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How Small Teams Will Build the Future
Y Combinator· 2025-07-16 20:10
I think one of the things that will feel most different about these next 10 years versus these last 10 years is how much a single person or a small group of people with a lot of agency can get done and that is a bigger deal than it sounds like because coordination costs are huge and when we can empower people with more knowledge more tools more resources whatever I think we won't just see like a little bit more stuff get built but because of these kind of coordination costs across people we'll see like a re ...
John Jumper: AlphaFold and the Future of Science
Y Combinator· 2025-07-15 14:00
AI for Science & AlphaFold Overview - AI systems can accelerate scientific discovery and enable new breakthroughs, particularly in healthcare [1] - AlphaFold, a system developed for protein structure prediction, has been cited approximately 35,000 times, demonstrating its impact on scientific research [1] - The speaker's guiding principle is to build tools that enable scientists to make discoveries [1] Protein Structure Prediction & Biological Significance - Proteins, numbering around 20,000 different types in humans, perform nearly every function in a cell [1] - Determining protein structure is exceptionally difficult, often requiring years of effort and significant resources, costing around $100,000 [2] - There are approximately 200,000 known protein structures, with roughly 12,000 new structures being added annually [2] - Protein sequence discovery is happening approximately 3,000 times faster than protein structure determination [2] AlphaFold Development & Key Factors - AlphaFold's success was driven by data (200,000 protein structures), compute (128 TPU V3 cores for two weeks), and, most importantly, research and innovative ideas [2] - Research and novel ideas were approximately 100 times more valuable than the data used in training AlphaFold [3] - Mid-scale ideas, rather than just scaling transformers, are crucial for building transformative AI systems [2][3] Impact & Applications of AlphaFold - AlphaFold has enabled scientists to make discoveries in areas like vaccine and drug development, and understanding how the body works [1] - The release of the AlphaFold database, containing approximately 200 million protein structure predictions, significantly increased its adoption and impact [3] - Researchers are using AlphaFold in unexpected ways, such as predicting protein interactions and engineering proteins for targeted drug delivery [5][6] - AlphaFold is estimated to have accelerated the field of structural biology by approximately 5-10% [9]
The Real Moat in the Age of AI
Y Combinator· 2025-07-06 17:27
Startup Characteristics - The key to startup success lies in deeply understanding a specific user base and providing effective software solutions [1] - A significant competitive advantage (moat) is built by understanding users better than anyone else and having software that works for them [1] - Successful founders typically possess strong engineering/technology skills combined with unique insights into a specific area [1] - The founders of multi-billion dollar startups possess a rare combination of technical expertise and unique understanding [1]
AI for Scientific Discovery
Y Combinator· 2025-06-30 21:16
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Potential - Unimaginable super intelligence is expected in 10 to 20 years, barring major setbacks [1] - AI has the potential to vastly increase the rate of new scientific discovery [2] Impact on Science and Economic Growth - AI for science is highlighted as a key area of excitement [2] - Long-term sustainable economic growth relies on scientific discovery and good governance [2] - Increased scientific discovery via AI could lead to incredible improvements in people's lives [2]
Satya Nadella: Microsoft's AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs
Y Combinator· 2025-06-25 21:00
A fireside with Satya Nadella on June 17, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco. Satya Nadella started at Microsoft in 1992 as an engineer. Three decades later, he’s now Chairman & CEO, navigating the company through one of the most profound technological shifts yet: the rise of AI. In this conversation, he shares how Microsoft is thinking about this moment— from the infrastructure needed to train frontier models, to the social permission required to use that compute. He draws parallels to the early PC ...
Andrej Karpathy on why we still need humans in the loop
Y Combinator· 2025-06-24 21:46
I think guies are very useful for auditing systems and visual representations in general. And I think guies for example are extremely important to this because a guey utilizes your computer vision GPU in all of our head. Reading text is effortful and it's not fun.But looking at stuff is fun and it's it's just a kind of like a highway to your brain. We have to keep the AI on the leash. I think a lot of people are getting way over excited with AI agents and uh it's not useful to me to get a diff of 1,000 line ...
Powering the Future with Fusion
Y Combinator· 2025-06-09 21:26
Energy Demand & Sources - Energy demand in America is spiking for the first time in a decade, partly due to data centers powering the AI boom [1] - The increased energy demand is leading to the burning of more fossil fuels [1] - Fusion energy is presented as a clean, safe, and virtually limitless alternative energy source, mimicking the sun's energy production [1] Fusion Energy Development - Challenges remain in making fusion energy commercially viable and cost-effective [2] - Progress has been made in building machines that demonstrate the feasibility of fusion [2]
Fusion Energy Will Power the AI Boom
Y Combinator· 2025-06-06 14:00
These massive data centers are the beating heart of the AI boom that's reshaping our world and they're hungry for more electricity. That's one of the reasons that for the first time in a decade, demand for energy in America is spiking. To keep up, we're burning more and more fossil fuel and fast.But there's another path, a clean, safe, virtually limitless source of power. Fusion energy. Fusion is the way the sun works.Only here on Earth, we've actually struggled to be able to do it in a commercializable, co ...
Many AI apps today are like the horseless carriages of the late 19th century.
Y Combinator· 2025-06-04 17:24
You think that developers today are using AI in the previous generation of software development that they've been used to. Yes. Um, and so you you use this phrase, the AI horseless carriage.Maybe tell tell us what you mean by that. This is a reference to early automobile designs that looked a lot like carriages with the horse replaced with an engine, right. And there were all sorts of problems with that design.Yeah. And this phenomena we we see over and over and over again in technology like some some ones ...
Sometimes, the tech just needs time to catch up.
Y Combinator· 2025-06-02 16:59
Company Overview - Replicate 是一家在技术发展初期坚持下来的公司 [1] - 公司在疫情期间曾暂停运营数月,后重新启动并默默发展了两年 [2] - 图像扩散模型出现后,公司业务迅速爆发 [2] Business Development - Replicate 在默默无闻中构建产品两年,直到图像扩散模型出现才迎来爆发 [2]