Benjamin Júnior

geek • determined dreamer • food evangelist • life enthusiast • venture capital investor

[Scott Sage @scott_sage]

We Believe the Future Belongs to Synthesists.

Today we announced $484 million across multiple investment vehicles - nearly half a billion dollars to invest from inception through seed across Europe, the US, India, and Asia-Pacific.

We are excited about the capital. We’re even more excited about the much bigger search space it creates.

Specifically, the ability to find more synthesists.

A synthesist isn’t a generalist. They go deep in one discipline but refuse to stay inside its boundaries. The physicist who ships software. The biologist who thinks like a machine learning researcher. The materials scientist who understands computation.

We think more of the world’s important companies will be built by people like this.

For most of history, becoming fluent in a second discipline was expensive - another degree, another career, or an unusual set of life’s stepping stones (h/t @kenneth0stanley). AI is collapsing that cost, at the exact moment many of the hardest problems in science are becoming computational problems too.

The interesting opportunity isn’t on either side of those combinations. It’s in the space between them.

The next great category may not exist yet because the disciplines required to create it have only just learned how to speak to each other.

This is the idea behind our Meridian Principle: human progress accelerates when extraordinary people connect ideas across disciplines, cultures, and generations.

@BoydVarty writes in The Lion Tracker’s Guide about following the track rather than fixating on the destination. Venture at its best has that quality. You follow exceptional people. You notice unusual intersections. You stay curious about things that don’t yet fit a category. Occasionally those tracks converge into something much bigger than anyone planned.

Consensus is good at pricing categories that already exist.

Venture returns come from recognising the ones that don’t.

The search and adventure space just got a lot bigger.

We intend to spend the next chapter following the most interesting tracks and stepping stones we can find. Thank you to all of the Founders and LPs that have entrusted us to be their partners.

[Inherent @inherent_labs]

We’re excited to introduce Inherent, a lab designed from scratch to build AI agents that discover new knowledge.

The coming era of machine-driven scientific inquiry demands a new kind of research institution and a new kind of AI.

To achieve our mission, we live within the experiment, recursively self-improving the entire research organisation. We investigate questions including:

- What does ‘AI taste’ look like in the sciences, and how can we build an institution that embraces this new aesthetic of discovery?
- What new kinds of human-machine teaming will make the most of AI that can truly innovate?
- How can we build recursive self-improvement at the collective level that continually increases human agency over outcomes?

We have just closed a $50m seed round led by @IndexVentures and @radicalvcfund, with participation from other outstanding investors including NVentures (@nvidia's venture capital arm), @buildexante, Metaplanet, Macroscopic, @MythosVentures, Charlie Songhurst, @chalfs, @jluan, @dwarkesh_sp, @Thom_Wolf, @j_foerst and @maxjaderberg. We are advised by @matthewclifford.

Inherent is a Public Benefit Corporation headquartered in London.

[Sam Altman @sama]

OpenAI Robotics is hiring, looking for exceptional full-stack hardware, ops, systems, and ML engineers to help us program and manufacture robots that are useful for society.

AI should be able to help people in the physical world. In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure; in the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need.

Our world simulation research program, led by Aditya Ramesh (@model_mechanic), has evolved over the past year into OpenAI Robotics. Progress is rapid, and based on a foundation of co-design between robotics hardware and ML research.

If you love working hands-on across the robotics stack and want to build the future, please consider joining us. Send an email with your background and evidence of exceptional accomplishment to: [email protected]

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

In most countries billionaires are self-made. They invent new products or services that drive progress.

In Germany, Spain, Italy, and France, most billionaires inherited their wealth. Europe has simply lost the entrepreneurial spirit that once drove innovation and prosperity.

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

The Next Compute Transition: Rethinking Inference Architecture https://t.co/wsIbk9GTGk

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

https://t.co/FrAePjHh4H The shift away from the public cloud by companies like 37signals marks a moment of reckoning for an industry that spent the last decade preaching infinite scalability and "as-a-service" convenience.

[steven.hl @_stevenhl]

Hyperliquid OGs spent 2 years being the contrarian for believing in a laser focused team doing the impossible. And they were right. Unit's success only reinforced this.

These same OGs still own majority of HYPE. That's why NM is winning, not because the vote was rigged for them.

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Raise $10M seed.

Put in a 4.5% yield checking account.

3 days later tell investors “we’re at a $450K run rate.”

They give you another $50M.

3 days later tell investors, “you’re not going to believe this but we’re at a $2.7M run rate”

Repeat until you IPO.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A new toy for adults is gaining massive popularity online. A mini Porsche for drifting.

It is equipped with an electric motor, weighs only 110 kg and is designed for one adult. The cost is about $6,000.

https://t.co/zDUZkl3t1p

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

Antarctica, the confusing continent.

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

Why do we glorify complexity and look down on simplicity — especially in tech? I wanted to share this because it resonates with so much of what I’ve experienced and observed in tech myself.

https://t.co/sZpjWAVhs0

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

Time Between Disengagements is a concept I came across in a recent article from Gitpod, and it offered an interesting new way to think about AI’s role in software development.
https://t.co/9EWwHA2KqJ

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

Google ad on a magazine in 1999

[Benjamin Júnior @bjunior]

Aerial views of Viseu, Portugal. This footage captures the region's dramatic topography https://t.co/cp3Gwzlg8l

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

JUGGERNAUT: $IBIT has hit the $40b asset mark (a mere two wks after hitting $30b) in a record 211 days, annihilating prev record of 1,253 days held by $IEMG. It's now in Top 1% of all ETFs by assets and at 10mo old it is bigger than all 2,800 ETFs launched in the past TEN years.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

SpaceX has released some new footage from the tower of the first Super Heavy booster catch yesterday. Absolutely epic shot.

(Interstellar music added by me lol)

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

🤣🤣