We just returned from the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in London mid-year.
AI founders, investors and operators from Europe, the UK, the US and beyond gathered to hear from industry leaders including the chairman of Sixth Street and the board of directors of Alphabet. R. Martin ChavezFounder of Cohere aidan gomez sequoia partner Luciana Lyxandre Luminance CEO eleanor lightbody Index Ventures Partner danny rhymer Founder of Decagon jesse chan And so on.
We’ll be sharing all nine Main Stage panels in our newsletter and on the Newcomer AI Summits YouTube channel.
Cerebral Valley AI Summit is co-hosted by co-founders Newcomer and Weekend max child and James Wilsterman.
A big thank you to our sponsors Nebius, Index Ventures, Higgsfield and Weekend for making this possible.
At the opening session of the Cerebral Valley AI Summit held in London, aidan gomezThe CEO of Cohere and co-author of the seminal paper “Attending Is All You Need” says that, in effect, we have already reached AGI.
Gomez also warned of the risk of Western countries relying too much on the American foundation model for AI capabilities.
Sequoia Capital Partners Luciana Lyxandre She said she saw ample opportunity to invest as European leaders realized they could no longer rely on the goodwill and protection of the United States. Sequoia just co-led a €500 million round in Stark Defense, a startup that makes suicide attack drones and other weapons.
Arnaud FournierThe Palantir veteran explained how OpenAI’s team of forward-deployed engineers has integrated into existing businesses and taught existing leaders what AI can do to transform business practices.
One of his most notable efforts is with Thrive Holdings to integrate AI into accounting firm rollups.
eleanor lightbodyCEO of legal tech platform Luminance and founder of voice model developer Gradium Neil Zegidor Both companies agreed that gaining customer trust that the AI tools are accurate and consistent is key to obtaining the highest quality deals.
Once you build trust and gain foothold, it becomes possible to train models from your company’s internal data.
Alex Mashrabov Founder of video generation company Higgsfield, and grant leeBoth founders of AI-generated slide maker Gamma started out aiming for the “prosumer” market. However, both companies quickly recognized enterprise demand for AI creative tools and are actively working on enterprise solutions.
Both are optimistic that much content creation for go-to-market teams could be fully automated in the near future.
Index Ventures Partner danny rhymer has invested in companies ranging from the rise of mobile technology to the sharing economy to the current AI boom.
He rejected the idea that supporting multiple AI institutes is contradictory. “We’re in the early stages,” he said, with room for multiple winners.
He gave advice to the founders in the audience to evaluate hires based on ability, flair, and initiative.
Founder of Decagon jesse chan He said this just a few months after opening his first office in London. Zhang found that, contrary to conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley, many established business leaders in Europe were keen to adopt AI customer support tools fairly quickly.
recursive Josh Tobin He explained why he and his co-founders are leaving big AI labs like OpenAI, Google, and Meta to dive headfirst into researching how to make AI models learn how to train themselves, a process called “recursive self-improvement.”
Tobin doesn’t think demand for AI computing will collapse anytime soon. In fact, he said, things will only get worse.
During his time at Goldman Sachs in the 2010s, R. Martin Chavez He realized the potential of AI agents when his team was developing “algorithmic trading.” Mr. Chavez said he set his terms clearly when he became CIO. Staff members can either tell the computer what to do, partner with the person telling it, or get in the way and leave.
To the founders in attendance, he shared advice he first heard from a Goldman sales executive. “Customers buy your product when they’re in excruciating pain, and you’re convincing them that your software product is the only thing that can relieve their pain. Everything else is just luck.”
