Getting brainy: is AI up to no good?

Necessary Nuggets

Happy Wednesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets, your one-stop pre-seed shop. We deliver updates from Necessary Ventures and helpful tidbits on our little corner of the world. Every edition is also on our blog. 

Jobortunities 🚨

Necessary Ventures: If you love this newsletter, we think you might like investing in what the world needs too. We have full-time and part-time opportunities to think early stage and have an impact on solving founders’ problems.

| Investor |

Taro: Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout via direct primary care based health insurance. 

| Product Engineer |

Forage: Create a unified API that helps low-income Americans buy online groceries. It’s Stripe, but for Electronic Benefits Transfer.

| Senior Backend Engineer |


Reach out with any questions! All 176 open job postings are listed here.

Market Stirrings 🚩

Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:

Funding Information

$16.9M

Total Amount Raised

22

Total Funding Rounds

$768k

Average Dollars per Round

$4M-$8M

Estimated Valuation Range

Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.


SAFEs vs. Priced Equity 
SAFEs are the dominant choice over a traditional price venture round for smaller rounds and pre-seed. The Carta data below shows another layer of the SAFE story. As the check size increases, founders begin to favor priced equity over SAFEs, hitting a 50/50 split in the check range of $2-2.9 million. We invest in both at Necessary!

Good Reads 📖

For the rushed reader …

For the less rushed reader …

TAKE THE WHEEL: BlueCruise left behind a dark trail. Ford’s hands-free driver system is under federal investigation after being found active during two recent crashes that killed multiple people. Over the past couple years, autonomous driving has been scrutinized under helicopter-parent-level watch, with Tesla’s Autopilot investigation in 2021 serving as one of the first examples. Ford’s BlueCruise is a little different because it’s only available on pre-mapped highways and only remains active so long as the driver’s eyes are on the road. Given these tighter constraints, BlueCruise’s involvement in recent crashes raises deeper questions about whether driver-assistance systems are fundamentally flawed and what place these systems have on our roads. Sorry Waka Flocka Flame, it might be a while longer before we can “do it with no hands.”

COMPUTERS GET BRAINS: China is monkeying around with brain-computer interfaces. Last week, NeuCyber NeuroTech and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research revealed a home-grown BCI that allowed a monkey to control a robotic arm by simply thinking about it. That also means the monkey can do more than some people I know. A few startups in the US, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, have accomplished similar feats testing BCIs in paralyzed people. However, as progress on BCIs continues, a collective fear of non-ethical applications is growing louder. A report written by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology provides the following translation of guidelines released by the Communist Party: “Nonmedical purposes such as attention modulation, sleep regulation, memory regulation, and exoskeletons for augmentative BCI technologies should be explored and developed to a certain extent, provided there is strict regulation and clear benefit.” That ambiguous statement goes on to say that human autonomy should be preserved until BCIs surpass humans (cue the thunder crack). For all the brain games like Wordle and Connections people play daily, it seems like brain power might be getting carried away.

PUPPY DOG AS: Does manipulation have a secret governing equation? A new paper authored by researchers at Google DeepMind exposes how, like humans, AI can manipulate and persuade, and how it contributes to potential dangers as we incorporate AI into daily life. The paper argues that persuasion isn’t inherently manipulative and depends on the underlying intent. Rational AI delivers facts and evidence to persuade, while manipulative AI exploits biases and misrepresents information to influence decision-making. The prolonged reciprocal exchanges that occur when interacting with generative AI create a new, higher risk profile, especially given AI’s more advanced persuasive capabilities and permeation through areas of life demanding more advanced decision-making (investing, healthcare, education, etc.). Taking that a step further, it raises an interesting point about how we should measure deception and harmful intent. Think about that next time you’re chit chatting with ChatGPT.

Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥

Notable pre-seed raises in …

artificial intelligence & Augmented Reality

  • Trace - Augmenting augmented reality

    • The Problem: Creating AR content is a complex process for anyone other than experts.

    • The Tech: An end-to-end, user-friendly AR system that enables individuals of all levels to create high-quality, immersive experiences.

    • Recently Raised: $2 million in funding led by Rev1 Ventures and Impellent Ventures.

    • Also Note: Trace has signed up Fortune 500 customers like Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Lenovo, and Telefónica.

  • Amplifier Security - Someone call security

    • The Problem: It can be difficult to address critical security issues without harming productivity. 

    • The Tech: An AI-powered, automated security platform that seamlessly integrates an organization’s personnel and its existing security tools.

    • Recently Raised: $3.3 million in funding led by Cota Capital.

    • Also Note: Coinciding with this round, Amplifier Security also emerged from stealth with a fully developed initial product.

Outro🚪

Feel free to reply to this email with all questions, feedback, or comments. We’ll be iterating and curating the NVTC newsletter according to your interests. 

Some last matters of business: 

  • If you’re a technologist (engineer or product manager / designer with a technical background) join us on the NVTC LinkedIn group if you haven’t. We’d love to have you! 

  • Sign up here if you’re interested in co-investing with Necessary.

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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!


© 2024 Necessary Ventures

San Francisco, California

Kaley UbellackerComment