Air Street Press

Guide to AI: March 2025 Mar 02, 2025

What you need to know in AI across geopolitics, big tech, hardware, research, models, datasets, financings and exits over the last 4 weeks.

See you in Berlin, Munich and Zurich! Feb 18, 2025

We’re about to set off to bring Air Street AI meetups to Berlin on Thursday 20th Feb, Munich on Tuesday 25th Feb and Zurich on the 4th March. We focus these events on a) best practices that entrepreneurs and researchers can learn from and b) attracting the very best contributors and heavily curating event attendance to make sure that everyone makes high-value connections. Each event will host circa 100 people and to facilitate connections we share the list of attendees ahead of time so you’re able to get a head start on meeting those you want to connect with. You’ll also get access to our 350+ strong Air Street Community on Slack, which hosts members from across all of our global city meetups, so you can keep in touch with folks.

Our investment in Fern Labs Feb 09, 2025

$3M day one financing to build multi-agent systems for real-world problems.

Learn more at www.fern-labs.ai

State of AI outtakes #2: embodied AI Feb 04, 2025

The State of AI Report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know across AI research, industry, politics, and safety. To ensure the report remains at a manageable length, lots of material doesn’t make it into the final version. We’re bringing Air Street Press some of the research that didn’t make the original cut, along with our own reflections.

Read more on press.airstreet.com and www.stateof.ai

Guide to AI: January 2025 Feb 01, 2025

Welcome to the latest issue of your guide to AI, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month.

UK defence and dynamism Jan 26, 2025

Air Street’s submission to the UK Strategic Defence Review.

You can read more at press.airstreet.com and https://press.airstreet.com/p/uk-defence-and-dynamism

Vibe shifts: Microsoft and Google on AI Jan 23, 2025

The dawning AI-first era is creating clear winners and losers. Here we dive into the vibe shift of both Microsoft and Google in their work on AI.

91% of AI papers used NVIDIA in 2024 Jan 21, 2025

Final 2024 statistics for AI chip usage across NVIDIA, Google, Huawei, Apple, AMD, Cerebras, Cambricon, Graphcore, Groq, SambaNova, and Intel Habana in the State of AI Report Compute Index.

Announcing Sereact's €25M Series A Jan 20, 2025

Scaling AI-first software for general purpose robotics.

AI-first biology: five years on Jan 19, 2025

Revisiting my 2019 lecture on why biology was experiencing its AI moment.

Read more at press.airstreet.com and https://press.airstreet.com/p/ai-first-biology-five-years-on

Vibe shifts: is AI still an existential risk? Jan 17, 2025

The dawning AI-first era is creating clear winners and losers. We’re seeing giants of the past lose ground, while companies that few initially believed in defy their sceptics. At the same time, the terms of big macro debates in the field seemingly change overnight. In this “vibe shifts” series, we’ll be diving into some of these stories and drawing a few lessons for entrepreneurs and investors.

Here we dive into the vibe shift around existential risk.

Profluent unveils Protein2PAM Jan 14, 2025

New research from Profluent Bio validates the power of machine learning models to design bespoke biological systems at scale.

How not to build a drone Jan 12, 2025

How the EU spent 16 years and €8 billion on a drone that may never fly.

You can read the essay on press.airstreet.com at https://press.airstreet.com/p/how-not-to-build-a-drone

Air Street: 2024 year in review Jan 10, 2025

In the spirit of building in the open and holding ourselves accountable to our progress, here is our year in review for 2024. We cover Air Street, Air Street Press, the State of AI Report, and our community engagement.

2024's greatest hits on Air Street Press Dec 22, 2024

We share our best essays from 2024 on Air Street Press.

The AI energy wars will get worse before they get better Dec 22, 2024

We dive into the AI energy wars, arguing that things will get worse before they get better. Read on for uranium, geopolitics, and why technical fixes likely aren’t coming to the rescue.

Odyssey launches Explorer and welcomes Pixar founder to the Board Dec 19, 2024

The company's first generative world model and Pixar's co-founder, Ed Catmull, joins the Board and invests.

Learn more at press.airstreet.com and odyseey.systems

Jeremy Kahn (Fortune) on Mastering AI Dec 17, 2024

Jeremy Kahn is the AI editor at Fortune and co-writes and edits Fortune’s Eye on AI newsletter. His book Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future was published by Simon and Schuster in the U.S.

In this episode, we interview Jeremy about his new book!

You can subscribe for more at press.airstreet.com

State of AI outtakes #3: US politics Dec 15, 2024

The State of AI Report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know across AI research, industry, politics, and safety. To ensure the report remains at a manageable length, lots of material doesn’t make it into the final version. We’re bringing Air Street Press some of the research that didn’t make the original cut, along with our own reflections.

You can read more on press.airstreet.com and check out the full State of AI Report 2024 at www.stateof.ai

Street talk #1 - 13 December 2024 Dec 13, 2024

Every month, we produce the ⁠Guide to AI⁠, an editorialized roundup covering geopolitics, hardware, start-ups, research, and fundraising. But so much happens in the AI world, that weeks can feel like years. So on off-weeks for Guide to AI, we’ll be bringing you three things that grabbed our attention from the past few days…

You can subscribe for more at press.airstreet.com

Being first is a moat Dec 12, 2024

This week on Air Street Press - we’re looking at how speed, inertia, and friction impact AI-first start-ups. Why being first is a moat, taking examples from ElevenLabs, Perplexity and Synthesia. As well as some failure cases like Internet Explorer and ActiveX.

You can subscribe at press.airstreet.com

Vibe shifts #1: Intel Dec 10, 2024

How Intel lost its way in AI and comes tumbling down. On Air Street Press, we’re starting a new “vibe shifts” series, where we’ll look at some of these stories and draw a few lessons for entrepreneurs and investors. First off: Intel Corporation.

Subscribe to read more at press.airstreet.com

You can read this post at airstreet.com/intel

Guide to AI - December 2024 Dec 08, 2024

Welcome to the latest issue of your guide to AI, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and startups over the month of November 2024.

Read more at press.airstreet.com and guideto.ai

Street talk #1 - 6 December 2024 Dec 07, 2024

Every month, we produce the Guide to AI, an editorialized roundup covering geopolitics, hardware, start-ups, research, and fundraising. But so much happens in the AI world, that weeks can feel like years. So on off-weeks for Guide to AI, we’ll be bringing you three things that grabbed our attention from the past few days…

Guide to AI - November 2024 Dec 06, 2024

Welcome to the latest issue of your guide to AI, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and startups over the last month.

Bio-defense(less)? Dec 05, 2024

Biorisk is real, but we’re having the wrong debates. Could the AI-first bio tools we use to design life-saving vaccines also be used to evade the screening protocols of DNA synthesis companies? How easy is it for non-state actors to use these tools? How worried should we be? We dive into all of this and more in this article on Air Street Press.

Read more at: https://press.airstreet.com/p/bio-defenseless

Reflections on Reflection Nov 02, 2024

What a four day meltdown tells us about standards and scrutiny.

AI isn't the dotcom bubble Oct 31, 2024

Reflections on the State of AI Report, by Air Street Capital.

State of AI outtakes #1: scaling in defense Oct 26, 2024

The State of AI Report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know across AI research, industry, politics, and safety. To ensure the report remains at a manageable length, lots of material doesn’t make it into the final version. We’re bringing Air Street Press readers some of the research that didn’t make the original cut, subsequent follow-up work, and our reflections.

Our investment in Patina Systems Sep 17, 2024

Shifting creative control from companies to people.

Good technology doesn’t speak for itself Sep 15, 2024

Why storytelling matters from inception to IPO and beyond.

Guide to AI - September 2024 Sep 01, 2024

Welcome to the latest issue of your guide to AI, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and startups over the last month.

Rediscovering the UK's AI ambition Aug 22, 2024

At the end of July, the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology commissioned Matt Clifford, Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), to produce a roadmap on how the government can harness the benefits for AI to drive growth and productivity. As part of this work, Alex attended a roundtable at 10 Downing Street and stakeholders have been invited to share their thoughts in writing with the taskforce.

As believers in openness as a driver of progress, we share our unvarnished views publicly, not just behind closed doors. So in that spirit, we’re sharing our submission in full.

Open-endedness is all we’ll need Aug 15, 2024

On “Agentic AI”: This week, we’re asking how far along this road we are towards agentic AI, looking at some of the more promising research threads, and assessing where value might be found in the meantime

The cathedral and the bazaar Aug 08, 2024

Openness is not a strategy. Given our past advocacy for open source and skepticism of the ‘bigger is always better’ paradigm, we felt it worth asking if these breakthroughs mark a tipping point in AI research and commercialization. As ever, the answer is … complicated.

Guide to AI - August 2024 Aug 04, 2024

While we work on the State of AI Report 2024, this summer edition covers our 8th Research and Applied AI Summit, held in London on 14 June.

Alchemy doesn’t scale: the economics of general intelligence Aug 03, 2024

Today we're asking if something approaching ‘general intelligence’ did begin to become available, does it invalidate our thesis that alchemy doesn't scale?

The State of Chinese AI Aug 01, 2024

We dive into the SOTA from Chinese AI labs, the chip wars, sanctions, and loopholes.

The power of non-consensus Jul 30, 2024

At Air Street, we search for ideas that are non-consensus today but have the potential to flip into being voted consensus by the market in a few years' time. We see this in founders who are working on unfashionable ideas that are difficult to pull off. These teams have a deep-seated conviction that the weight of evidence is on their side and the timing is right to chip away at the problem.

The generative AI copyright wars took a new turn recently, when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that it was suing music generation services Suno and Udio for massive infringement of copyright. The lawsuit alleges the systematic unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train the two companies’ models and points to how some of their output either closely resembles or directly copies various iconic songs.

Our investment into Odyssey Jul 23, 2024

Powering breakthrough visual storytelling with AI-first visual effects for Hollywood.

Guide to AI - July 2024 Jul 07, 2024

Welcome to the latest issue of your guide to AI, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and startups over the last month.

Alchemy is all you need Jun 11, 2024

There are also specific dynamics at play in the frontier model space that will likely prevent the market from correcting in the near future. These have the potential to impact the entire AI value chain, from the chipmakers through to investors and founders.

California’s AI bill was an avoidable disaster Jun 06, 2024

What went wrong and how to prevent this from happening again.

Who remembers capsule networks? Jun 04, 2024

We recently stumbled across the first ever Hacker News thread discussing Attention Is All You Need, the landmark paper that describes the transformer architecture. The work had come out in the summer of 2017, but it took a while for the wider AI community to begin to grasp its significance and build on it.

Most commenters at the time expressed interest or admiration. Some didn’t understand it. Others thought that the paper would probably be out of date in a few months. And one person asked what it could do for capsule networks.

But whatever happened to capsule networks?

Your guide to AI: June 2024 Jun 02, 2024

Guide to AI is an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and startups over the last month.

Produced by Air Street Capital.

Chips all the way down May 30, 2024

If foundation model economics is alchemy, what does that mean for hardware?