New GenAI Market Map, Hear From the?Numbers Station Founders, and Learn More About Steve Singh

We're excited to share a new blog post and market map highlighting the components of the generative AI stack. We?also released a new?episode of Founded & Funded with two?Numbers Station co-founders who dive into using foundation models for data wrangling. GeekWire wrote about the excitement for our upcoming Hackathon,?and don't miss the latest from our portfolio companies, including PlexTrac 's new CEO!

Madrona News

The Generative AI Stack: Making the Future Happen Faster

There is just so much happening in AI right now! Applications that used to take years to develop are now being built over weekend hackathons.

It’s all a testament to the power of #FoundationModels?and rapid innovation at the infrastructure layer to put that power in the hands of more developers. While this progress opens up exciting possibilities, it also poses challenges to developers who may find themselves overwhelmed by the number of options available. Last week, Palak Goel , Jon Turow , and Matt McIlwain shared a piece highlighting the components of a?#generativeai?stack, which includes a detailed market map. Read more here.

Founded & Funded

Numbers Station Founders on Applying Foundation Models to Data Wrangling

This week, Madrona Managing Director?Tim Porter?talks to?Numbers Station AI?Station Co-founders?Christopher Aberger?and?Ines Chami. We announced our investment in Numbers Station’s $17.5M Series A in March and are very excited about the work they’re doing with foundation models, which is very different than what has been making headlines this year. It isn’t content or image generation – Numbers Station is bringing the transformational power of foundation models to the data-wrangling problems we’ve all felt! Listen to the full episode here.

In the News

Steve Singh recounts the 5-hour dinner that led to $8.3B deal

"Does that human being have the tenacity, the humility, the inquisitive nature to continue to learn and solve? Because 90% of what you assume in the very beginning is wrong." — Madrona Managing Director?Steve Singh?shares in a recent?Puget Sound Business Journal?interview on?venture capital?and so much more. Read the full PSBJ piece (paywall) here.

Generative AI hackathon in Seattle encourages entrepreneurs to tinker with ‘magic wand’

“The key inexhaustible resource of humanity is our creativity to find new important things to do and ways to do them. When you add the kind of leverage generative AI offers to each of the minds that we have in the world, it’s really powerful. ... Tinkering is important because it lets us plant this seed in everybody’s mind. I’m sure that planting all these seeds will make the future happen faster and in a more positive way.” —?Jon Turow?told Geekwire in a conversation about the excitement for the AI Tinkerers Summer Hackathon coming up on June 10! Read more in GeekWire.

Matt McIlwain Quoted in Business Insider

Managing Director Matt McIlwain shared his perspective with Business Insider that?big cloud providers are not just trying to juice their revenues, but rather are focused on growing the broader generative AI space, building sustainable AI companies,?and supporting their partners. Read the full story in Business Insider.

Aseem Datar Joined an Episode of The Startup Project

In this episode, they cover Aseem's time as an intern at Windows all the way to becoming a GM at Microsoft Azure, transitioning to investing at Madrona, startups vs. big tech in AI, commoditization of #LLMs, and even the difference between LLMs and human brains. Listen to the full episode here.

Newsletters

Aspiring for Intelligence: Cybersecurity in the Age of AI

AI is coming to the desk of every worker. While this may be great for productivity and collaboration, it's also making your CISO?sweat by introducing a whole new set of?cybersecurity?challenges that need to be addressed. from data privacy to prompt injections and model poisoning. Just as previous platform shifts like the Internet heralded a generation of firewall and network security providers and then cloud computing,?so too will AI usher in a new set of security vendors built to combat novel threats. Read more from Vivek Ramaswami and Sabrina Wu and subscribe here.

Hooked on Conviction

It’s never too early to reach out, build rapport, and establish the earliest forms of connective tissue so talent can develop a reciprocated conviction in you as a founder. As Audra Aulabaugh explained in this week's edition of Hooked, it’s a fact that the right people join startups based on their trust and belief in who is leading the show. So while founders are doing everything in their power to validate great leaders, they are searching for the same signals that they should follow a founder into battle. It’s a two-way street.?Read more and subscribe to Hooked here.

Portfolio Company Roundup

PlexTrac Appointed Andy Langsam as its new CEO. Founder Dan DeCloss will assume the role of CTO.

Highspot launched a new set of capabilities, including generative?AI-powered sales enablement.

Strike Graph raised $7M to expand its certification offerings.

Indochino was highlighted in ApparelResources.com for its record-breaking first-quarter sales.

Terray Therapeutics moved to a new headquarters in the heart of Monrovia, CA.?

Coda head of engineering Oliver Beckman joined the Startup podcast to share his 10 commandments of planning.

Yoodli Co-founder Esha Joshi joined the Startup Hustle Podcast to talk about everything you need to know to use AI speak coaching to communicate confidently.

Flexe CEO Karl Siebrecht and other logistic tech leaders join the Radical Reinvention podcast.

Clari CEO Andy Byrne joins Fortune to talk about how Clair helps people predict whether they'll meet, beat, or miss on revenue.

Stacklok Co-founders Craig McLuckie and Luke Hinds join the Resilient Cyber Podcast to talk supply chain security.

DevZero CEO Debo Ray was featured in an interview in Pulse 2.0.

Eclypsium was featured in a Wired story for the research they did to discover a backdoor in Gigabyte motherboards.?

Clozd Sales Director Rhett Nelson was on the Sales Leadership Podcast with Rob Jeppsen.

TaxBit VP of Brand & Global Comms Michelle O'Connor was recently featured on the Leaders Unscripted podcast.

Uplevel VP of Product Christina Forney joined Techstrong TV to discuss the results of their recent dev/CTO alignment survey.

OctoML introduced InkyMM — the first commercial open-source multimodal model.

Tigera?was highlighted in a recent piece from The New Stack about protecting containerized workloads at runtime.

Outbound AI was recently highlighted in The Evolving Enterprise and MHealth Times, and the company's Co-founder and CTO,?Jonathan Wiggs,?wrote a column for MedCity News.

Temporal launched a public preview of its audit logging feature for Temporal Cloud.

Deepgram's API Playground is now available, making it easy to explore test transcription and language AI.

TrovaTrip introduced a host referral program.