Andreessen Horowitz

Survey says: gimme more AI Speaking of revenue growth, ~88% of enterprise decision-makers anticipate spending more on AI over the next 12 months, according to a recent Wharton Survey. That’s a 16pp increase from last year, or +22%. The biggest shifts in “substantial” spending increases are in IT, Operations, and Finance/Accounting, where ~25% of respondents expect a lot more to come. Legal remains the relative laggard, but even there, a majority of respondents expect AI spend to increase. Also of note: the number of respondents expecting to decrease spend is barely visible. That’s consistent with the wildly impressive retention curves, recently highlighted by Ramp’s spending data: AI retention curves for business customers have improved every year, with current 9-month retention just under 90%. This one pretty much speaks for itself. Sure, it’s only a survey, but expectations are that enterprises are going to keep investing in AI, and even more so than before (and basically no one said “less”). ROI may be hard to measure, but we’re two years in and businesses like what they see, more and more. We’re still in the very early innings of this thing. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gpENSDcW

US Startups doing it faster Stripe’s data shows that US startups are growing revenues much more quickly than the rest of the world. US startups have grown ~1400%, while EU and UK startups lag far behind at ~600% and 500% respectively. It’s not AI either. When you strip out AI, US startups still have a pretty wide lead. Although, interestingly enough, AI startups did start to pull away from non-AI, sometime around 2024. Why is growth so much faster in the US? It’s hard to say for sure, and it’s probably not one reason. Patrick Collison thinks it might have something to do with technological adoption: US startups adopt new tech more quickly than most. Other reasons might include regulation (Europe has a lot), market-size (US is bigger), and/or the spending appetite (and tech adoption) of US customers. In all events, US startups are absolutely soaring, so bet against America at your peril. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gpENSDcW

Valuations not so crazy after all? Public markets keep breaking all-time-highs and some are hollering “bubble.” If you look at p/e ratios, you might also notice that investors are paying historically high prices for earnings. So, checkmate for the no-bubble bros, right? Not so fast. It’s true that multiples on earnings are historically high, but it’s also true that companies are historically profitable–and valuations have scaled accordingly. The higher the margins, the higher the p/e ratio. At ~14.5% margins, the S&P is more profitable than ever. And unlike the clear “bubbles” of Dotcom (orange) and Pandemania (dark green), current valuations are well within trend. Adjusting for margins, the current p/e is ~17.75%, which is about the same as it was from 2015-2018! The point here is that for all the histrionics, investors aren’t dumb. There’s a clear method to the madness, and it’s all about profitability. Fat margins and growing profits lead to high stock prices, and fat margins and growing profits is exactly what PublicCos keep doing. Now, reasonable minds can disagree about whether forward earnings estimates are correct (and there are of course many other things that affect stock prices), but taking them at face value, there is nothing bubbly at all about current valuations. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gpENSDcW

Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad asks what happens when people stop learning from each other and start talking to AI instead. “Are people talking to each other less at companies? And is that a bad thing?” “I’m starting to think more about these second order effects.” “If people are not sharing as much knowledge between each other or it's not culturally easy to go ask for help because you should be able to use the AI agents... there are some cultural forces that need to be reckoned with.” Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gJthcB-n

What is New Media?

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan say virtual cells could change how science takes risk, letting researchers test bold ideas in simulation before entering the wet lab. “The promise of being able to do virtual biology… is you can actually take on riskier ideas.” “If you had a virtual cell model… you could actually then start testing it and tinkering on the computational side… see if there is promise doing the experiments in silico before you make the time and money investment in the wet lab.” Biohub

We’re excited to continue partnering with Truffle Security Co. as we co-lead their $25M Series B. Protecting secrets is at the heart of information security. Truffle Security makes it easy: Their flagship product, TruffleHog, scans code repos, chat apps, files, and more for exposed secrets to uncover and eliminate leaks. Founders Dylan Ayrey and Dustin Decker have turned an open-source phenomenon into a fantastic company. They’ve sold to innovative enterprises like Twilio and Compass, and TruffleHog has been downloaded over 15 million times and is run over 250,000 times a day. We’re incredibly impressed with what Truffle has accomplished since we backed their Series A, and we look forward to many more protected secrets.

🚀 BIG NEWS! ⭐ We’re thrilled to share that Truffle Security has raised a $25M Series B, led by Intel Capital and a16z to accelerate our mission of making secrets easier to manage. 🐷 Starting today, we’re launching TruffleHog GCP Analyze, an addition to TruffleHog Enterprise. GCP Analyzes maps leaked GCP secrets, their permissions, and reach to help teams remediate faster with confidence. 🙌 A huge thank-you to our customers, community, and investors for believing in our mission and supporting this next phase of growth. 🔗 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gP7ZzDrP #TruffleHog #GCP #GoogleCloud #NHI  #Secrets #DataSecurity #Appsec #OpenSourceSecurity #cybersecurity #secretsmanagement #securityawareness #datasecurity #infosec #TruffleSecurity

Dropping tomorrow

Wabi founder Eugenia Kuyda says we’re entering a world where anyone can create and remix their own software: “Apps will be built by all of us, for all of us, and maybe sometimes by AI for us.” “You see maybe some cool apps that you discovered... your best friend’s using, or maybe you built for yourself or you tweaked one of the apps you found for yourself.” “It’s a lot more flexible, malleable, and very deeply personalized. Think of it as an operating system built on the platform of you.”