[New program] a16z Open Source AI Grants
Hackers & independent devs are massively important to the AI ecosystem.
We're starting a grant funding program so they can continue their work without pressure to generate financial returns.
GP at a16z & AI enthusiast. Investor in @cursor_ai, @inferact, @unconvAI, @character_ai, @replicate, @tabulario, and many others.
Joined April 2013
- New post: the AI Canon We share all the papers, posts, articles, courses, and videos we've relied on to get smarter about LLMs and modern AI Compiled by @derrickharris @appenz and myself
- New post: Emerging architectures for LLM applications We compiled a reference stack for developers building apps on top of LLMs, focused especially on in-context learning With @rajko_rad
- We're announcing the second batch of @a16z open source AI grants today This cohort focuses on: โถ๏ธ tools for LLM training/ hosting/ evals โถ๏ธ visual AI models & communities Thank you to the grantees for your contributions! More info in the linked post
- The big idea in the @MistralAI models is high accuracy (currently gpt 3.5 level) with very efficient inference & full open source access. We're leading their A round, and backing this incredible team, to help them achieve that goal at scalea16z is thrilled to announce our Series A investment in @MistralAI. Mistral is at the center of a passionate open source AI developer community. We think this is the most promising path to achieve widely adopted AI systems, and that Mistral is the leading team on this path.
- [Announcement] We're leading the seed round for @udiomusic, a new AI music app launching today in public beta. Go to udio.com and try it. You will be blown away by the music you can create - melodic, coherent, creative & high fidelity. Thoughts & samples below ๐
- Replying to @BornsteinMattTLDR in case your learning style is xkcd memes:
- [New Post] The 2022 edition of Emerging Architectures for Data Infrastructure is out today! We argue *platforms* are taking shape in the data ecosystem (though very early) - detailed architectures & analysis in the post (w/ @martin_casado, @JenniferHli)
- Replying to @BornsteinMattCongratulations to our first cohort: @jon_durbin, @erhartford, @jeremyphoward, @TheBlokeAI, @woosuk_k, @zhuohan123, @NousResearch, oobabooga, and @teknium *Huge* thank you for your contributions!
- [New investment] We led the series A round in @cursor_ai, the best way to use AI for programming Huge congrats to @mntruell, @amanrsanger, @sualehasif996, and @ArVID220u! More here:
- Can anyone make any sense out of the definition of an AI model in SB1047? I'm reasonably sure that no actual AI models are covered by this ridiculous bill
- The @cursor_ai founders have always said revenue is a trailing indicator of building a great product and team. So *huge* congratulations to them today on achieving a major funding and revenue milestone. But more importantly, for doing such incredible work to advance AI coding.
- We couldn't be more excited to lead the B round for @replicate. It's by far the easiest way to build apps around modern AI. It's amazing to think stable diffusion was released only ~1 year ago, and llama2 <0.5 years ago..Businesses are building on open-source AI. But weโve only reached a tiny fraction. That's why we raised a $40M Series B. Open-source is open for business ๐ replicate.com/blog/series-b
- for all the AI doomers out there: quick reminder that gpt-2, with a mind-blowing 1.5bn params, was considered too dangerous to release when it was trained the hand-wringing about current models (like llama-3.1) will look just as silly in retrospect





