Dave Blundin

DB2. Co-Founder, DataSage, EverQuote & Vestmark. Godfather of Quantization. GP at Link Ventures.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Who is Dave Blundin anyway?

Take a walk with me for a glimpse inside my day to day action at Link Ventures as I answer 31 rapid-fire questions that never make it on the pod!

Tune in for the inside scoop on what we’re building, what we look for in founding teams, and my thoughts on AI in this special moment in history.

https://t.co/LU4uEkvnD7

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/BEoee01Nlm

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Sam calls this the biggest red pill moment of his life.

One of the young geniuses in our lab, Will Thompson from @Harvard, got access to @cerebras' 1200 token per second Astra model. Only @sama and his top engineers have it, because you have to overpay roughly 10x per token.

It’s so fast that by the time you finish typing a sentence, everything you asked for is already done. Before you blink.

Once you’ve experienced it, you can never go back.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@JBActors @alexwg Good revision

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Anyone with an engineering mindset should reject the idea that there’s a big knob labeled “risk” that we dial left or right.

@alexwg says this about nuclear power: we could have engineered the risk down to near zero and kept the full benefit. Instead we treated it like a knob, decided we wouldn’t tolerate the risk, and dialed all progress to near zero.

It feels like that’s exactly what we’re about to do with AI. It’s an engineering problem with engineering solutions. We cannot let this happen.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/BEoee01fvO

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/0EsAiLeoQP

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

In a single day, @OpenAI dropped 722 math solutions. That’s 81% of the most important math results of the past three years, published all at once. The roadmap matters more than the math. There’s so much to gain in the looping and prompt management they figured out on Navier-Stokes and then applied here. That’s the playbook for the material scientists, the physicists, the biologists, everybody.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@Douglance @alexwg 84 likes. C'mon guys, poke your friends. I want to see the full render - especially the grand finale. I'm picturing splits and falsetto.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@billcox1962 In some respects, I'm already there

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Spring 2023 (picture) to Fall 2026 today (graph): .5T parameters became 2.5T, and now 2.5 will become 10T in just a few months. That log chart look will flex up a lot as the singularity continues ->

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@billcox1962 project -> agent
agent -> ?

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@RT_Visual_on_X Compute: man's best friend

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

@Douglance @alexwg AWESOME! Alex actually sings that well, too.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/JzPxG9DgUE

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Architect Labs (@architectlabs) unveiled Redwood back in August, the first AI chip designed end-to-end by AI. Zero bugs in its first FPGA build, and a projected 3.4x the performance per watt of @Nvidia's Jetson. Is this an incredible threat to Nvidia? Absolutely.

Stretch Nvidia's lifespan by one week and that's $7B in revenue. So they're acquiring and investing in anything that moves. The real question is whether Nvidia buys this and buries it, or @AMD buys it to close the gap. Look out, cousin!

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/eOLwfsUvVS

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

AI won't enter big companies from the top down. It'll come bottom up from the kids.

That's how the Mac happened. Corporate offices ran on PCs and Unix boxes. @Apple made Macs available in colleges, they spread to high schools, and eventually students handed them to their parents. Adoption moved up the generations, not down the org chart.

AI is going to follow the same path. Nobody in high school today does homework without it. When they enter the workforce, they won't accept writing code or documents the old way.

In my experience executives are talking about AI because it's on the cover of the @WSJ, but very few are actually using it every day.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/eOLwfsTY6k

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Some of the best-positioned AI companies in the world don't think of themselves as AI companies.

Businesses with massive proprietary datasets mostly think about AI as a productivity tool - just like any other business: write code faster, automate workflows. But their data is really what could make them AI-native leaders.

Their main problem is momentum. A startup can recruit with founding equity and a clean sheet of paper. A legacy company has far more valuable assets, but struggles to keep top AI talent engaged.

Someone is going to crack the formula for turning valuable legacy assets into AI-native companies. When they do, it's going to start a huge tidal wave.

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Full episode: https://t.co/BEoee01Nlm

[Dave Blundin @DaveBlundin]

Sam Altman says the world should tolerate a “few bad things” happening, in the pursuit for universal super intelligence. This isn't actually about safety IMO. It's about winning the PR war.

@DarioAmodei took the moral high ground on pausing and testing, then said he's keeping best models locked internally because it's too dangerous for you to have.

That opened the door for @sama to differentiate by embracing super intelligence for all.