In AI, consumer beats B2B in monetization.
The median consumer AI startup hits $4.2M ARR in year one, with the top quartile at $8.7M. That’s twice the same numbers for B2B AI companies.
So, in fact, it’s consumer AI startups that are scaling revenue the fastest.
@omooretweets explains:
If you believe in the future, build it.
“Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.” - @pmarca
Last week we hosted our 3rd annual @sequoia AI Ascent, bringing together 150+ of the top founders and researchers in AI.
Our star-studded speakers dropped hot takes and sparked inspiration for a standing-room-only audience:
- jensen huang on token-generating AI factories as the new industrial infrastructure
- @sama on the timeline to agents/science/robots and ChatGPT as Operating System
- @JeffDean on how he's been trying vibes coding and his prediction on the timeline to an AI junior engineer (sooner than you might think!)
- @btaylor on becoming Facebook CTO at age 29, pricing/packaging agents, and advice for application layer founders
- @DrJimFan of NVIDIA on why simulation is the key to robots passing the physical Turing test
- @ChaseLochmiller of Crusoe on the moving industrial bottlenecks to scaling AI: power, steel, real estate
- @mikeyk of Anthropic on MCP, Claude Code, and on his framework for product-building when the models themselves are changing so quickly
- @hwchase17 of Langchain on ambient agents and his vision for an "agent inbox"
- @danintheory of OpenAI on how RL is going from the "cherry on top" of the pre-training cake to the main course, and what questions einstein-v1907-super-high might be able to answer by scaling reasoning compute
- @gradypb on the new physics of distribution, the Leone merchandising cycle applied to AI foundation models vs application startups, and his advice to startups to "run like heck"
- @Konstantine on the agent economy and stochastic mindset
And many more.
Thanks to our community for making this the best, most buzzy, content-rich AI Ascent yet 💚 Detailed session recaps to follow -- and replay videos dropping over the course of the week.
big news
we’re teaming up with @Adobe Ventures to support founders building across tech, AI, and entertainment.
the perks:
- up to $1M in funding
- full-stack support from the a16z team
- resources from Adobe Express to sharpen your deck
- curated event(s) like the one below
📅 apply by May 11 → https://t.co/TO3JwGxPsP
📝 mention Adobe as your referral
and if you're in NY for @Techweek_:
join us for an intimate chat with @scottbelsky & @andrewchen on AI & creativity
RSVP → https://t.co/kn4WNJwBM3
Vertex shares fell in after-hours trading, as investors considered a stock trading near its all-time high with a longer wait for its next leg of growth. https://t.co/ZEWVt9qcdD