Anyone know what the event was?

Hi, I wrote this article and thought HN might be interested!

Google just inked its biggest deal ever, Nvidia reportedly bought Gretel, and Meta is chasing an AI chip startup — and that was just in the last week. The flurry of dealmaking could continue.

Pretty insane how little the company has scaled its headcount relative to its revenue.

Since 2022; revenue is up 385%, headcount is only up 60%.

Pretty insane how much money some whistleblowers are getting paid for successful tips to the SEC. Some stats:

In fiscal year 2024, the Commission reported getting nearly 25,000 TCRs, some 14,000 of those were from just two people!

Largest reward ever was $279 million.

yeah! they did. Nowhere near to the same extent though, which is interesting (and as you said suggests the majority of YC founders weren’t as enticed by crypto as they are by AI).

“In 2022, when “Crypto / Web 3” was the hottest thing to work on, 33 YC startups were working in the space — in both of the most recent batches there was only 1.”

So that’s still only like 5% working on crypto stuff even during the mania I guess?

$5m inbound at demo day

Apparently Volt Typhoon has breached 4 US firms, including internet service providers.

Duolingo now has 100 million MAUs

From the article: “The German manufacturer plans to unveil its proposals for affordable compact EVs in 2027, it said Tuesday.”

If that article is correct, it is insane that the established Western companies are going to take 3 YEARS(!) to even UNVEIL their new low-cost EV efforts.

> plans to unveil a proposal

Three levels of weaseling. The chance of this being real seems pretty remote at this point.

Announcing something 3 years out for an automaker would be realistic. Building out the lines, all the planning and design, takes time.

The alternative is Tesla announcing new models this year or the next year, and then "delays" for multiple years, ending up effectively about the same.

Yes. Exactly. Tesla announcements about future plans are worth about the same amount.

Interesting! YC themselves said it was “at least 50%”, but looks like even more than that based on the company tagging in startup directory. Curious how much people think this is (probably all 3):

1) signal value: AI-anything is getting funded atm and founders are smart. 2) founder-level trend: founders are actually just working on AI much more naturally. 3) YC selection trend: YC deliberately pivoting towards AI in its selection process.

I think it's mostly #1. AI is the hype right now, and founders probably perceive (rightly or wrongly) that finding a way to tie into "AI" will make fundraising easier.

I bet that the number of startups that included blockchain-related keywords a few years ago was also very high, very the same reason.