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Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana advises early-stage founders to look beyond Total Addressable Market (TAM) when building startups.
She highlights that many successful companies, like Google and Microsoft, emerged from markets that were initially nonexistent.
Sardana categorizes TAM into known, emerging, and invisible markets, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and demonstrating innovation, especially in creating new markets.
She advises founders to develop their own unique insights rather than relying solely on industry reports and metrics when evaluating their market.
Ultimately, investors prioritize evaluating founders' understanding of their customers and their ability to unlock supply and change behavior in the market.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, formerly of OpenAI, will lead research at MetaSuperintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao, a key contributor to ChatGPT and GPT-4, will set the research agenda under Alexandr Wang.
Meta has recruited top researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Apple for MSL. Zuckerberg is investing heavily in AI, offering substantial compensation packages and building a 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, to support AI training.
Meta now has two chief AI scientists, Zhao at MSL and Yann LeCun at FAIR, focusing on long-term AI research. With these efforts, Meta aims to compete with OpenAI and Google in the AI space.
Lyft will introduce autonomous shuttles manufactured by Benteler Group into its network by late 2026. These electric shuttles, operating under the Holon brand, will not include steering wheels or pedals and can accommodate up to nine seated and six standing passengers.
This move comes as Uber, Lyft's primary competitor, has been actively integrating robotaxis from various companies, including Waymo, WeRide, Baidu, Pony AI, Momenta, May Mobility, Volkswagen, Wayve, Nuro and Lucid Motors.
Lyft is also collaborating with May Mobility to deploy autonomous vehicles in Atlanta later this year and is working with Mobileye, whose technology powers the Holon shuttles.
Meta will cease selling and displaying political advertisements in the European Union starting in October due to the EU's upcoming regulation of political advertising, known as the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA). Meta deems the law's requirements as "unworkable," citing significant operational challenges and legal uncertainty. Google has also announced a similar decision. This move is part of ongoing tensions between the EU and Big Tech over regulations concerning AI, competition, and data privacy.
The NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) has refreshed its investment team with new partners Ulrich Quay and Sander Verbrugge, alongside Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, the remaining member of the original team. This follows the departure of founding team partners Kelly Chen and Chris O’Connor. The fund, which has made 19 investments, aims to empower deep tech founders in defense, security, and resilience. NIF is also involved in NATO’s Rapid Adoption Action Plan to integrate new technologies for defense. The new team structure consists of three partners, and NIF is focusing on defense and security resilience opportunities to support ecosystems across Europe.