James Clark

We are thrilled to share that Australian Gulf Capital has invested in Groq, an AI inference chip company that is poised to transform the AI landscape. Alongside co-investors BlackRock and strategics like Cisco and Samsung Next we are proud to support Groq’s mission to revolutionize AI hardware. Groq has raised an impressive $640 million to address the growing demand for fast AI inference. As the need for real-time, efficient AI solutions continues to soar, Groq's powerful LPU chip and innovative inference engine stood out for us as game-changers. What truly excited us about investing in Groq was the incredible leadership of Jonathan Ross, Sunny Madra and Adam Tachner, and the immense demand they have managed from developers in such a short period of time. Particularly happy with the recent appointments of Stuart Pann, former head of Intel’s foundry business and ex-CIO at HP, as Chief Operating Officer, and Yann LeCun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist, as a technical advisor. Their expertise will undoubtedly strengthen the team further. We look forward to supporting Groq as they continue to innovate and lead the way in AI inference technology. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting journey! Bhaskar Dasgupta Kal Desai Marc Aouad Warwick Grigor Adam Malouf FAICD, F.GCCBDI #VentureCapital #Investment #AI #TechInnovation #Groq #AGC #AIRevolution

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"Rebellion looks beyond conventional AI systems." This is a well-written article by Venture Capital Journal (by David Bogoslaw) about our Rebellion Ventures announcement last week. It reviews artificial super capability (ASC) and our debut fund focused on autonomous operations and AI agents, leveraging a community of 70+ unicorn founders, operators, and industry experts in AI and automation. Check out VCJ's article below - worth taking a look. https://lnkd.in/g6HDmZ8P

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🚨Boom! 8090 Industries portfolio company Armada led by Dan Wright and Jon Runyan lands another $40M led by Microsoft marking $100M raised to date after announcing its Series A and coming out of stealth in 2023 just 7 months ago and shares new customer partnerships with Haliburton and Skydio. 🌪 “Extreme situations like hurricanes reinforce the need for “edge” computing, the practice of processing data locally rather than sending it back to the cloud. “Lots of oil and gas companies are really very concerned about these types of disasters. You can’t have any latency. You have to be able to respond in real time.” Dan Wright, cofounder and CEO of Armada, While disaster response is the obvious application, Armada’s edge technology also has a big role to play in all sorts of remote environments where uninterrupted data access is critical. Think real-time safety monitoring at high-risk worksites, real-time emissions tracking for oil rigs, and automated operations for mines. In regards to the newly inked partnership with Microsoft: It’s a natural fit, says Pradeep Nair Armada’s founding CTO and a 10-year veteran of Microsoft’s Azure business. “If you look at all of these customers we’re hitting—oil, gas, and mining—these guys are legacy, traditional customers and Microsoft is their biggest vendor,” he says. The partnership with Microsoft “opens up the whole pipeline, without us needing to go through the whole procurement process.” Cc Kerem Ozmen Garuth A. Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Andrew Irwin Shilpa Patel

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The success of a Fund boils down to DPI (distributions back to LPs in relation to how much capital was deployed). The industry often gets infatuated with TVPI, which accounts for paper gains. However, these numbers are frequently not worth the paper they are printed on. Knowing when to stick or twist is always a challenge, so I favor a balanced approach: the third-third-third strategy. Sell a third of the investment at the first opportunity. Gradually sell the second third. Hold onto the final third for potential upside. Even this model needs adjustments based on market conditions, requiring a mix of aggressive selling or patience. The real issue for LPs is the industry's recent obsession with maximizing TVPI without enough attention to DPI. This can lead to portfolio imbalances and potentially disappointing (or zero) cash returns. 🎙 Listen to my full episode of Fintech Leaders with good friend Miguel Armaza for more on data as the new gold, secrets behind successful VCs, and the importance of founder-market fit: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3KitB4b Apple: https://apple.co/4bXmmuC Youtube: https://bit.ly/3Vh4HIz

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Today’s read from BBC is a thought provoking one. Even in our current era of peak technological advancement pushing society forward, there’s simultaneously also an unprecedented revival of #analog technology. Vinyl #LPs for the latest Taylor Swift album are selling out, most of the last year’s best picture contenders at the Oscars were shot on traditional #Kodak film-stock, and photographers are embracing the classic #aesthetic of film grain. So, even though analog is much less convenient than our digital counterparts, what is drawing people of all ages to outdated technology? Something that ties all of these things together is the fact that these devices are used in #artistic mediums, and for the “#craftspeople” who prefer analog in these fields, there are still qualities to “slow” tech that digital doesn’t quite offer. Vinyl LPs are capable of capturing all the nuances of music without losing detail to digital file compression. #Digital cameras can capture even more than the human eye, but film offers a stylistic and heightened look that is harder to achieve elsewhere. Ultimately, analog technology is more difficult to use, but these are also valuable #skills that could be lost if we don’t nurture them for future generations. #Art is very different from #business, but maybe in the age of #AI, this is something worth paying attention to.

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🔥🍴 Intel Ignite is still relatively new to the UK tech scene and we're keen to understand more about the VC ecosystem so last week we conducted an experiment. We hosted a dinner for a small group of investors to see what would happen. How open would people be in sharing their experiences? What are the things we can learn from each other? Would people even turn up? I can report that the event was overwhelmingly positive; conversations were flowing, everyone was engaged, we got to know each other personally, insights and lessons learnt were shared and above all, it was a fun time! Some of the things we talked about: 🛰 The rise of defence tech and dual-use investing, plus the increased amount of spacetech deal flow we’re seeing. 😇 Angel investing when you work at a fund. Is it allowed, and if so, can you only invest in companies outside of your fund’s thesis or does the fund get the right of first refusal on those deals? How do you handle conflicts of interest? 🐲 We talked about the incredible impact of DragonChasers, the community for emerging managers to find the right investors and helping LPs from around the world find the right European ventures funds to invest into. 💰 Ofer Shayo shared the story of how his start-up got acquired. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t easy at all. It was an intricate process where there were a lot of moving pieces. We also shared tactical tips with each other including how to engage with student entrepreneurs and university spin-outs, and how we conduct first calls with founders! My thanks to Isabelle O'Keeffe, Harry Morgan, Aashna Gupta and Patrick Gilday for the lively conversation. And here’s a picture of us in our “rave” sunglasses 🕶

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We had the pleasure of speaking to the inimitable Gordon Sanghera, co-founder and CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, valued at around $6.8bn in 2021. Gordon somewhat accidentally ended up as an entrepreneur, breaking the conventional VC wisdom around 'born founders'. The technology is wild - democratising access to genomic sequencing giving us a new understanding of living organisms. In the episode of Riding Unicorns, we cover: 00:00 Defining Entrepreneurship 00:55 Understanding Oxford Nanopore's Technology 06:10 Gordon's Journey to Founding Oxford Nanopore 12:09 Commercialization Challenges and Strategies 16:27 Building a Strong Founding Team 20:55 Navigating the Ups and Downs of Deep Tech 25:54 Innovative Applications of Nanopore Technology 28:57 Company Culture and Operational Insights 35:05 Attracting Talent in a Competitive Market 37:22 The IPO Experience and Future Outlook https://lnkd.in/eQZVSGeK

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Cambridge Future Tech builds DeepTech ventures and last week we hit another milestone; we're co-founding our 15th venture 🤘 It's awesome building new ventures from the ground up. It's why we started CFT in the first place. It always feels great to be at the start of the build phase, helping founders articulate a new venture’s tech and potential, building a strong narrative. We’re collaborating closely with founders to transform groundbreaking ideas into companies. 🚀🚀🚀 More to come on this. I'm hyped to share what we're building 🤘 #venturebuilder #deeptech #startups #cambridge

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Cambridge Future Tech builds companies. But what makes us different? We get involved from the pre-incorporation stage and join the team as co-founders. We start with the tech. ⚡⚡ Our research team perform extensive due diligence on product, tech and market fit. Then, we build the company around the tech. We help to build : 🚀 The team. 🚀 The vision. 🚀 The narrative. We’re hands-on. We support with: 🚀 Legal and governance. 🚀 Operational process and structure. 🚀 Financial and business models. We prepare the venture: 🚀 For pitching and fundraising. 🚀 For commercial engagements. 🚀 To bring the product to market. Then, we connect them with our international network of investors and VC. 🔗 We’re with them every step from incorporation through pre-seed, seed and beyond. #cambridgefuturetech #venturebuilder #deeptech

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NVIDIA has claimed the top spot as the most valuable company globally, showcasing remarkable performance in forward earnings and stock price. At Herbert Smith Freehills, we're witnessing a surge in #privatecapital funding for #datacentres and #fibrenetworks as a way for these investors to tap into the exponential growth projected in #AI. Hyperscalers and other companies need to make money with AI, and so it does raise some risks as to the medium to longer term demands for the underlying infrastructure. While I firmly believe that AI is generational and here to stay, private capital investors must assess flexibility of customer and power supply contracts (space and power reduction rights, termination rights, take or pay power supply arrangements) in the context of possible reductions in demand and factor that impact in to the investment case. Our team is well equipped to help guide private capital investors through these considerations amongst many others.

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The European Union has published its proposed €200bn draft budget for 2025 with significant cuts to technology spending. The draft EU budget includes €13.5 billion for research and innovation, of which mainly €12.7 billion for Horizon Europe, the Union’s flagship research programme, down by €100m on 2024. With high inflation and financing subsidies to chip makers under the European Chips Act under Horizon Europe and through redeployment from other programmes, this is a significant cut in real terms for research projects.

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Industry experts call for tailored AI rules in post-election UK

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On further reflection on my previous post (link below) about AI being like electricity, not in the fear mongering sense but in the Nicholas Carr commoditization sense, this is only true in the same way that the Efficient Market hypothesis is true… While the stock market is generally efficient, through brilliance, skill, or specialized domain knowledge, people like Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Edward Thorpe, have been able to consistently find inefficiencies and generate wealth. Especially now when there is so much flux in the whole AI landscape one can find great opportunities. We are experimenting with a few ideas in our field of  CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) When I interviewed the legendary angel investor Gil Penchina (invested in 7 unicorns) for TechCrunch he told me that one of the questions he always asks startups is:  Why now? What has changed that makes this idea attractive? https://lnkd.in/dqf-aRtJ #ai #startups #ecommerce #conversionrateoptimization

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🔈 Calling all #researchers #deeptechdeepthinkers - gathering ideas on the #sustainability of #AICompute. Solving the #energy demands for #AI is just one of the many challenges facing the industry. Your thoughts #storage #emissions #load #security #affordability would help us with our growing footprint. 🗣 Get in touch!

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Maternity in VC in the spotlight. Well done Rachel Drapper, Sophie Winwood & the WVC:E team on getting this important report out there. In VC we’re dealing often with small firms, network & event heavy schedules and FOMO of being left behind if we take time out (I refuse to use the word off as anyone who’s had a child knows that’s the furthest from how it feels). If you’re thinking about having a child or in the throes of the early-stages, navigating how to even try and get some semblance or balance, then hopefully this report can provide some useful tips. Most importantly showcasing that you’re not alone.

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Incredible to see Mosaic in the Financial Times this morning in this excellent piece by Sujeet Indap on tech innovation in private equity. Sujeet's research into the historical evolution of Wall Street's analytical horsepower was particularly fascinating. Though I wasn't around for the shift from pen-and-paper to VisiCalc, I can only imagine the step-function productivity increase it unlocked. Anders' assertion that the advent of the spreadsheet in part drove the LBO boom of the late '80s is also intriguing (although I'm sure the <10% min. equity helped, too). Though the spreadsheet was a great advancement in the '80s, it always baffled me that ~30 years later (when I began my PE career) we were still underwriting billion-dollar buyouts using a generic productivity tool and not an industry-focused application. That's precisely why I started Mosaic. With dedicated platforms like Mosaic and Blackstone's Atlas now powering new deal underwriting - could the industry benefit from a similar step-function productivity increase? Also - an open question to anyone who was working as an investment professional in the 1980s/1990s: was the spreadsheet initially met with hesitation / skepticism by a subset of old-school investors who thought there was value in grinding it out until 3am with only pencil and abacus in hand? We're fortunate at Mosaic to work with some of the world's most forward-thinking investors who readily embrace change - but this sentiment does comes up once in a while. What happens to the holdouts? And curious how the innovators - whose shoulders we stand on - navigated it before us. Read the full story here: https://on.ft.com/4dXEvth

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In this Unlearn episode, I challenge the myth that innovation is solely the playing field of startups, alongside Elliott Parker, CEO at High Alpha Innovation. We delve into how large corporations can shake off the 'business as usual' mindset to embrace a trajectory of continuous innovation. Our discussion revolves around fostering agility, critical thinking, and a culture adaptable to challenges and evolving success metrics. For any corporate leader looking to infuse their business operations with a fresh, innovative spirit, this conversation sheds light on practical, actionable strategies to drive significant transformation. Don’t miss out on unlocking the innovative potential within your large organization. https://lnkd.in/gD8QUbKW #CorporateInnovation #MindsetShift #BusinessTransformation #InnovationCulture #PodcastValue

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The art of synthesis for deep tech founders. In a conversation with a founder last week, we were exploring a new business idea. At the heart of the idea is some complicated bio-technology, a very difficult to navigate supply chain and an expensive capex build. It was also quite boring on the surface and hard to imagine a crowd of investors downstream fighting to get into the next round. But the founder explained it to me in a way that electrified the concept in my mind. They came at it from a world of geopolitical shifts, a gaping opportunity to effortlessly reflow supply chains and a magical technology that would sustainably deliver industrial advantage to countries. The founder started with the WHY and led me to the WHAT. See Simon Sinek - https://lnkd.in/dE4RV4Sj for more on this. - WHY: painting a picture of a massive market problem that most people understand. - HOW: building a business model around an existing flow of that market and leaning into it instead of trying to force a change. So many companies fail when founders think they can bend a whole planet around their company. - WHAT: a unique invention that no one else has. After the WHY and HOW, I am hungry to understand the WHAT. The work to get to this simple idea takes a special kind of work - SYNTHESIS. It involves iterating thousands of times over a vast information space that includes world events, government policies, industrial trends, technological invention. It requires an always-on radar that scans the world looking for micro-moments of hypothetical product market fit and smushing them all together until a single cohesive story emerges that a founder can unite a community around. - I'm a Partner at Main Sequence, a VC purpose-built to create global companies from scientific ideas with the inventors who imagine them. I build-out-loud here: https://lnkd.in/gENhMrbU Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog: https://lnkd.in/dAXEMWTr

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