Terra Industries has extended its funding round to $34M, adding $22M led by @Lux_Capital to scale autonomous systems that protect Africa’s critical infrastructure.
Our mission remains to give Africa the technological edge needed for resource protection and counterterrorism.
“The world is made of atoms, and moving atoms is the ultimate frontier for intelligence.”
Lightspeed Partner @ravirajjain on the coming wave of physical AI:
“Robots are going to be everywhere.”
“[I believe] they’re going to do a lot of really amazing things, things that humans should not be doing.”
“These robotics systems and physical AI systems can do that at scale and more safely.”
Travis Kalanick on VCs vs operators: "don't tell Michael Jordan how to dunk"
"A super high bar for a VC is do no harm. There's a lot of reasons why that's hard for a VC. Everybody wants to make a mark on the world."
"The way I think about it is, if an operator is good, they're a grandmaster of chess. And that grandmaster is playing 60-80 hours a week. He really knows this thing, knows many moves ahead, sees things other people don't see."
"The VC is a chess enthusiast. They check in on the match once every three months. And they're trying to make a mark. 'Hey, why don't you do this or that?'"
"Don't go to Jordan and tell him how to dunk. And definitely don't tell him how to dribble."
"If you're not in the thing all the way, every day, 12-16 hours a day, it ain't a thing. But that's a hard thing for most people to take who aren't running sh*t."
"VCs are glamorized, and they have a seat at the table."
"he way to think about it is you're on the Serengeti. If an antelope limps, the lion will take it down, even if it's not hungry. Can't even f*cking help it. And that's the nature of most VCs. If you are on the Serengeti and limping, you will be eaten. And the lion doesn't even know why sometimes. It's just like, this is what I do."
Travis Kalanick says a leader's job is to find the line between order and chaos:
"On one side is order. You have lots of rules, lots of structure, lots of process, and eventually lots of bureaucracy."
"If you go to the other side of the line, which is chaos, lack of rules, lack of process, lack of structure... you also get to a place where you're going slow and people are bummed."
"That line between order and chaos is innovation at speed and at scale, and the job of every leader is to find that line. And it's not in two dimensions. It's like in eighty dimensions."
"Go back to launch at Uber... There's a bunch of 23-year-olds launching cities... Nothing would actually launch until it got to a pricing call... It could be eight, ten hours of pricing calls before we launched London."
"I never solved the same problem twice. Once we solved it, it became part of the playbook, and eventually we get to city 20 and that pricing call takes five minutes. I stopped going to them."
"So now I've got one rule, which is that pricing call. The fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. If you didn't have that one rule, you now have 23-year-olds running around doing crazy shit."
@travisk w/ @davidsenra
this view is shared by many who have invested in defense over the last few years. a good take.
but reminder that the broader *industrial* side of the defense-industrial base has ~infinite greenfield right now
- 2002: launch was a "terrible" business when spacex was founded
- 2003: EVs were a "terrible" business when tesla was founded
- 2017: defense contracting was a "terrible" business when anduril was founded
- 2018: air traffic mgmt...ASI...
- 2023: retail electric...base power...
- etc.
"I suspect we'll see massive expansion of the number of trillion-dollar companies impacting fundamental areas of society," says @vkhosla about AI. "So still lots of opportunity to invest in new companies." https://t.co/9C1JxBR8Vw
Michael Kratsios (@mkratsios47) has seen the AI boom from both sides: as COO of Scale AI and inside the White House. Today, as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, he helps shape America’s national strategy on AI, science, and emerging technology.
At Startup School 2026, he sat down with YC's @lutherlowe, to talk about how Washington makes technology policy, why the White House supports open source AI, and why little tech needs a seat at the table.
02:38 — From Tech to the White House
04:39 — How Technology Policy Actually Gets Made
05:51 — The White House on Open Source AI
08:28 — How Washington Sees AI Differently
09:53 — Regulating a Technology That Changes Every Six Months
11:37 — Which AI Risks Are Overblown?
13:03 — Giving Little Tech a Seat at the Table
17:31 — Regulation Without Creating Incumbent Moats
18:01 — Born Free vs. Born in Captivity Technologies
20:46 — What Working in the White House Is Actually Like
25:56 — A New Golden Age of American Science
31:32 — Quantum, Congress, IP, and What Comes Next
37:54 — Why Technologists Should Consider Public Service
While we talk about the race in AI being between the US and China, frontier AI being led by the former, and open-source, open-weights AI led by the latter, another big shift has been happening in the background. With rising geopolitical unease, the demand for and investment into dual-use technologies by the rest of the world (some being deployed and tested quickly in active conflict situations as in Ukraine, Russia and Israel) and the recognized need for sovereign AI and a decoupling from dependencies both technology and infrastructure-wise are creating a more securitized and fragmented AI market.
AI leadership of the future will in all likelihood be more multi-polar, with various smaller players carving niches based on their paths and comparative advantages. Some of these economies who have historically received far less investment (and are not on the frontier) may benefit from second-mover advantages, winning on diffusion and application instead.
These shifts may in turn open up a whole new array of risks and opportunities for the players, from AI users and governments to the hyperscalers, and demand a new kind of agility from each. A remarkably clear-eyed research paper by Katja Bego for Chatham House: https://t.co/wz14ffHPlq…
one of the best essays i've read, maybe ever. anish articulates so well why making things feels so different from consuming them
the idea is that "being present" is a sad goal for a life. the most alive people are stretched across past and future at once, remembering, planning, dreaming
consuming only ever asks you to be in the current second. but making something pulls you into all three tenses – because you're building toward a thing you can already see, made of everything you've ever loved.
Navigating the future, together.
To our clients and partners: thank you for the trust that defines our journey. We wish you clarity, connection, and brilliant horizons in 2026.