Mayfield

Theme of the week: Corporate Alliances This week shows how the AI race is being shaped by alliances and dependencies rather than isolated breakthroughs. Companies are locking in long-term partners, defending customer relationships, and building ecosystems that will decide who controls compute, distribution, and talent. In infrastructure, AWS pushed Trainium3 and Trainium4 AI chips while tightening its grip on Anthropic. Google accelerated its next TPU line, and NVIDIA strengthened its position in inference with new Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) systems, which allow larger models to run more efficiently by activating only a subset of specialized “experts” during each inference step. In the enterprise, Microsoft widened Copilot, Amazon pushed Nova agents and AgentCore, and Salesforce kept gaining ground with Agentforce. OpenAI declared a “Code Red” as Google’s Gemini 3 surged, redirecting resources toward strengthening ChatGPT and delaying other projects. Capital and global strategy followed the same pattern, with firms taking on debt, buying critical suppliers, and forming partnerships that behave more like treaties than deals. On social media, leaders sharpened the narrative. Ilya Sutskever argued that scaling alone will not deliver superintelligence. Paweł Huryn highlighted major gaps in agent reliability across models. Marc Benioff declared the model a commodity. Burkov pointed to architectural tweaks that are quietly reshaping long-context performance. The conversation echoed the same message as the market: relationships, not raw scale, are becoming the defining advantage. Here is your Saturday guide to the signals shaping the future of AI 👇

AI is a 100x opportunity. I've been part of the web, mobile, and cloud era. Each transformed how we work, live, and play. But AI? It's different than past technological shifts, and we’re just getting started. Today, we published The Future of AI, our new digital magazine - our last piece of 2025 and a culmination of AI perspectives from leaders across the industry. It captures insights from the Imagination in Action summit in Silicon Valley – two days where visionaries, founders, and scientists gathered to answer one question: What will the future of AI look like? If you’re looking for a deep read over the holidays, this is it. Three insights that stood out: 1. Companies are hitting billion-dollar valuations faster with fewer employees. This isn't incremental - it's a fundamental shift in how startups scale. 2. Velocity crushes first-mover advantage now. Good ideas have a half-life of weeks, not months. Being first doesn't matter. How fast you ship and learn does. 3. Augmentation beats automation every time. Entry-level employment declined where AI automates work, but not where it augments it. The companies winning aren't replacing people, they’re making them superhuman. This magazine covers 12 distinct futures: agents, startups, investing, research, infrastructure and hardware, energy, consumer, enterprise, applied AI, health, physical AI, and policy and governance. Each section includes insights from founders and leaders who are building these futures right now. Grateful to John Werner and the entire Imagination in Action team for bringing together this community in Silicon Valley. Check out the full magazine and let me know which future you’re most curious about. https://lnkd.in/gMEfEZCJ #FutureofAI #AIFounders #ImaginationInAction

This Thanksgiving, we’re reflecting on what it means to turn gratitude into action. At Mayfield, we’re proud to support The Farmlink Project, which is transforming the food system by connecting farmers with communities facing food insecurity, rescuing surplus produce that would otherwise go to waste and delivering it to families in need. Their impact speaks volumes: - 450 million pounds of food moved - 300,000 metric tons of CO₂e emissions prevented - 375 million meals made possible Through our partnership, the Mayfield Farmlink FIELD Fellows program empowers emerging changemakers who are reimagining how food can nourish people, communities, and the planet. The 2025 Fellows are leading bold innovations across the food system: • Creating pay-what-you-can farm stands that bring dignity and choice to food access. • Mapping urban food networks to connect local growers with families in need. • Piloting regenerative citrus farming in California and shared composting hubs in the UAE. • Designing policy frameworks that turn surplus into sustainability, aligning incentives for farmers, restaurants, and communities alike. Each Fellow reminds us that solving hunger isn’t just about moving food - it’s about rethinking the systems that grow, share, and value it. As we give thanks this season, we’re inspired by these innovators who are feeding communities and shaping a more equitable future. 🎥 Watch the video below to meet the 2025 Fellows and see how they’re building a more just and sustainable food system with The Farmlink Project. This Thanksgiving, what innovations or acts of service are inspiring you to give back?

I believe that AI is evolving education into something more powerful. It’s reshaping the entire learning experience. Teachers are becoming personalized learning architects - designing AI-driven curricula that adapt to each student's pace and strengths. Administrators are evolving into data-driven leaders who use AI insights to predict student needs and optimize resources. Curriculum specialists are shifting toward adaptive content design while AI handles routine delivery. But the bigger story? The entirely new roles that will emerge in education: - AI Curriculum Architects design learning pathways that adapt in real-time - Learning Analytics Specialists analyze patterns across thousands of students to identify what actually works - Digital Instruction Coaches help teachers integrate AI without losing the human connection - AI Ethics Coordinators ensure algorithms don't disadvantage any student groups In this newsletter, I break down the roles emerging in education, identify the skills that matter most, and share how education leaders can position their teams for this shift. Education is entering its most exciting chapter yet - one where learning becomes deeply personal, data-driven, and accessible at scale. What AI roles in Education are you most excited about? #Education #AI #FutureOfWork

Theme of the week, people. AI keeps scaling in compute and capital, but the real momentum comes from the builders driving it. Jensen Huang and Lisa Su steer new chip alliances. Jeff Bezos returns as co-founder of an AI venture. Tim Cook’s expected retirement sharpens Apple’s AI succession, with John Ternus emerging as a potential heir. Across the industry, leadership decisions are shaping where talent, capital, and innovation flow next. Company moves reflect that momentum. Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN forms a new venture with AMD and Cisco, HUMAIN also partners with NVIDIA to deploy hundreds of thousands of GPUs and train the engineers to run them. Foxconn partners with OpenAI to redesign advanced hardware. In the enterprise, Google’s Gemini 3 powers daily workflows, Target adopts ChatGPT across its business, OpenAI adds shared group chats for real-time collaboration, Anthropic expands with Microsoft and NVIDIA, and Databricks climbs toward a new valuation peak. Research and policy move in parallel. GPT-5 shows new scientific promise. AI2 releases Olmo 3. DeepMind expands in Singapore. Policymakers adjust frameworks as AI becomes a strategic priority. Social signals sharpen the narrative: Sundar Pichai moves Gemini 3 from model to agent with less prompt wrangling, Elon Musk pushes an AI-optimized feed across organic and ads, Andrew Ng urges restraint on frontier LLMs, and Pascal BORNET warns that AI is becoming a memory architect, so leaders must protect context and judgment. Here are the past week’s signals worth reading. 👇

The 10-person, $100M startup is here. Are you building it? At our AI List event a few days ago, I did a fireside chat with Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan to discuss what's happening on the ground with AI startups. According to Garry, here's what matters for founders: - The New Math of Company Building Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to scale a meaningful company, you needed to raise $100 million and hire 500 people to reach $20-30 million in annual revenue. That was the playbook. Today, something remarkable is happening. AI-native startups are reaching $50M ARR with teams of 15-20 people. In the next 2-3 years, as models become 2-10x smarter, we’re going to see companies go from zero to $100M ARR in a single year with just 10 people. The economics for building and scaling a startup have fundamentally changed. - Three Principles for AI Founders 1. Go after market expansion, not displacement. The $5T IT budget is crowded. The $30T knowledge worker spend, and the $50T+ physical worlds spend are wide open. Build in fragmented markets, attack weak incumbents, and create experiences that are 10x better than what humans alone could deliver. 2. Build superintelligence into your core. Stop thinking "AI assistant." Start building systems that do what humans can't. For example, voice AI startup Giga can resolve DoorDash’s three-party delivery disputes (between a Dasher/driver, restaurant, and customer) in 30 seconds versus 10+ minutes of manual work between humans. That's superhuman capability. Automating existing workflows isn’t enough. 3. Master meta-prompting to 10X yourself. Founders need to effectively collaborate with AI. Garry iterates through 20+ versions of his prompts, training them to match his voice and needs. Each prompt becomes "better than the best associate you could ever hire." This is the skill that separates 10-person companies from 500-person ones. What This Means for Founders 1. Paint a compelling vision in a few minutes (if you can't, you probably can't recruit or sell either) 2. Prioritize building 10x better products over growth hacks 3. Implement AI into their core systems from day one 4. Target market expansion Success as a founder isn’t avoiding failure. Your mission is to avoid predictable mistakes while building something that scales to billions. That’s where experienced investors add value – helping you sidestep landmines and supporting your vision. What are you seeing out there? How is AI changing your company-building approach? #AI #Startups #Venture #PeopleFirst