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20 really smart things Jeff Bezos has said
20 really smart things Jeff Bezos has said
"If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new." https://lnkd.
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300+ investors who routinely invest in Seed, Series A or Series B rounds raised by European startups. Total of €15 billion worth of funds.
300+ investors who routinely invest in Seed, Series A or Series B rounds raised by European startups. Total of €15 billion worth of funds.
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisFirst week of my new role at CuspAI done*! And what an amazing, crazy, deep immersion. When I decided to leave the brilliant team at Google DeepMind, I left with a clear idea of what I wanted next. A company: - At the intersection of AI and science, still small enough that I could help it grow and shape the culture - With European values and the ambition of a Silicon Valley company - Where I could build a brilliant team again, and build something amazing with them - Where I would be learning and exposed to something new every day - Where I could see a clear throughline from the science to real-world impact One of the formative experiences I had at DeepMind was telling the story of AlphaFold from hackathon to Nobel Prize, through The Thinking Game documentary, the DeepMind podcast and more. I believe what Cusp is doing in the AI for materials space is on that same trajectory. Having finally seen what we have built – and are continuing to build – I'm already blown away. The scale of the ambition, the talented, kind and seriously fast-moving team. I truly believe we can deliver on that ambition. I'm joining as VP of Comms, Creative & Marketing. Having told the AlphaFold story once, I can't wait to help tell this one from the start. Thank you to Chad Edwards, Max Welling, Debbie Toms, Zheela Qaiser and everyone else for making me feel so welcome this week. Super happy to also be working with so many old friends. Excited to build this with you 🚀 *well, a few more hours… but nearly!
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisStill rather surreal to see this in print. I was featured in the TIME AI 100 last week, and the physical copy just arrived. Landing on a page alongside Mira Murati, Yann LeCun, Ilya Sutskever, Fei-Fei Li, Darío Gil and so many brilliant founders and researchers is not something I could have imagined a few years ago. This recognition is shared with my co-founder Max Welling, the whole CuspAI team, and everyone who backed us, advised us, and believed in the idea that AI could transform how the world discovers new materials. Immensely grateful to everyone who has been part of this journey so far. We're still young and I can't wait to see where we go from here. 🙏
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisThe TIME100 AI 2026 reflects a group of visionaries "reshaping our world through groundbreaking advances in artificial intelligence." Congratulations to the Lightspeed-backed founders included in this year’s list: → Ali Ghodsi (Co-founder and CEO, Databricks) → Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie (Co-founders, Ricursive Intelligence) → Chad Edwards (Co-founder and CEO, CuspAI) → Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei (Co-founders, Anthropic) → Garrett Lord (Co-founder and CEO, Handshake) → Jack Clark (Co-founder and Head of Public Benefit, Anthropic) → Mikey Shulman (Co-founder & CEO, Suno) → Mira Murati (Co-founder and CEO, Thinking Machines Lab) → Sanmi Koyejo (Co-founder, Virtue AI) → Vivek Raghavan (Co-founder, Sarvam AI) We are proud to back some of the exceptional founders working to help shape the future of AI.
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisCelebrating my co-founder Chad Edwards being named on the TIME100 AI list today, and thinking back to our first conversation a little over two years ago. Two things became apparent very quickly: 1/ We both believed that AI was ready to tackle materials science problems and that done right, this had the potential to deliver huge, beneficial impact for the world. Our values aligned. 2/ We saw this same opportunity from two completely different sides - which is why we should start a company together. We’re both scientists, but Chad brings exceptional commercial instincts and dealmaking abilities to the table, complementing my love of deep research and pushing the technical frontier. Congratulations Chad for this more than deserved honor. You are a once in a generation CEO: tenacious, innovative and kind. I’m extremely proud to see his impact recognised alongside other leaders in AI. These photos are from our first birthday celebration in Wales - we ended up signing a termsheet from a tent…! Read the profile of Chad in TIME below. #TIME100AI
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisTIME magazine has named Cusp co-founder and CEO Chad Edwards to the TIME100 AI list, which recognises the 100 most influential leaders shaping artificial intelligence today. His inclusion reflects what he's built in a little over two years. Chad has turned his belief that AI can be applied to next-gen materials discovery into a global company that works in partnership with leading organisations and research teams. This is a win for the whole team, too - we’ve come a long way from the early calls between Chad in Cambridge and co-founder Max Welling in Amsterdam in 2024 when they discovered they shared the same dream. Read more below - and if working on these hard challenges sounds like your cup of tea, we’re hiring… #TIME100AI
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Charles Seely shared thisIn 2016 I led an investment in to Zipline's Series B on behalf of SGH Capital. The deal announced today between Uber and Zipline is absolutely transformational. Super excited to be along for the ride and thank you Susan Choe for making the introduction to Keller Rinaudo Cliffton https://lnkd.in/eVB9dARF "The partnership is Uber’s biggest commitment to drones yet, marking the first time it’s laid out a long-term delivery target for the technology."Uber, Zipline Partner With Goal of Hitting 1 Million Drone Deliveries a DayUber, Zipline Partner With Goal of Hitting 1 Million Drone Deliveries a Day
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisWhat if AI didn't just help us discover new materials, but designed them from scratch? That's the vision behind CuspAI. After securing a second major round of funding, the company founded by Dutch AI researcher Max Welling is bringing that vision one step closer. Read how CuspAI is rethinking materials discovery, and why this could have a major impact on technologies ranging from carbon capture to batteries and semiconductors. Click to read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/dETPFDYK #ArtificialIntelligence #MaterialsScience #DeepTech #Innovation #AmsterdamAI‘My dream is for CuspAI to function as an autonomous search engine for materials’‘My dream is for CuspAI to function as an autonomous search engine for materials’
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisOur book on the relationship between Generative AI and Stochastic Thermodynamics- co-authored with Sirui Lu and Lars Holdijk can now be ordered on Amazon! Major societal and economic shifts have always been anchored in foundational physics. During the First Industrial Revolution, thermodynamics gave us the blueprint to harness energy, and power physical machines like the steam engine. Today, history is repeating itself in the digital realm. During the current Digital Revolution, stochastic thermodynamics is giving us the blueprint to harness intelligence and power learning machines like generative models. Surprisingly, the same theory that explained and accelerated the Industrial Revolution, Thermodynamics, also provides the mathematical scaffolding behind modern generative AI. This connection runs both ways: Physics for AI: Thermodynamic principles help us analyze, optimize, and push the boundaries of generative models. AI for Physics: Generative AI accelerates complex computations in chemistry, thermodynamics and the physical sciences more generally. In short, fundamental science isn't only an application for AI, but part of its core infrastructure. AI is uniquely suited to decoding the chaotic physical world - because it speaks the same mathematical language. When we combine AI, computation, and experimentation, we have potential to unlock massive breakthroughs - such as designing new, sustainable materials. This exact synergy is the foundation behind CuspAI’s new materials foundry, which we announced two weeks ago. If you’re interested in diving deep into the mathematics and physics powering the next generation of AI, you can order the book using the link in the comments below.
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Charles Seely reposted thisCharles Seely reposted thisCome join the team that’s on a mission to unlock breakthrough materials needed to power human progress!
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Charles Seely liked thisCharles Seely liked thisThank you MSN for the kind words and the feature. We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to female representation in both Venture Capital and mountaineering, but I feel lucky to play a very small part in both worlds. Here's to building more bridges between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world and to climbing more mountains (even though the sleep deprivation of recently welcoming my second daughter into this world is making training very difficult these days 🙃). Full feature here: https://lnkd.in/g-qhJQwv
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Charles Seely reacted on thisCharles Seely reacted on thisSome of the most important work in a startup happens behind closed doors. Much of ours has Debbie Toms name on it. She was the first person to believe in CuspAI, before there was too much to believe in. Since then she has helped raise multiple funding rounds, built the team to almost 100 people across seven offices. She turned Max Welling and I's idea into a company that actually runs, and kept the culture intact while we scaled. Sifted has named her one of its 100 Women in Tech in Europe 2026. It is beyond deserved. Debs, thank you 🙏 .
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Charles Seely reacted on thisCharles Seely reacted on thisA massive congratulations to our Chief of Staff Debbie Toms who has been named to the 100 Women in Tech in Europe 2026. I could not be prouder to work alongside you from Day 1 of building CuspAI. Thank you to Sifted for this well deserved recognition of a very special person. https://lnkd.in/giR-h-WT
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Charles Seely liked thisCharles Seely liked thisAfter the best 9.5 years of my professional life, and with a heart bursting with gratitude, I'm spinning out of FJ Labs to start my own firm. There is no place in the world like FJ. Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin helped pioneer super-angel investing, a collaborative, network-driven model that still sounds unfathomable when I describe it. I had the privilege of working on almost 500 investments and raising capital from LPs in 20+ countries. For the rest of my life I'll remember the late-night debates, the thesis-building (and debauchery) at offsites, and working with a group of colleagues who became extremely close friends. Fabrice and Jose - thank you for taking a chance on a junior IR associate and trusting me with your firm. From hunting in Spain to kitesurfing at Fabrice's villa in Turks and Caicos, fundraising from Riyadh to Bangkok, raising a SPAC (oops!), and Halloween in Shanghai: what a ride. Arne H. Halleraker, my Nordic brother from another mother - you were the best partner I could ask for. You bring an engineer's rigor to investing, and taught me so much about management, science, technology and strange Norwegian traditions :) I'm convinced you can go down as an all-time great frontier tech investor. The team is in the best hands possible. Matthew S., the title COO doesn't do you justice. Ariel Lebowits, I hope to never negotiate against you :) William in Guillouard, the funny Frenchman and king of IT. Lauren Lee, Danny Browne and Mehul K., the young guns who keep me honest on AI. Ryan Geary, Owen McCarthy, CPA, Morgan Spar, Gloria Rodriguez- the best ops team in the game. My FJ teammates, both former and current- thank you for everything. I consider you close personal friends and always will. To my founder and investor friends (too many to list here, but you know who you are!!) - while my day-to-day at FJ is ending, I'm staying in the family as a Senior Advisor (think venture partner on steroids), helping with the portfolio, and will work closely with the FJ Labs team on secondary opportunities. As for what's next- if you know me, you know I'm an obsessive distance runner. An ekiden (eh-kee-den) is a long-distance relay race that started in Japan more than a century ago. Each runner carries a sash called the tasuki for one leg, then hands it to the next teammate. As I wrote in Venture's Nifty Fifty Moment, great companies now stay private longer than the funds that backed them were even built to last. Venture has quietly turned into a race with no finish line. I like to say that one of the polite lies of venture capital is the 10-year fund life. Plenty of early investors, employees and LPs have run their leg, and they're still waiting for someone to take the sash. Announcing Ekiden Capital. If you're looking for the next leg in the venture relay race, my inbox is open.
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Charles Seely liked thisCharles Seely liked this𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗔 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 Last week our Founder & CEO Boudewijn Wijnands and Director of Global Partnerships Neil Chauhan were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly Week, joining discussions hosted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Center for European Policy Analysis and others on the future of AI, technology and security. Three themes stood out. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. As competition intensifies, we need to get the balance right between regulation, security and innovation. That includes finding ways to secure agentic AI and building sovereign technology stacks without equating sovereignty with self-sufficiency. 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘁. Access to compute, data centres and AI capability is increasingly central to growth and competitiveness. But countries also want partnerships that build domestic capability, strengthen resilience and give them a meaningful role in the technology stack. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. The benefits are already tangible, including in medicine, while the risks require serious attention and practical safeguards. We need to address those risks swiftly and practically without allowing the most extreme scenarios to define the debate. A valuable week of conversations about the choices ahead as AI becomes increasingly central to economic growth, national resilience and security.
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Charles Seely liked thisDeepInfra just crossed $100M ARR, and we're just getting started. A few numbers I'm proud of: 📈 $105M+ annualized run-rate 👩💻 240,000+ developers building on the platform 🔁 400%+ net revenue retention 👥 35 people, which works out to more than $3M in revenue per employee The part that still blows my mind: I was the only GTM person from $5M to $70M. Today our go-to-market team is two people, me and Behzad Nouri. This has been done in 15 months! Lean team, relentless engineering, and customers who keep growing with us. Grateful to everyone who's built with us so far. The next $100M is going to be even more fun. Thank you to all our partners and customers. Teams like LiveKit, humans&, and OpenCode run demanding workloads on our platform every day and help us to continuously improve. Lastly, my awesome coworkers at DeepInfra who keep scaling our infrastructure to meet that demand. We're hiring https://lnkd.in/gksZK9QqCharles Seely liked this#ICYMI: We announced today that we're processing over 22 trillion tokens per week, more than tripling our volume since May, and reached a $105M+ annualized run-rate, representing nearly 14x year-over-year growth. There's a clear trend behind this tremendous growth: companies are moving AI into production, and they need inference infrastructure built for performance, reliability and economics at scale. And our platform combines dedicated AI compute, optimized software and a fully managed developer experience while supporting 200+ open-source models so that teams can pick the right model for each workload. With the support of our incredible team and one-of-a-kind customers like LiveKit, humans& and OpenCode, we're able to continue thriving, whether it's by expanding our international footprint or scaling our enterprise and custom DeepCluster offerings. Read the latest announcement for more: https://lnkd.in/gF5MdXAtDeepInfra Surpasses $100M ARR, Triples Token VolumeDeepInfra Surpasses $100M ARR, Triples Token Volume
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Charles Seely liked thisCharles Seely liked this23 years ago today, I officially started working for Google. Little did I know of the adventures that lay ahead, as I introduced myself to the Googlers sharing a small, rented office in London. If I could sit down and share advice with that younger version of myself, or anyone starting their career journey, there is a lot I would say. 1. Find your voice. Speak before you are “ready.” Don't wait for the perfect moment or for someone to ask for your opinion. I used to tell myself to just speak up at least once per meeting. When you have a seat at the table, use your voice, we need it. 2. Find your purpose. If you leave your family to come to work every day, it needs to be worth it. Quit if the passion is gone. If you show up, show up. Your impact matters, make it count. 3. Find your people. People that get you. Challenge you. Rely on you. Make you laugh. You are going to spend a lot of hours together. 4. Trust your gut. I’ve made a few decisions I regret because I let other people influence me. Your instincts are usually right, and will get you further than you think. 5. Treat your career like a jungle gym, not a ladder. Put your hand up for roles, ask for challenges, ask to be considered. There will be years where you feel like you’re flying and years where you’re just trying to keep your head above water. That’s okay. 6. What makes you different is your superpower. Growing up, I was one of only two girls in my advanced math class. Later on, I was an Irish woman navigating two male-dominated industries that had a very specific, established way of talking and acting. It took me a while to realize that my unique perspective was exactly why I was in the room in the first place. Don’t sand down your edges. 7. You can be "Mom-in-Chief." Before she passed, my dear friend Susan Wojcicki taught me that it’s possible to be both a good parent and a good leader, and that your kids will be proud of you for working on something that gives you purpose. 8. Always stay curious, learning keeps you young! To my team and all the amazing folks I work with every day, thank you for making the last 23 years the privilege of a lifetime. The 2003 version of me couldn't possibly imagine what we'd build together, and the 2026 version of me is incredibly excited for what's next.
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Charles Seely liked this"There's 10⁶⁰ possible materials you could potentially make that are stable in this universe, this universe has only created a tiny, tiny fraction of that." Our co-founder Max Welling on the etn. show at HumanX. Max talks about how we use AI to search that space for materials that don't exist yet. Thanks to Ronan Chambers and Luke Knight for the conversation. Clip below https://lnkd.in/p/e_XgFrWxCharles Seely liked thisCuspAI Co-Founder and CTO Max Welling spoke to us at HumanX about using AI to search the 10⁶⁰ possible materials that don't yet exist: "AI is accelerating it's own invention." "It's a bit dizzying...you constantly underestimate the speed at which things go." "It is disrupting the way we do science..." "If you think about it, there's 10⁶⁰ possible materials you could potentially make that are stable in this universe, this universe has only created a tiny tiny fraction of that." "If you can find needles in this immense haystack, you can come up with totally crazy materials with totally crazy properties." "We are at the cusp of making that happen."
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Advisory Board Member
New Jobs for New York
- 1 year 1 month
Economic Empowerment
Founded and Chaired by Hillary Clinton, New Jobs for New York focused on helping create jobs in Upstate New York through attracting investment, making investments and advising businesses located in Upstate New York.
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Board Member
Falling Whistles
- 3 years 1 month
Human Rights
Falling Whistles is a non-profit organization campaigning for peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Ungrounded Delegation to G8 Innovation Summit and United Nations
"100 brilliant innovators. 11 hours. One plane. Can a single transatlantic flight help change the world?"
British Airways and their Advisory Board have hand-picked 100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers, and put them on a flight from San Francisco to London. On board, they’ll do what they do best—innovate and collaborate to find an effective solution to the growing global challenge of the misalignment of technical talent. Once…"100 brilliant innovators. 11 hours. One plane. Can a single transatlantic flight help change the world?"
British Airways and their Advisory Board have hand-picked 100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers, and put them on a flight from San Francisco to London. On board, they’ll do what they do best—innovate and collaborate to find an effective solution to the growing global challenge of the misalignment of technical talent. Once back on land, they’ll present their ideas to ranking delegates from the United Nations and the G8 Innovation Summit.Other creators
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Mark Dowds
Dr. Mark Dowds is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of RESPONSIBLE, a technology company focused on reducing the consumption of new fashion products. He is a Venture Partner at Anthemis Group, a VC firm with the mission of cultivating change in the financial sector. He is also the Co-Founder and Chair of Ormeau Labs, a Belfast based technology innovation hub housing over 200 entrepreneurs, and the Chair of Mantis, an AI software company transforming the trucking industry. <br><br>In 2012 Mark co-founded Trov, the world's first on-demand insurance platform that was later acquired by Travelers Insurance. He previously co-founded ServiceCloud that was acquired by SFDC. He was also the co-founder of BandofCoders and did a management buy out after several years of successfully scaling the company internationally. Mark was the Chair of Techstart Ventures, which invests in entrepreneurs to build successful technology businesses from the ground up in Northern Ireland and Scotland. He was also an LP in Bullet Time Ventures, an early seed investor in Uber and Twilio, and is an advisor to LoweConex.
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Elisha Tropper
Could Startup Nation finally be morphing into Scale-Up Nation? In what might be a sign of a significant paradigm shift, through the first eleven months of 2025, 35% of the acquirers in the more than 110 deals by exiting Israeli startups (totaling over $70 billion) were Israeli companies, and not foreign-owned entities. In addition, fundraising appears to have returned to pre-war levels, with over $12 billion expected as the year comes to a close. All in all, a spectacular performance by the sector, and further evidence that Israel is an extraordinary source of investment opportunities and returns. #israel #startupnation #investing #scaleupnation #israelitech #roi https://lnkd.in/emS6daRq
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Rob Desborough
In case you missed it. Seraphim's Head of Marketing, Leah Martin, sat down with Investment Associate Lucas Bishop to unpack the Q4 2025 Seraphim Space Index. It was a record-breaking quarter for SpaceTech. $3.8bn deployed globally in Q4 alone. $12.4bn raised across the trailing twelve months. That’s a new high, overtaking the 2021 peak of $10.9bn. SpaceTech has not only recovered from the 2022 downturn. It’s now outperforming the wider venture market. Watch here: https://lnkd.in/emzSDp8A #SeraphimSpace #DualUse #SpaceTech #VentureCapital #SpaceEconomy #CommercialSpace #InvestInSpace #Innovation
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Jonathan Tobin
We recently closed an investment in Lumonus $28m Series B. The company has developed an AI-powered clinical assistant to improve radiotherapy care. The company is already generating significant revenue and we are excited to be part of its growth. Brandon Capital Stephen Thompson
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