How AI Is Generating a Tech Industry Upturn

For the past nine months, nearly every investor with a Twitter account, blog or board seat has been beating a unified and constant refrain: The go-go days are done. Founders were being pushed to build 36 months of runway, whether or not it was actually feasible to cut costs that much. Time and again, investors told me due diligence was back. I watched as fundraising rounds that a year ago would have produced a term sheet in a few days stretched across a full month and dozens of pitches.

And then came Dall-E 2’s public release, quickly followed by a flood of wildly cool technology.

These events triggered a craze now ripping through venture capital land. We’re seeing billion-dollar valuations for companies peddling products based on generative artificial intelligence algorithms with less than a million dollars of revenue and no proven business model. Not long ago, the same behavior was held up as a cautionary tale about the excesses of VC over Web3 and instant delivery. Now we have a whole new era of exuberance on our hands.