Kunal Parikh

Storyteller | Co-founder at Aethereus

[Stephanie Zhan @stephzhan]

@karpathy and I are back! At @sequoia AI Ascent 2026. And a lot has changed. Last year, he coined “vibe coding”. This year, he’s never felt more behind as a programmer.

The big shift: vibe coding raised the floor. Agentic engineering raises the ceiling.

We talk about what it means to build seriously in the agent era. Not just moving faster. Building new things, with new tools, while preserving the parts that still require human taste, judgment, and understanding.

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

@nitingupta7799

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Microsoft just turned an $11 billion startup into a Word feature.

Harvey raised $200M at an $11B valuation in March on the bet that legal AI is its own surface. The numbers held that up. $190M ARR per TechCrunch's December reporting. 100,000 lawyers across 1,300 organizations including the majority of the AmLaw 100. Around $1,200 per lawyer per month per Sacra. Big firms paid because Harvey was the only tool in the category that worked.

Brad just stapled a legal agent directly inside Microsoft Word, shipping in the $30 per seat Copilot subscription every law firm already pays for. Same surface every lawyer drafts in. Same .docx that gets sent and redlined. No second login, no procurement cycle, no migration. The price gap is roughly 40x.

The interesting tell: Microsoft built the agent with legal engineers, many of them from Robin AI, a legal AI startup that recently went under, per Artificial Lawyer's reporting. The talent that knew how to make legal AI work for lawyers landed at Microsoft after their startup couldn't survive standalone. That's the legal AI category in one sentence.

Distribution was always the constraint here. Lawyers don't switch tools. Word is where contracts get drafted, redlined, and tracked. Whichever AI lives inside that .docx wins the default workflow, and Microsoft just walked through the door uncontested.

Harvey's surviving moat is the AmLaw 100 partner workflow. Domain training, agentic litigation prep, deep integrations with iManage and NetDocuments. Real moat for $1,500-an-hour partners running M&A and complex litigation. It does not extend to the millions of lawyers globally drafting NDAs, redlining vendor contracts, and updating templates. That layer is exactly what Word Legal Agent goes after, and Microsoft can ship it as a feature inside a $360-a-year subscription.

The $11B valuation pays out only if legal AI work stays its own surface. Microsoft just absorbed the surface.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

We're expanding our collaboration with Amazon to secure up to 5 gigawatts of compute for training and deploying Claude. Capacity begins coming online this quarter, with nearly 1 gigawatt expected by the end of 2026.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

Introducing Project Glasswing: an urgent initiative to help secure the world’s most critical software.

It’s powered by our newest frontier model, Claude Mythos Preview, which can find software vulnerabilities better than all but the most skilled humans.
https://t.co/NQ7IfEtYk7

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

#salesforce #Ohana #TeamAethereus #dreamforce2022

@Kunal_Parikh1 @nitingupta7799 @vijaygp34 @mittalpayalSF @rohitssuri

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

@AethereusSF @nitingupta7799 @vijaygp34 @mittalpayalSF @rohitssuri Congrats #TeamAethereus on winning the 2022 Salesforce Partner Innovation award. So proud of the team that made it happen!

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

@AethereusSF @partnerforce @salesforce @SalesforceOhana @salesforceapac Thanks you @partnerforce for the recognition. We are thrilled and humbled to get this recognition within our first year of being a partner.
#Aethereus #Salesforce #Partnersuccess #gratitude

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

Way to go #TeamAethereus

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

We’re excited and incredibly proud to announce we’ve won the "SMB Implementation Partner of the Year" as part of the Salesforce APAC Partner of the Year Awards‘20! #APACPOTY20 @partnerforce

@salesforce @SalesforceOhana #salesforce #sfdc #CustomerSuccess #award @salesforceapac

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

We’re excited and incredibly proud to announce we’ve won the "SMB Implementation Partner of the Year" as part of the Salesforce APAC Partner of the Year Awards‘20! #APACPOTY20 @partnerforce

@salesforce @SalesforceOhana #salesforce #sfdc #CustomerSuccess #award @salesforceapac

[Vijay @vijaygp34]

We’re thrilled to accept the APAC Partner of the Year Award for "SMB Implementation Partner of the Year India" from Salesforce.

Thank you #Salesforce , #Customers and #TeamAethereus for enabling us for this success !!

#salesforce #sfdc

[Rishab Goyal @iamrishabgoyal]

Dec 19 -> Sept 20 #SilverPartner -> #GoldPartner
Level Upgraded💪 As we said, We are just taking off!
#Aethereus
#Salesforce
@salesforce @AethereusSF
@vijaygp34 @Kunal_Parikh1 @nitingupta7799

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

Aethereus continues to blaze new trails. Delighted to announce that we are now a #Salesforce Gold partner. Even more special to achieve this milestone within an year of being born!

A Big Thank you- to our Customers, Salesforce, Partners & #TeamAethereus for making this happen!

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

@AethereusSF Happy Birthday @aethereussf

[Tyler Prince @Tyler_SFDC]

Congrats @ncino on today's IPO! Honored to virtually "ring the bell" with you this morning. Thank you for your partnership and looking forward to continued success. @partnerforce

[Tyler Prince @Tyler_SFDC]

The team at Salesforce continues to look for ways to support our partners. In an effort to help partners offset their sales and marketing costs, Salesforce is now increasing Partner Referral Payouts in International Markets through Q3 2020.
Learn more: https://t.co/Q6DmAZ7Ra3

[Stephen P. Anderson @stephenanderson]

@daveixd Ask, and you shall receive: https://t.co/rkl4C5KpOj

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Work styles are going to completely change for the vast majority of companies in the coming months. This will be a period of rapid innovation in enterprise software, and spell the end of many legacy approaches to IT.

[Kunal Parikh @Kunal_Parikh1]

Way to go #Team #Aethereus

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

Our #newyearsresolution - Doubling down our focus on #EmployeeLearning , while we continue to delight our customers!

As we enter 2020, our first #Salesforce leaning outcome - #FSC Accreditations to demonstrate competency in #FinancialServicesCloud.

[Aethereus @AethereusSF]

#TeamAethereus wishes everyone Merry Christmas & a great new Year !!
#aethereussf #sfdc #sfdcpune #trailblazers #developercommunity #salesforce #salesforceohana #hny2020 #happynewyear2020 #christmas2019

[Radhika Bansal @RadhikaBansalSF]

@BajajRabia and @mittalpayalSF shinning bright at community campfire sharing about their experiences in community. #TDXIndia19