As far as the AI can see ...
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Wednesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets, your one-stop pre-seed shop. We deliver updates from Necessary Ventures and helpful tidbits on our little corner of the world. Every edition is also on our blog.
Jobortunities 🚨
Mental: Putting the men in mental health. Action-oriented tools targeted towards strengthening the manly mindset.
| Head of Growth |
Taro: Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout via direct primary care based health insurance.
| Product Engineer |
Arc Boats: Electrify watercraft. Build the Tesla of boats. Arc’s aim is both sustainability and high performance. Arc is currently accepting internship applications, so go ahead and forward this to every engineering student you know.
Reach out with any questions! All 131 open job postings are listed here.
Market Stirrings 🚩
Guess which sector is all the r(AI)ge. AI is stealing VC’s eye, claiming a steadily growing percentage of VC deals each year from 2018 to 2023 and jumping from 21.5% in 2022 to 35.4% in 2023. Within the AI industry, vertical applications (SaaS) is taking the cake; however, 2023 revealed horizontal platforms (like OpenAI and Claude) might present some stiff competition. The ups and downs, and perhaps the verticals and horizontals, of the market don’t seem to be cracking the AI empire.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
Google signed up as Stack Overflow’s first customer for its new revenue stream to charge big AI for access to its content used to train chatbots.
Anthropic released Claude 3, an AI LLM similar to those powering ChatGPt, and is claiming Claude 3 sets new industry benchmarks.
Energy-focused startups made up a larger portion of nine-figure deals so far in 2024 compared to 2023, according to TechCrunch.
For the less rushed reader …
COOKIE MONSTERS: Stack Overflow is handling a data flood in the best way possible: commercializing it and selling it to Google. Google signed up as Stack Overflow’s first customer for its new revenue stream to charge big AI for access to its content used to train chatbots. What this really means is Google is quitting shoplifting and finally paying for the data it’s been regularly scraping. Google is not the only culprit; many AI developers have been scavenging for data wherever it can be found, and it’s a good sign that Google is leading by example and paying the price. The larger problem remains that chatbots are devouring data, yet most publishers have not been compensated. Maybe AI companies can take publishers out on a date-a to smooth things over.
ANTHROPIC IS EPIC: Claude 3 is clauding to the top. Anthropic released Claude 3, an AI LLM similar to those powering ChatGPT, and is claiming Claude 3 sets new industry benchmarks. In previous models, Anthropic fell slightly below OpenAI’s capabilities, but the company isn’t pl(AI)ying around this time. According to reports, Claude 3 demonstrated “near-human” performance in cognitive tasks like reasoning, expert knowledge, math, and language fluency; as far as AI developers are concerned, that would mean it’s the perfect pupil. However, while “near-human” is certainly eye-catching, most experts in the space are skeptical, considering it more of an overreaching attention grab than fact. Only time will tell if Claude 3 has any chance of winning a quiz bowl.
POWER TO ENERGY STARTUPS: It’s no secret that venture capital funding is taking the long way ‘round, slowing to a near halt for late-stage startups as funding rounds become rarer and rarer. The story looks a bit different for energy-focused startups, which made up a larger portion of nine-figure deals so far in 2024 compared to 2023, according to TechCrunch. Energy-focused megarounds reportedly gained 60% in relative share – a massive change for any sector in one year. While China previously dominated the energy category, it’s now about evenly split between the U.S. and EU. Although the VC megaround environment might seem tired at first glance, it has plenty of energy afterall.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Notable pre-seed raises in …
Healthtech
UnityAI - Hospit(AI)lity
The Problem: Hospital work life is hectic, and workers could use relief to make caring for others easier.
The Tech: AI-powered platform that uses reinforcement learning to communicate with healthcare workers and aid them in their decision making.
Recently Raised: $4 million in funding led by Max Ventures.
Also Note: UnityAI is starting with Nashville-based healthcare systems.
artificial intelligence
Ema - Coworking computers
The Problem: Employees could do more valuable work if they weren’t burdened by mundane, day-to-day tasks.
The Tech: A universal AI employee driven by more than 30 LLMs and domain-specific, patent-pending models.
Recently Raised: $25 million in funding co-led by Accel, Section 32, and Prosus Ventures.
Also Note: Ema stands for “enterprise machine assistant.”.
Outro🚪
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