"I wouldn't be surprised if we increasingly move to a world with robots at the forefront of surgery." - @deenashakir (Partner at Lux Capital) "Robotic surgery is already happening across the board, it's one of the areas in healthcare that has seen the most adoption."

We asked @christinacaci (Co-Founder & CEO of @TrustVanta) about the classic dilemma: expand to new markets or build new products? "The organization gets optimized around doing the thing you’re doing… you have customers, you have revenue, and it all reinforces itself." "When you try to take a group and do something with no customers and no revenue, you kind of can, but it’s just weird. It is hard."

IN NEWS: @diodeinc raises $11.4M Series A round led by @a16z to accelerate the design of circuit boards. A moderate‑complexity board takes months to design using legacy design tools. @davideasnaghi (Founder & CEO) on how they're rewriting the PCB playbook: “Our goal is basically to democratize the way that we currently build circuit boards and allow … from startups to large enterprises to take advantage of a very high‑end type of workflow." "The only way we could think about how to do it is to teach large language models who actually generate schematics." "We use code to build our circuit boards … Circuit boards are very visual. You can think about them almost as Figma, while what we do is more like web design ,  CSS and code that then gets rendered into an actual circuit board.” Diode designs, validates, and manufactures custom circuit boards with generative AI.

We caught up with @christinacaci (Co-Founder & CEO of @TrustVanta) right after they announced a $150M Series D at a $4.15B valuation, and asked how it all started. "We started with SOC 2 for startups, because in 2017, no one got SOC 2. Now you get it when you’re two founders. That wedge gave us the access to help with more and build trust." "That was the seed pitch. It was literally the 2018 deck. And now we're here, a little later, actually doing it."

Happening now! @deenashakir ok the stream @tbpn Tune in:

In a conversation with Slingshot AI founders, Neil Parikh (@neilparikh) and Daniel Cahn (@danielreidcahn) we explored the limitations of AI chatbots when it comes to therapy. "ChatGPT and Claude are not made for therapy... they can end up in these very weird rabbit holes." "What we're building is something that's very different." "It's not trying to build an instruction-following model."

"I don't see a world where Bitcoin weakens the US dollar." We asked @aeyakovenko (Co-Founder, @solanalabs) why the narrative around crypto as a threat might be off. "The growth in stablecoins has supported spot markets for Bitcoin. More stablecoin demand means more Treasuries are bought, it’s actually benefiting the dollar."

We discussed decentralization with the Co-Founder of Solana (@aeyakovenko). “Solana has always been about decentralizing how blocks are made, how transactions are ordered… where it counts.” “The validator cost is higher because we’ve prioritized throughput, but anyone can still participate in block production.” “Solana Labs doesn’t even employ anyone who builds the protocol anymore. We’re mostly focused on building a phone.”

IN NEWS: @ScrunchAI raises a $15M Series A. We asked Co-Founder & CEO, @chriswandrew, on the AI-driven shopping revolution: "AI is doing the research, citing sources, and we as humans are clicking out to purchase and engage." "Buyer journeys are massively reduced. People are arriving on a website and buying the first time." "Customers see 2 to 4x conversion from AI search visitors vs. organic."

BREAKING: Microsoft has poached over 20 staff members from DeepMind over the last six months.