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Six imperatives for building AI-first companies

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1 year ago

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Morgan Cheatham
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Morgan Cheatham is an investor with Bessemer Venture Partners, where he leads healthcare and life sciences investments from seed to growth stages, and in parallel, is pursuing medical training with a bioinformatics research focus at Brown.

Steve Kraus is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners’ Cambridge office where he has spent the last 20 years focused on investing in healthcare and life science companies.
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Change happens slowly, and then all at once — especially in complex industries like healthcare.

Just five years ago, venture capital investments in healthcare AI were emerging and exploratory. Half a decade and one global pandemic later, we’re living in a brave and more ambitious new world defined by an unbridled enthusiasm for leveraging revolutionary technologies like AI.

Pointing this technology at previously intractable problems in key industries such as healthcare, life sciences, and beyond is among the greatest opportunities of the century.

The year 2022 was when the broader public bore witness to material advancements in AI research that have matured from lab to life. ChatGPT educated over 100 million people globally about transformers in just two months.

What was once a nascent area of research has now become venture capital’s next platform shift, and with that, investors ask, “How will generational AI companies be built in healthcare, life sciences, and beyond?”

AI-first companies are in the business of advancing AI as a science, whereas AI-enabled companies are implementation and distribution machines. The two company phenotypes establish moats at different layers — AI-first companies innovate just above silicon, while AI-enabled companies create enterprise value at the application level.

For founders, knowing what kind of company you are building is essential for recruiting proper talent, partnering with aligned investors, securing sufficient capital, and deploying a viable business model. AI-first companies require deep AI research acumen, investors willing to take a long view, materially more capital, and potentially less conventional business models than AI-enabled peers.

The impact of AI-first companies will be greater, financial returns superior, and moats more enduring than their AI-enabled counterparts.

In reality, this distinction is a spectrum, not a binary. Impactful companies will be built with both approaches. For AI-first companies, though, we believe the fruits will be worth the labors.

Influence over the technology stack from the ground up enables tight control over cost structure, immeasurable product optionality, and greater defensibility relative to AI-enabled companies that defer the exercise of scientific inquiry to those that are AI first.

We can no longer afford to conflate AI-first and AI-enabled companies. So far, the largest AI-first companies have been built for horizontal applications (e.g., OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic); yet vertical, industry-specific platforms, such as those in healthcare and life sciences, will showcase the expansive capabilities of large-scale models to deliver real-world impact.

For founders, we believe enduring AI-first companies — in healthcare, life sciences, and beyond — will follow these six imperatives.

Create and sustain an undeniable data advantage

AI-first companies exhibit an insatiable appetite for data and employ creative means for acquiring it sustainably. In addition to amassing large and robust datasets, AI-first companies develop designer datasets that are uniquely suited to deliver high performance on specific tasks.

Designer datasets are unique in that they are not easily found in public; they are machine readable, in that they are ingestible by AI models; and they are scalable, in that it is tractable to generate high volumes over time.

Importantly, designer datasets are not simply the exhaust of processes within a given system, and they are not generated by customers alone. For example, the healthcare and life sciences industries generate 30% of the world’s data, and yet companies that train only on existing electronic health record data or resources like PubMed leave material performance gains and capabilities behind.

Designer datasets may require authoring experimental protocols for situations that do not occur naturally but that deliver strong model performance for a given task.

For example, Subtle Medical, an AI-first company focused on imaging acceleration, generated millions of imperfect MRI images captured in 15 minutes, which were later utilized to train deep learning models that could reconstruct and de-noise medical imaging exams taken in shorter periods of time. In practice, imperfect MRI images provide little clinical value; however, as an AI-first company, these images trained deep neural networks that created a data moat for Subtle’s technology.

Reinforcement learning with (expert) human feedback — RL(E)HF — is another critical tool for AI-first companies. RLHF is a technique where an AI system learns and improves its performance by receiving feedback from human input. With RL(E)HF, expert human feedback provided by individuals trained in particular disciplines such as neurology or structural biology can tune model outputs for high performance in that domain.

Abridge, an AI-first company that provides ambient documentation tools for clinicians, leverages clinician feedback on AI-authored notes to enhance note accuracy and quality across specialties.

Data derived from customers also creates flywheels of opportunities for generating novel and defensible data assets. After establishing product-market fit, AI-first companies can leverage this position to serve adjacent customer segments. By capturing and integrating datasets across stakeholders in a given industry, AI-first companies can strengthen data advantages, unlock TAM, and create new categories.

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Severe Geomagnetic Storm Triggers Auroras Delighting Skygazers; Pictures Go Viral

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October 11, 2024

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Earth has been struck by a severe geomagnetic storm after another round of explosions on the Sun. This comes after an intense episode of solar flares coupled with the expulsion of charged solar particles called the coronal mass ejection.

According to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, the CME slammed into Earth at around 8:45 pm IST last night resulting in a G4 (severe) geomagnetic storm.

“G4 levels reached again! CME progression will continue overnight with periods of weakening and some escalation possible in geomagnetic storm levels. The G4 Watch remains in effect for 11 Oct and all applicable warnings remain in place,” it stated on X.

A geomagnetic storm is a disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field and the solar particles that cause it can impact power grids, GPS and radio communication systems and satellites in orbit. The NOAA has said that the geomagnetic storm can also reach to G5 levels if the solar activity continues.

ALSO SEE: Brilliant Red Auroras Cover US Skies After Geomagnetic Storm; Pictures Surface

On the bright side, residents in Canada, the U.S and the U.K among other European nations are getting mesmerised by auroras that have been triggered in the polar regions. Many posted pictures of the brightly lit skies in pink and green hues on social media.

Interestingly, the auroras that are normally limited to the polar regions were seen as far as Florida. This surprisingly happened before Hurricane Milton took over with devastating winds and rains.

ALSO SEE: NASA Releases Pictures Of Explosions On The Sun As Auroras Amaze Skywatchers

(Image: X)





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Hurricane Milton live cams: See Tampa Bay webcams as landfall nears

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6 hours ago

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October 11, 2024

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Another storm has rapidly intensified. This time, it’s Hurricane Milton.

The hurricane is projected to make landfall on the west coast of the Florida peninsula on Wednesday night or early Thursday, and is tracking towards the well-populated Tampa Bay region, or areas just south. The hurricane jumped from a Category 1 to 5 in under a day.

For those in the Tampa area or interested in the storm’s impacts there, you can watch on the webcams below.

This hurricane will undoubtedly be life-threatening. “Prepare for MAJOR impacts from storm surge, hurricane winds, & flooding rainfall far from the center,” the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office posted online. Watch for guidance from local National Weather Service offices and other relevant agencies for updates and evacuation information.

Mashable Light Speed

SEE ALSO:

Why it’s impossible to forecast the weather too far into the future

Though a number of factors influence the formation of strong hurricanes (opposing winds that can break apart storms, moist or dry air, etc.), a vital influence is warm sea surface temperatures of over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). Warm oceans act as jet fuel for hurricanes, storm scientists explain. That’s because warmer oceans fuel tropical storms as more water naturally evaporates into the air, giving storms energy and moisture to intensify. Crucially, the oceans, which absorb most of the heat created by burning fossil fuels, are relentlessly warming.

Today, Atlantic hurricanes are already twice as likely to develop from a milder storm into a major hurricane.

Tampa Bay Riverfront webcam

Siesta Key Beach (off the coast of Sarasota)

(You may need to click the video to watch it on YouTube.)

Clearwater Beach Hilton

Clearwater Pier Cam

And remember, as you’re watching the slightly shifting track updates of Hurricane Milton, the track forecast cone is not an impacts cone. Other regions will see extreme deluges of rain, surge, and flooding.

Featured Video For You

Land, air, and space footage captures the surging Hurricane Milton





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Space Junk Disaster Is Waiting To Happen, Experts Sound Alarm On ‘Ticking Time Bomb’

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October 10, 2024

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The growing issue of space debris is causing serious concerns, as researchers from orbital mapping company LeoLabs warn of the potential dangers of the massive amount of space junk surrounding Earth. In an interview with Forbes, Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, described the situation as a “ticking time bomb” that could lead to catastrophic events if left unaddressed.

Currently, almost 30,000 objects larger than a softball are orbiting the Earth at incredibly high speeds. These objects pose a significant threat to satellites, space missions, and even astronauts. LeoLabs and other experts are racing to find solutions to prevent inevitable collisions, but they fear time may be running out.

Dan Ceperley, Chief Operating Officer at LeoLabs, highlighted the risk posed by space debris of all sizes saying the impending disaster is “not a question of if but when.” While the company can track objects as small as four inches in diameter, anything smaller is difficult to monitor. This presents a significant danger, as even debris just a few millimeters in size can cause fatal damage to spacecraft and astronauts.

Thankfully, no human lives have been lost due to space debris so far but things could have been tragic. In 2021, the Canadarm2, a robotic arm attached to the International Space Station (ISS), was punctured by a small piece of space junk.

ALSO SEE: NASA Sued By Florida Family After Space Junk Strikes Their House

Low-Earth orbit is especially problematic. McKnight pointed out that upper rocket stages from both the United States and the former Soviet Union were abandoned in space decades ago.

These large remnants now clutter the highest areas of Earth’s orbit. There was a close call in June 2022, after two upper stage – one Soviet and one American – came within 500 feet of colliding.

Efforts to address this issue face a major diplomatic challenge. Ian Christensen, a senior director at the Secure World Foundation, reportedly said that convincing major spacefaring nations like the U.S., Russia, and China to take responsibility for their debris is essential. Together, these three countries account for 90 percent of the debris risk in orbit.

ALSO SEE: Massive Space Junk Of Suspected SpaceX Capsule Crashes In US, Discoverers Baffled



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