Over the past eight months, Carta has strategically acquired assets to build a groundbreaking platform that integrates dealmaking, fund management, investor communications, and now legal and compliance services. The recent purchase of Avantia, a UK-based AI-driven law firm specializing in asset management, marks a significant step in unifying the private capital industry under a single technology ecosystem.
Thrive Capital, led by Joshua Kushner, has made a strategic investment of around $100 million in Shopify, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. While the amount is relatively small for the fund, which recently raised over $10 billion, the move is significant as it reflects confidence in Shopify's potential in the evolving AI landscape. This investment highlights a trend where strong AI prospects can be found in undervalued stocks, signaling a unique approach in venture capital.
Over the past ten months, Figma’s journey on Wall Street illustrates the volatility tech stocks can face. After its IPO on July 31, 2025, priced at $33 per share, Figma’s stock surged past $140 on its first day of trading. However, throughout 2026, the stock has steadily declined, impacted in part by competition from Google's free Stitch design tool and Anthropic’s Claude AI, casting uncertainty on the market’s confidence despite Figma’s strong performance in AI.
Richard Socher has launched a groundbreaking $650 million venture aimed at creating an AI system that can autonomously research and enhance its capabilities indefinitely. Despite the complexity of this goal, Socher is confident the company will deliver tangible, market-ready products.
For AI systems to continually improve in knowledge-intensive tasks, they require either autonomous self-improvement or human evaluators to catch errors and provide quality feedback. Industry efforts have heavily focused on the former, overlooking the critical role of human evaluators. The problem is compounded as entry-level jobs training new experts—like document review, research, and code review—are increasingly automated. This limits the next generation’s ability to develop the deep judgment essential for evaluating AI effectively.
Unlike games like Go, where AI can learn through stable rules and clear outcomes, knowledge work is dynamic and evolving, requiring human insight to interpret changes and provide nuanced evaluation. Historical knowledge loss typically happens due to external crises, but here it results from rational economic decisions that phase out human expertise. Entire fields risk “hollowing out,” where models perform well superficially, but the human capacity to innovate and validate disappears.
Rubric-based evaluations help reduce dependence on human evaluators but fall short because they only measure explicit criteria, missing deeper intuitive judgment. While AI development should continue, the human evaluation gap needs urgent attention. Ignoring this risks degrading the foundations that underpin AI’s knowledge and progress.
Ahmad Al-Dahle, CTO of Airbnb, calls for treating the loss of expert evaluators as a serious challenge—one requiring research and investment equivalent to the focus on AI capability advancements.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed on the All-In podcast that the company plans to invest $300 million in Anthropic tokens this year, focusing primarily on advancing AI-powered coding capabilities. Benioff described the AI coding tools and Anthropic as "awesome," emphasizing that this investment will lower development costs across Salesforce. Additionally, he expressed interest in enabling coding functionality within Slack as the next step.
Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award-winning computer scientist and a key figure in AI development, has reiterated his concerns about the risks posed by hyperintelligent machines. In a recent interview originally published in October 2025 by the Wall Street Journal and republished by Fortune, Bengio cautions that rapidly advancing AI could threaten humanity’s survival within the next decade.
John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, criticizes keyword search as an ineffective method for finding products online. Speaking to Bloomberg, he predicts that agentic commerce—where AI agents autonomously shop on behalf of consumers—will entirely change the online retail landscape. This innovation promises to reshape not only how customers shop but also the way retailers approach selling, signaling a fundamental shift in e-commerce structure.
Bill Gross, a respected Silicon Valley investor and founder, has launched ProRata, a platform aimed at ensuring publishers and creators receive fair compensation when their work is used to generate AI-driven content. Drawing inspiration from lawsuits like The New York Times vs. OpenAI, Gross designed a patented attribution method similar to Spotify's revenue-sharing model with artists. Although no AI company has yet adopted this system, Gross believes lawsuits and profitability will eventually compel them to share revenues equitably. ProRata has already partnered with 1,500 publishers and offers a spin-off, Gist, to help clients monetize content better through AI-powered site search and related question features. Gross views his approach as a fair and statistically valid method, comparing it to Nielsen ratings accepted by advertisers. He acknowledges AI doesn't truly understand content but has a useful approximation that provides great value. Gross predicts AI will disrupt society, hoping the benefits reach all levels rather than only enriching the wealthy.
Design software company Figma reported a strong first quarter with $333.4 million in revenue, marking a 46% year-over-year growth driven largely by its AI-powered tools. The company recently introduced AI credit limits, which are successfully monetizing tool usage as over 75% of its larger customers purchased additional credits after exceeding their limits. With AI features playing a key role in expanding seat adoption across organizations, Figma raised its 2026 revenue forecast to between $1.422 billion and $1.428 billion, anticipating a 35% growth. Following this update, Figma’s stock price climbed over 9% in premarket trading to its highest since March, though still below its IPO peak last July.
