AI agents, and how Europe is keeping venture's hopes up despite Asia
Plus a failed acquisition
Welcome to Cautious Optimism. Today we’re looking at a failed mega-tech acquisition, AI progress, and the state of venture worldwide. To work! — Alex
The Rundown
📈 Trending Up: European stocks … ransomware payouts … CapCut’s revenue … startups seeing their work lifted … streams over sales, in audiobook land (FT) … video game IPOs … HERO software, which raised €40M … real average hourly earnings … Web3 funding … laws to keep IP from AI … peace in the Middle East? …
📉 Trending Down: Vision Pro sales … Graphcore’s independence … Graphcore’s employee wealth … the Mag 7 … cybersecurity … net neutrality … collusion …
🤔 What Else?
Boston-area VCs are happy that the Google-HubSpot deal is off. Having the giant tech company swallow the regional heavyweight could have limited the Northeast startup market by tying up employees and causing technical distractions, Ron Miller reports.
Someone is wrong about AI agents
OpenAI recently held an internal meeting that discussed the steps it sees along the path to AGI. The AI model company broke down foundation model progress into five buckets, Bloomberg reports.
Level 1 is chatbots.
Level 2 comprises “reasoners” with “human-level problem solving.”
Level three is “agents,” or AI tools that can “take actions” as Bloomberg puts it.
Level four is “innovators” — AI technology that can help with technological breakthroughs.
Finally, level five is AI, which can do the work of an entire company or other organization.
OpenAI reckons it’s still at the first level and it is getting close to the second. That means OpenAI has chatbots, yes, and very nearly “reasoners.” But not agents. Which a lot of startups are building now.
So, who is right? Are AI agents truly possible now, or are they still a ways off? Are VCs betting on startups like Sierra too early?
Asia’s venture capital market is moving in the wrong direction
As we noted a few days ago, venture capital totals perked up in the second quarter here in the United States, leading to record valuation marks. However, in Asia, things are bleaker. Here’s Crunchbase News: