Ben Dubin

Working with NRF to pursue our patent strategy is an important step in recognizing that proprietary AI systems and workflows are becoming a new form of intellectual property for modern firms. Great to partner with George, John McBride, and the team at Norton Rose Fulbright as we work at the frontier of how AI can transform investment decision-making in venture capital. At Decasonic, we believe the next generation of companies will reinvent with AI workflows and systems how organizations operate, how leaders make decisions, and how teams collaborate with intelligent systems. In going through this streamlined process, it's clear to me that many more startups should clarify their IP strategy. Our internally developed AI platform, RLEN, reflects that philosophy. We are building AI not to automate tasks and flourish outcomes, in collaborative ways for human and AI teammates. This enables our investors to test ideas, explore alternative perspectives, and reach deeper insights faster when navigating uncertainty. More broadly, we are seeing trailblazing work across industries and cities as leaders experiment with how AI can reshape communities, companies, and countries. Leadership with AI forever transforms. We are still in the early innings. Appreciate the partnership and collaboration from the Norton Rose Fulbright team as we continue inventing and innovating. Special shoutout to my colleague Abdul Al Ali who's listed as a co-inventor.

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As AI workloads eat up global computing supply, DRAM prices are surging like never before—creating major challenges for teams trying to plan out their data center spend. One of my portfolio companies, Mext, is addressing the largest cost component in the datacenter: server memory (DRAM). From being on the board of Redis for the last twelve years, I’ve learned a lot about the various aspects of this problem and approaches to solving them. Mext found a breakthrough, using new AI techniques, for dramatically reducing the amount of server-DRAM required to run applications, all while maintaining performance. It intelligently manages the server’s memory, keeping hot pages (i.e., those in use by applications) in fast DRAM and offloading cold pages (i.e., those less used) to a much less expensive memory tier (e.g., NVMe Flash). Key to the approach is ensuring cold memory pages that are about to be accessed by an application are back in DRAM before the application needs them or notices that they were gone. This is done without modifications to the application or the OS – so it can run in the cloud or on-premise. Mext thus allows applications to either run using less DRAM or keep their DRAM footprint but do more with it. They're hosting a webinar along with Fred Weber (former CTO of AMD) on Jan 22nd at 10am pacific time. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gXe9GCeE

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Navigating the Future of Mobility: Safety Concerns in Autonomous Technology The recent incident involving a Waymo robotaxi hitting a child near a Santa Monica elementary school underscores the critical importance of safety in the rapidly evolving autonomous vehicle sector. As stakeholders in venture capital, we must prioritize understanding the regulatory landscape and invest in companies that prioritize child and pedestrian safety. How do you think incidents like this will shape public perception and regulatory frameworks for autonomous technologies? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

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Honored and excited to partner with Drew Baglino and the incredible team at Heron Power as they re-imagine the electric grid for the modern world. Power in America is not zero sum. We deserve access to cheap and abundant electricity and we should win the AI race. And we must build the capacity to manufacture critical technology here at home. When faced with existential challenges, we deploy technology against them. And we win.

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#AmTech Weekly Roundup: -> Clarium raised $27 million in Series A funding from Northzone, General Catalyst, AlleyCorp, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures. Clarium’s hospital supply chain management software works with crowdsourced data from providers, suppliers, and vendors to lower costs and prevent disruptions.   Steve Liou   -> Reflect Orbital raised $20 million in Series A funding from Lux Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Starship Ventures. Reflect Orbital builds satellites that reflect sunlight down to Earth for large-scale solar generation and night-time lighting for things like overnight construction projects, disaster relief, and public events.   Ben Nowack, Tristan Semmelhack    -> Adyton PBC raised $11 million in funding from Venrock, Khosla Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Initialized Capital. Adyton’s defense-focused operational software gives warfighters access to information about resources, supplies, and support platforms.   JJ Wilson, James Boyd #VentureCapital #VC #USA #Startups

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In the latest episode of the OpenAI podcast I got talk to OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar and legend himself Vinod Khosla about the AI industry. Sarah explained the relation between compute and revenue (OpenAI's revenue keeps 3x'ing each year) and Vinod provided an insightful way to tell if we're in a bubble: API calls. Are they going up or down? (Spoiler: Up, up, up!) https://lnkd.in/g2tTQBdp

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This WSJ story on Recursive Intelligence is another signal that we’ll keep seeing “new chip startup remakes the industry” narratives as AI demand explodes. Makora (fka Mako) is playing a different game: we do not need to wait 5 to 7 years for a new silicon cycle to make AI more efficient, because most companies will never train frontier models but they will drown in inference costs. Unlocking efficiency on the GPUs already deployed makes AI cheaper now and turns on use cases that were uneconomical at today’s prices. https://lnkd.in/defHEtM6

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Quantum Art is on a mission to build a scalable Quantum Computers, and reach 1 million Qubits within the next few years. Great talk by QArt's co-founder and CEO, Tal David, explaining their unique approach, architecture and goals!

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DeepSeek-V3.2 is also available on Atlas Cloud now. We worked with SGLang to fix tool-use in non-streaming mode. The model now supports tool_call, tool_choice, response_format and reasoning. Price: $0.28/M Input & $0.4/M Output. Try it on Atlas Cloud: https://lnkd.in/gUb9i_B8

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My DCVC partner Milo Werner at the announcement of MIT's New Manufacturing Initiative: the highly automated factories of the future will re-industrialize the United States, tightly couple R&D and manufacturing to accelerate innovation, and decarbonize industry.

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Nvidia, Foxconn reported to be in talks to deploy humanoid robots at Houston AI server making plan - https://lnkd.in/gYvJ-fWd These type of mid-market Humanoids Could Be Korea/Japan/Taiwan’s Moment: • China may be poised to dominate in consumer robotics but… • Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are ideally positioned to ship secure, reliable, mid-priced robotics and humanoids for more stringent applications • Cheaper than U.S. systems, safer than PRC supply chains: ideal for enterprise and government buyers Why this matters now: • Trusted supply chains + infosec baselines → KTJ ecosystems already meet industrial cybersecurity norms • Industrial-grade mechatronics + serviceability → legacy robotics and component expertise translate into uptime • Cost discipline without cutting safety → focus on modularity and repairability, not disposable hardware Recent catalysts: • Korea launched a national K-Humanoid Alliance to drive global leadership by 2030 • Taiwan’s robotics suppliers are emerging as preferred subsystem and sensor partners for U.S. and EU OEMs • Japanese firms are pivoting humanoid R&D into applied enterprise robotics: logistics, inspection, healthcare For manufacturing-tech investors: The humanoid shift isn’t about billion-dollar prototypes: it’s about scalable, serviceable, and secure humanoids built on KTJ’s manufacturing DNA. This is the mid-market inflection where enterprise robotics meets trusted industrial supply chains.

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