2025 will be remembered as a year where Private AI startup valuations were completely divorced from fundamentals, sales, real revenue or anything concrete. More AI bubble, than AI boom I am afraid.

Unconventional AI is the latest case study of this (after Thinking Machines). Unconventional AI is rethinking the foundations of compute to bring energy efficiency comparable to the human brain (which operates on just 20 watts) to AI systems. Can you recognize any of the hype trends?

• Novel Hardware Architecture

• Physics-First Approach

• Analog Computing

From the highly respected Naveen Rao: Former CEO MosaicML/Databricks & Nervana/IntelAI.

They say their goal is Biology-scale energy efficiency.

A $4.5 Valuation in a seed round? Yes, you heard that right.

A two-month-old startup! What could possibly give it such a valuation?

Energy isn’t a constraint in China, but U.S. startup are pretending like it will be everywhere. I wonder why?

It’s somehow raised $475 million in a deal co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners (Who also had vague PR write-ups). The pedigree of Nao is high sure - also participation from Sequoia, Lux Capital, DCVC, Future Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and many other amazing investing partners. Are a16z and Bezos picking winners or creating them? 🤔

This is not how a meritocratic capitalism is supposed to work!

This represents one of the most ambitious "moonshot" projects in AI hardware, attempting to fundamentally reimagine how we build computing substrates for artificial intelligence. At a time when BigTech is building AI Infrastructure fast - but not likely soon as fast as the demand for compute hits the energy constraint of the U.S. and European power grids.

Disappointing to see the U.S. basically run by Venture Capitalists. Unconventional AI has three other co-founders, who have deep roots in technology and academia: Michael Carbin, Sara Achour, and MeeLan Lee. Deep learning and Semi researchers have been trying to mimic biology for the past three decades. - so what’s changed suddenly?