIT and DeepMind
(03:55) Pete's epiphany: robots sitting still
(08:30) Why intelligence, not hardware, is the next frontier
(13:20) The GPT-3 era of robotics
(14:55) Why leave DeepMind?
(16:50) How to train robot brains
(18:30) Emergent ambidexterity
(20:40) LLMs vs robot world models
(23:50) GEN-0, GEN-1 & scaling laws in robotics
(27:28) 10x more science per year
(32:50) Skilled trades, reindustrialization & future of robots
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8VC retweeted
I'm proud to now be a Partner at @8VC, and I can't think of a better moment to be in this seat.
Startups are beautiful things designed to fight the inertia of the world, but they die if the world stands still. The question we ask every founder, "why now?", is a second-derivative one (incumbents handle a low, predictable rate of change just fine), so four years ago most pitches didn't have a great answer, and today these answers are inspiring and plentiful.
For years we argued for ideas outside consensus (that America needed to build again, that the legacy industries written off as bad software markets were exactly where AI would strip the tedium out of work). The Overton window has since moved our way, and more of the founders building in those markets now start with us.
Ambition has changed too. You used to wait for scaled PMF before shipping products 2 and 3, but software is now infinitely iterable (thanks @DevinAI), so the best teams chase the maximally ambitious version of their company far earlier, and the intensity of the work right now is contagious.
I'm an ambitious person myself, and I feel privileged to do this work at this moment. Thank you @JTLonsdale @AlexKolicich @andrewoetting and the whole 8VC team for the trust. Never been more optimistic.
AI and robotics are advancing faster than most predicted, opening up categories of companies that would have sounded like science fiction only a few years ago. @vvkgopalan has pushed our team to believe the future will arrive faster than consensus expects, and he has repeatedly been right. I’m excited to announce that Vivek has been promoted to Partner, six years after joining @8VC from Yale.
Vivek has earned the trust of exceptional researchers, engineers, and founders across AI and robotics, helping us partner with ambitious companies including @GeneralistAI, @BedrockRobotics, @edra_ai, @withsableai, @ValsAI, Bobyard and more. He genuinely loves the craft of company-building, helping founders pursue the maximally ambitious version of what they can build.
Vivek and I recently sat down with @GeneralistAI founder @peteflorence to discuss recent breakthroughs in general-purpose robotics. Listen to our conversation below.
Proud to call Vivek our Partner. To the frontier!
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America is pouring trillions into the data centers and power infrastructure required to win the AI race. But the finance teams supporting this buildout are drowning in complex, manual work.
@kos_ai_inc is building the AI finance team for this new industrial era -- reconciling invoices, contracts and accounts, with a complete audit trail behind every decision. Billions of dollars of data center invoices already run through Kos.
If America is going to build at the pace this moment demands, the systems supporting that buildout need to scale with it.
Proud to back @tanujt and @kos_ai_inc 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
China is winning the AI race.
So we raised $12M from @8vc to build thousands of new AI data centers in America.
Here's what will make the AI bubble pop:
Data centers are needed for AI. Every invoice to build a data center is hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of pages long.
The finance teams that need to approve these invoices are drowning.
The entire AI race is being bottlenecked by human approval. AI should fix this.
That's why we’re launching Kos.
Kos is a team of AI agents that work the way humans work. Tag Kos in Microsoft teams, or get on a Zoom call.
It doesn't hallucinate, and it has verifiable proof for it's work.
Kos is purpose built AI for Datacenter, Energy, and Manufacturing Finance. Think Harvey but instead of for law, it's specialized for Finance.
Book a demo here: kos.ai/
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We’re backed by the founders and C-Suite of billion dollar companies:
Keith D. Taylor (former Equinix CFO), Dave Ferdman (CyrusOne Founder), Heather Paduck (STACK Infrastructure CFO), Matthew DeNezza (former Crusoe CFO), and @sk7037 (Stanford, OpenAI).
Our institutional investors are @8VC, led by @AlexKolicich, XYZ (@fubini), MVP (Alex Li)
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One more thing, I made a huge notion doc on everything I learned building my last company (SpotAI) to >$100M in sales and funding.
I give away my secret framework to find the right market, my exact interview process, and how to close enterprise deals.
If you want it, just let me know and I'll shoot it over :)
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8VC retweeted
UK finance teams have waited long enough.
Ramp is now live in the UK.
Sorry we’re late.
ramp.com/uk
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Joined @EdLudlow to talk about AI progress, independent evaluation, and why I’m optimistic.
Some quick takes:
- We’re better at building AI than understanding it. Attention towards testing/evaluation matters more than slowing down.
- Our RSI Index projects models could match human researchers on the tasks we test by August 2027. Embedded evaluators can produce more accurate estimates based on internal systems.
- Public conflict masks cooperation. The labs, policymakers, and enterprises we work with want better evidence. I’ve seen enough to believe coordination is possible.
- Independence comes at a cost. We’ve rejected contracts that would compromise ours. The same group doing the testing shouldn’t also sell the solution.
- Evaluation should scale through better technology. If it becomes a bureaucratic moat for incumbent labs, we’ve failed.
- Market-based evaluation has a role with or without regulation. Competition pushes us to build better technology and keep up with the frontier.
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8VC retweeted
I'm hiring 3-4 FDEs to work with me @Cognition on AI-native companies in Silicon Valley and New York. A few things that could make for an attractive candidate:
1) You studied CS and were actually good. Yes, AI has permanently changed the shape of engineering skills, but the important thing here is that you committed a time of your life to studying something and took pride in being good at it.
2) Ideally you've started a company and made money before. The company could have failed or been unprofitable - which is OK. The main thing here is that you've experienced the process of transacting with a customer.
3) You probably want to start a company again in the future. You're taking a job for now and know that it's temporary. This is also OK.
4) You're a natural at working with technical people in the SF and NY AI ecosystems. Perhaps you were a Fellow or Scholar with one of our investors (cc: @BainCapVC @8vc @generalcatalyst @soma_capital @kleinerperkins @accel @a16z). @zfellows is also an awesome cohort.
5) You don't want to have a boss and treat 1:1s as a nice-to-have. Your default mode is to just figure things out on your own.
There's probably more but these are a good start. You don't need to have all of these things, but it should feel obvious whether you are this general shape of person or not. If we have a mutual friend or you have a contact at one of our investors, warm intros are great and will guarantee a convo. If you don't have that, just email me (shayan@cognition.ai) and I'll take a look.
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8VC retweeted
We started Sequence (@seqholdings) with a clear conviction: the holding company of the next century will be a technology company that owns and operates businesses. Today is an important step in that journey.
We’re thrilled to announce that Sequence, along with the Dell Family Office and the Baldwin family and management team, have agreed to take The Baldwin Group private. I’m excited to partner with Trevor Baldwin and the broader team as we help extend Baldwin’s lead as the insurance firm of the future.
Read more here: ir.baldwin.com/news-releases…
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Introducing SWE-2, our closest model yet to the frontier.
On leading evals, it scores on par with recent frontier models – at up to 70% lower cost.
We scaled RL to multiple trillions of parameters, with a refined recipe that pushes the Pareto curve on both capabilities & cost.
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The free world has seriously underinvested in the weapons required to deter serious adversaries.
Covenant is fixing that. I’m in Dallas, TX today to help open our new factory.
They are building the long-range missile arsenal of the United States: deep-strike weapons produced at scale in Texas. Better missiles at scale, for a fraction of the cost.
This is how America restores deterrence 🇺🇸.
Today, Covenant is emerging from stealth and introducing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike capability designed for mass production, with deliveries beginning in the thousands in 2027.
We’ve raised $250 million, flown Anthem in more than 200 tests, and secured approximately $150 million in orders, including contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and key international allies.
We’re building Anthem at our 105,000-square-foot production facility in Dallas, alongside factories in Germany and Israel.
Covenant is backed by @a16z, @foundersfund, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @8vc, @aleph, and @AltimeterCap.
Deep precision strike is the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West, and we spent the last two years building Anthem to fill it.
Now we deliver at scale.
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8VC retweeted
Today, Covenant is emerging from stealth and introducing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike capability designed for mass production, with deliveries beginning in the thousands in 2027.
We’ve raised $250 million, flown Anthem in more than 200 tests, and secured approximately $150 million in orders, including contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and key international allies.
We’re building Anthem at our 105,000-square-foot production facility in Dallas, alongside factories in Germany and Israel.
Covenant is backed by @a16z, @foundersfund, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @8vc, @aleph, and @AltimeterCap.
Deep precision strike is the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West, and we spent the last two years building Anthem to fill it.
Now we deliver at scale.
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For a few years now @sthupukari has been the person I call when I'm trying to crystallize for myself where the product capabilities of this wave are heading
Excited for him to show what he's been working on for the past year, which I consider to be on the very frontier of what a cloud / multiplayer agent experience for entire organizations can look like
Introducing @indent, one coworker for your whole company
Indent is a single agent that is built to work with every member of your team, simultaneously. Instead of every one setting up their own agents, use Indent to build one together.
Try it at indent.com
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8VC retweeted
Introducing @indent, one coworker for your whole company
Indent is a single agent that is built to work with every member of your team, simultaneously. Instead of every one setting up their own agents, use Indent to build one together.
Try it at indent.com
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8VC retweeted
Congrats, guys!
We led Cognition’s previous round from @8VC at 25B, three months ago. Of course, in AI world, that’s like over a year ago.
Just amazing progress. Scott and team are hiring the world’s top talent, and building a trillion $+ co that’s helping the world to build.
The world needs far more software than it can build. Cognition exists to change that.
We’ve just raised over $2B at a $48B valuation, led by a16z, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir.
Since our round in May, run-rate revenue has grown from $492 M to almost $900 M.
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Extraordinarily well deserved continuation of a generational run
The world needs far more software than it can build. Cognition exists to change that.
We’ve just raised over $2B at a $48B valuation, led by a16z, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir.
Since our round in May, run-rate revenue has grown from $492 M to almost $900 M.
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.@AlexFrommeyer just announced the launch of our latest @8vc build co Stack Health, which means I can finally share easily the funnest brand we've had the privilege to explore. Fro requested 'Liquid Death for Insurance', and I think we delivered :)
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