Crossing the Rubicon
With Artificial Intelligence, there has never been a better time for small, ambitious founding teams to positively transform life as we know it.
Talia Goldberg, Sameer Dholakia & Bessemer Partners
Published on May 9, 2023
We are amidst a major computing revolution. Artificial intelligence is here and nearing escape velocity. Progress across numerous technological vectors has led us to this point—from new model architectures to specialized hardware with vast computing power to advanced machine learning techniques.
There has never been a better time for small, ambitious teams to positively transform life as we know it. AI is no longer locked in research labs. The open source ecosystem is thriving. APIs are accessible. Costs are plummeting.
For consumers, AI is already permeating daily life. ChatGPT captured the imagination of over 100 million users practically overnight. Midjourney brings human imagination to life and supercharges creativity. Human-AI communication is becoming mainstream. We expect AI agents will soon outnumber humans.
For scientists, AI serves as a multiplier for transformational research and discovery, from life-saving drug discovery to personalized medicine (Peptone, Alphafold) to AIs that comb satellite photos of the Earth for methane leaks and CT scans for tumors.
For businesses, AI improves efficiency while unlocking new customer experiences and opportunities. Just look at Abridge, Intercom, Ada, or Jasper. Products like Copilot imbue team members with superpowers. Platforms like HuggingFace and Zapier lower the barriers to innovation and broaden access to AI.
We have crossed the Rubicon.
With this in mind, Bessemer is committing $1 billion in capital from its current funds to support entrepreneurs at the bleeding edges of AI and founders building AI-native products.
We aren’t interested in faster horses, we want to invent automobiles. We aren’t funding features or marginal improvement, we are looking for breakthroughs. And the breakouts will be built ground up with AI, by those that are agile, technical, and unencumbered by the status quo.
Our goal is to support the entrepreneurs forging new paths with AI to accelerate positive progress, transform markets, and imagine new ones.
Capital alone is not enough. We are building a community for AI founders to tap into a network of operating advisors, share field notes, and get preferred access to compute and models. We are also kicking off a series of workshops specific to companies building and innovating in AI.
And in the spirit of experimentation and learning, we launched ChatBVP! ChatBVP is your friendly neighborhood AI chatbot, here to support founders and answer questions about Bessemer. Please introduce yourself, have fun, and let us know what you think!
If you’re building an AI-native startup, we want to support you with advice, community and capital. Reach out to us at ai@bvp.com and on bvp.com/ai.
Contributors
Talia Goldberg
Partner
Talia Goldberg is a partner in Bessemer’s San Francisco office. She supports teams that leverage AI to create new categories and progress the way we live and work. She looks for founders building radically better products with unique distribution models, or those pushing the frontier.
Talia joined Bessemer in 2013. She is partner to Cognition, Discord, DeepL, fal AI, Fin (fka Intercom), Kindred, Mind Robotics, Papaya Global, Perplexity, Ramp, Recall, ServiceTitan, Shippo, Stubhub, Supermaven (now Cursor / XAI), and Toss, among others. Learn more on her blog and hear from many of the entrepreneurs she has backed by listening to This is Series A. She was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital.
Talia graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, which she insists is home to the best ice cream and pizza in America.
Sameer Dholakia
Partner
Sameer Dholakia is a partner of the growth investment practice at Bessemer, where he focuses on GenAI and Physical AI investments.
Before starting his second career in Venture Capital in 2022, Sameer spent 25 years as an operator, building software companies. His most recent role was as the CEO of Bessemer-backed, SendGrid, which he joined in 2014. He accelerated the company’s growth and led SendGrid through a successful IPO in 2017 and subsequent acquisition by leading cloud communications platform Twilio for approximately $3 billion in early 2019.
Before joining SendGrid, Sameer served as GM of the Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix, which he joined following its acquisition of his first startup, VMLogix.
Sameer earned a B.A. in economics and a M.A. in organizational studies from Stanford University. He also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Outside of work, Sameer most treasures his time with his wife, Laura, and their two kids. He enjoys traveling, watching sports, and trying to improve his golf game. He also supports philanthropic efforts at Pledge 1% and is the Board Chair of the Menlo School Board.
Bessemer Partners
