Navigating Controversy: Sequoia's Brand and Political Tensions

The Newcomer Podcast returns just in time to have Eric, Tom, and Madeline weigh in on Meta's audacious AI hiring spree. The tech giant has enticed researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic with huge paydays in the hopes it can bring its Llama models up to par with the competition. Next up, Ramp's report that companies have stopped purchasing AI tools made a lot of buzz this week, but it's still too early to call an AI peak.

Later on in the episode, Grok's offensive replies aren't enough to slow down xAI's latest model launch. We close out the episode rehashing Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire's latest inflammatory tweets over New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

00:35 — Meta poaches top researchers to ail its flailing models

11:13 — XAI outperforms despite Grok's offensive replies

18:27 — It's too early to call the AI bubble

28:50 — Shaun Maguire's tweets bring attention to Sequoia