General Partner @Benchmark
San Francisco, CA
Joined October 2009
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Everett Randle retweeted
I agree with this take. Businesses are coming to us directly to learn how they can reorient their application or website to be useful to this new type of distribution.
When they do, they see higher transaction volumes, higher retention due to the user’s learned preferences in Instinct’s memory, and distribution advantages over their competitors who are unable to move quickly or think creatively.
We only announce a subset of our partnerships. Here’s how the rest of the businesses are opening up and rebuilding towards Instinct traffic:
- Whitelisting our IPs for computer use access.
- Giving Instinct access to private APIs that aren’t available anywhere on the internet.
Oftentimes, Instinct needs to abide by an “acceptable use” policy, which prevents Instinct from abusing the underlying service. This is ok and preferred. We know from the data that consumers prefer to use Instinct over clicking on websites or applications. However, the underlying business shouldn’t be abused beyond what’s necessary or what the user needs. For example, Instinct shouldn’t be able to book every restaurant in America and cancel all of them but one on the night of the dinner. This would be extremely disruptive to every small restaurant in America. However, Instinct should be able to scan 1000s of restaurants in one wide sweep to find the best fit for the user’s night. Instinct should always be aligned with what’s best for its user.
As we move from the old interactive internet of apps and websites to the new internet of agents who own outcomes for users, it’s important for us to build responsibly and on a ground of trust between the user, Instinct, and the brands that we all love today. It has been very interesting to see how all of this is playing out.
Jack and I spend much of our day discussing the latest in tech with our partners and figured why not extend that conversation to our friends on the internet. Let us know what you think!!
After 58 episodes of Uncapped it was time for a little format refresh.
Benchmark Breakfast, where @EverettRandle and I will talk about whatever's on our mind or in the news as though it's our monday partner meeting. Sometimes with guests sometimes without.
Here's the first one, let us know what you think 🤗
(0:00) Intro
(0:45) Introducing Benchmark Breakfast
(2:09) Anthropic S-1 drops
(3:59) The revenue vs. compute chart
(6:19) Growth volatility and consumption-based revenue
(7:11) The race for the best model
(10:21) Code gen saturation and software factories
(13:39) The AI-bottleneck trade
(17:39) Code gen as the most impactful PMF in history
(21:27) Durability is hard to call
(23:36) Investing in the trend vs. calling the next one
(26:09) Circular revenue vs. outside customers
(28:15) Open source vs. closed source steelman
(34:25) Own your intelligence
(36:29) Open source as a % of frontier spend
(40:52) AI and cybersecurity
(44:35) Abliterated models
(48:08) Bio, robotics, and physical abundance
(51:52) Why physical feedback loops are slower
(54:12) Ev’s dad and the promise of bio
(55:13) Halloween plans and the iPhone Duo
Everett Randle retweeted
After 58 episodes of Uncapped it was time for a little format refresh.
Benchmark Breakfast, where @EverettRandle and I will talk about whatever's on our mind or in the news as though it's our monday partner meeting. Sometimes with guests sometimes without.
Here's the first one, let us know what you think 🤗
(0:00) Intro
(0:45) Introducing Benchmark Breakfast
(2:09) Anthropic S-1 drops
(3:59) The revenue vs. compute chart
(6:19) Growth volatility and consumption-based revenue
(7:11) The race for the best model
(10:21) Code gen saturation and software factories
(13:39) The AI-bottleneck trade
(17:39) Code gen as the most impactful PMF in history
(21:27) Durability is hard to call
(23:36) Investing in the trend vs. calling the next one
(26:09) Circular revenue vs. outside customers
(28:15) Open source vs. closed source steelman
(34:25) Own your intelligence
(36:29) Open source as a % of frontier spend
(40:52) AI and cybersecurity
(44:35) Abliterated models
(48:08) Bio, robotics, and physical abundance
(51:52) Why physical feedback loops are slower
(54:12) Ev’s dad and the promise of bio
(55:13) Halloween plans and the iPhone Duo
Everett Randle retweeted
We are entering a new dark age of cybersecurity. Devin is here to help.
Introducing the new Devin Security: powered by Claude Mythos and frontier cyber models, plus hundreds of millions of dollars of credits to help teams find, prioritize, and fix urgent vulnerabilities.
Stripe press publishing the nomad letters @aashaysanghvi_
And now you can preorder the NOMAD LETTERS (out December 1!): press.stripe.com/nomad-lette…
For years these letters have circulated (at first, unofficially) among investors, acquiring a devoted readership. We wanted to give them a permanent home in print.
Nick and his partner Qais Zakaria’s record is extraordinary. The letters are the account of how they got there, featuring everything from studying Amazon and Costco (Nomad’s defining investments)—to visiting cement plants in Zimbabwe, and beyond.
They’re candid about their mistakes and curious about the forces that shape investors’ behavior: incentives, psychology, and the wisdom (or foolishness!) of the crowd.
Since closing the fund, they’ve devoted their time to philanthropy, a journey Nick recounts in the lovely foreword he wrote for this edition.
I’m thrilled to continue adding to the investing corner of our catalogue, and I can’t think of a better work to follow Poor Charlie’s Almanack. ❣️
Everett Randle retweeted
From Benchmark leading the seed to an $8.8B valuation in 2.5 years, the Legora team has led the industry by bringing the best products to lawyers around the world. Thrilled to be joined by our friends at Atreides, Baron Capital, Capital Group, Fidelity, JPM, and many others!
We have raised a $550M Series E at an $8.8B valuation, led by Atreides.
Every major existing investor is back in, and we’re welcoming Baron Capital, Capital Group, Fidelity, Glade Brook and J.P. Morgan. We picked investors who think in decades. Several of them work with law firms and legal teams every day, so they can see where the work is heading.
Lawyers are moving from AI assistants to agents that do multi-step work. The money goes there. We’re growing our teams across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, and going deeper on the Legora aOS.
Thank you to the 1,000+ people at Legora, and to the 140,000 legal professionals who use what we build.
I say this a lot because I believe it: it’s the best time in history to be a lawyer. We're thankful to be a part of it.
Full story: legora.com/blog/series-e
Everett Randle retweeted
Our agents use a LOT of Exa
For us, it just covers all the gaps. The gaps all the APIs and enrichment services we use for our agents don't cover.
It's relatively cheap, so we basically run it unmetered (like Jev now, too)
Something cheap enough to run unmetered 24x7 = something really big
Especially if your agents use it all day and night long. As our agents do.
Exa just passed $100m in annualized revenue.
We've grown almost exactly 10x per year for 3 years. We now handle 2 billion requests a month from 200k+ teams. And it’s still so early:
We predict agents will search 1000x more than humans by 2030.
Agents don't search like humans. They write long, complex queries and want all the world's data, not just the web. We've spent 5 years building a search engine designed for them.
We now serve personal agents, AI labs, coding agents, GTM agents, really any agent. Exa gives these agents access to 100s of billions of web documents and tons of proprietary data.
Our customers are increasingly noticing that information is the bottleneck to agent performance. While the world seems close to perfect intelligence with models like Fable and Astra, we are very far from perfect information.
To our small but legendary team, thank you for getting us here, from engineering to research to GTM to ops.
To our customers, it is an honor to serve you. We have some exciting releases coming soon and can't wait to share them 🫡
Everett Randle retweeted
Exa just passed $100m in annualized revenue.
We've grown almost exactly 10x per year for 3 years. We now handle 2 billion requests a month from 200k+ teams. And it’s still so early:
We predict agents will search 1000x more than humans by 2030.
Agents don't search like humans. They write long, complex queries and want all the world's data, not just the web. We've spent 5 years building a search engine designed for them.
We now serve personal agents, AI labs, coding agents, GTM agents, really any agent. Exa gives these agents access to 100s of billions of web documents and tons of proprietary data.
Our customers are increasingly noticing that information is the bottleneck to agent performance. While the world seems close to perfect intelligence with models like Fable and Astra, we are very far from perfect information.
To our small but legendary team, thank you for getting us here, from engineering to research to GTM to ops.
To our customers, it is an honor to serve you. We have some exciting releases coming soon and can't wait to share them 🫡
Everett Randle retweeted
Today we announced an agreement to acquire Bumble.
Over the past six months, we’ve looked at hundreds of companies, asking which businesses would become more valuable as AI advances.
Bumble stood out.
As intelligence becomes more abundant, we believe connecting with the right person and forming meaningful relationships will become even more precious. And frontier technology can help more people find and build those relationships.
Our purpose at Ithaca is to apply frontier technology to things that matter. We acquire enduring businesses, transform them with technology, and hold for the long term. We focus on businesses not only for their financial potential but their ability to enrich lives.
Whitney and her team have built something extraordinary. Millions of relationships began on Bumble, and we’re honored to help take it into its next era. Together we intend to build the best company in the world for helping people find each other.
Let’s get to work.
Everett Randle retweeted
Today Hone launches Engines: AI that owns business outcomes.
Chatbots give answers. Agents do tasks. Engines deliver outcomes, and we hold them responsible for creating real value, measured in actual dollars instead of tokens or vibes.
You point it at a business metric, and the Engine figures out the rest. It onboards itself, builds the necessary agents, skills, and memories, collaborates with the right people, and gets better with experience.
From AI leaders to global enterprises, our customers have already used Engines to:
• Uncover millions in procurement savings
• Optimize product funnels
• Manage credit risk
• Increase qualified pipeline in new territories
• Accelerate implementations and improve account management
To scale this impact across the economy, we’ve raised a $60M seed led by Benchmark and Index with participation from Elad Gil, Hanabi, Definition, Diffusion, Lux, SV Angel, and Align.
AI’s raw capabilities are far ahead of the value it creates in the real world, and Engines will help close the gap.
Here’s how they work…
Long-horizon Engines are a new & exciting step function in AI capabilities and usefulness in enterprise environments — we’re thrilled to partner with @moritz_stephan @oqbrady @CarloWillem and the Hone team as they push the frontiers of applied AI
Today Hone launches Engines: AI that owns business outcomes.
Chatbots give answers. Agents do tasks. Engines deliver outcomes, and we hold them responsible for creating real value, measured in actual dollars instead of tokens or vibes.
You point it at a business metric, and the Engine figures out the rest. It onboards itself, builds the necessary agents, skills, and memories, collaborates with the right people, and gets better with experience.
From AI leaders to global enterprises, our customers have already used Engines to:
• Uncover millions in procurement savings
• Optimize product funnels
• Manage credit risk
• Increase qualified pipeline in new territories
• Accelerate implementations and improve account management
To scale this impact across the economy, we’ve raised a $60M seed led by Benchmark and Index with participation from Elad Gil, Hanabi, Definition, Diffusion, Lux, SV Angel, and Align.
AI’s raw capabilities are far ahead of the value it creates in the real world, and Engines will help close the gap.
Here’s how they work…
Everett Randle retweeted
Today we’re announcing Personal Agent Protocol — an open standard @Meta and @SierraPlatform are developing along with industry partners at @Genesys, @instinct, @RocketOTD, @Shopify, @stripe, and @Walmart. It will help define how personal agents interact with businesses and is open for anyone to implement. You can read more here - and if anyone is interested in joining let me know! sierra.ai/blog/introducing-p…
Everett Randle retweeted
Thrilled to announce Benchmark’s investment in Furientis! This is a remarkable team building incredible technology to produce scalable, low cost interceptors.
Excited to announce @Furientis @DeptofWar OTA contract for 100mi interceptor and $25M Seed raise led by @benchmark!
This couldn't have happened w/o our incredible engineering team testing at industry best pace. Join us- we're hiring across all disciplines!
furientis.com/careers
Everett Randle retweeted
Agent Browsers are live on Gumloop today so your agents can reach the work that doesn't have an MCP or API
> Secure credential storage & 1Password integration
> Session replays to see your agents work
> Stealth, proxied sessions
All completely model agnostic
Try Browser today.
Everett Randle retweeted
Instinct in group chats
Starting today, early access users can add Instinct to group chats. A new Instinct joins and works for the whole group.
Making plans with friends usually turns into a frustrating back-and-forth over times and places. With Instinct in the group, you can explore options together, agree on a plan and get it done, all in one thread. Your friends don't even need Instinct to join in.
A few things it’s good at:
- Planning a weekend trip with friends, including dates and arrival times
- Coordinating logistics with a roommate
- Getting tickets as soon as they go on sale, then splitting the cost and sending one to everyone
- Running a fantasy league, keeping standings, settling rules disputes, and reminding everyone to set their lineups
- Sorting out carpool schedules - works out who’s driving each day from everyone’s schedules
- Organizing Thanksgiving, keeping track of who’s bringing what and ordering the shopping list
Group chats are new territory for Instinct, and we put a lot of care into getting the permissions right. Here’s how it works:
- Your personal Instinct asks before connecting with the group’s Instinct. You choose which groups to trust and can remove trust at any time.
- The group’s Instinct has no direct access to your personal accounts. Your Instinct checks your permissions before sharing information or taking action.
- If someone new joins the group, all pending replies from your Instinct are held until you grant it permission to share with the expanded group.
Group chats are available to all of our early access users, and will be rolling out to everyone soon. To join early access for this release, ask your Instinct to put you on the list.
Great work with @GajanNagaraj @anuda_w and @saagarwashere
If you are buying for utility and don’t need a large SUV there is 0 reason to buy anything other than a Model Y. FSD is a starlink-on-a-flight level experience that you get to enjoy every day
Everett Randle retweeted
As someone who usually does the hosting it was very fun to get to go on 20vc with @HarryStebbings @jasonlk and @rodriscoll 🤗
The best products are created by people solving a problem for themselves.
I wanted a podcast that discussed the biggest news in tech, every week, with amazing analysis and left the politics and ego aside.
This is the result and the only show you have to listen to every week.
- Instinct Raises $1B at $10B Valuation
- AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B
- Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO
- Oura Pulls IPO
- Nubank Eyes $8–12B Monzo Takeover
My notes below with @jasonlk, @rodriscoll, and @jaltma
1. It Is BS to Think That Open Source Runs Away With It by Being Cheaper
Open-source models will not win on price alone because frontier labs hold structural advantages in compute scale, distribution, and revenue. Closed providers can subsidize lower-tier models aggressively enough to match open-source pricing. Open source will still capture a meaningful share of developer workloads, but frontier labs will compete hard on price to defend their position.
2. Why the Personal Assistant Space Is Very Reminiscent of the AI Coding Space
Consumer AI assistants like Instinct represent an "aggregator of aggregators" shift similar to Cursor's impact on coding. Instead of acting as passive chat boxes, these autonomous agents can execute complex, multi-step actions across the live internet. By fundamentally reshaping how consumers interact with software and services, this new paradigm creates room for both startups and incumbents to build enormous value.
3. Tyler Cowen's Prediction for the Future of Venture
AI is driving greater variance across venture capital, concentrating returns around an even smaller number of breakout winners. As Tyler Cowen put it, "Variance is gonna go up with AI, and many of you will fail." Traditional compounding strategies are becoming less reliable as capital and value creation cluster around outliers.
4. Why Will We See Many More Neo Lab Acquisitions?
Foundation model labs and semiconductor giants like AMD are actively acquiring Neo Labs to expand technical capabilities and defend strategic positions. Few of the roughly 100 existing research labs are likely to survive as independent businesses. Those with differentiated technical assets and specialized domain models could become highly valuable acquisition targets.
5. Seed Round Should Still Be $2M to $3M
Despite the hype around $50 million seed rounds, $2 million to $3 million remains the atomic unit of early-stage investing. AI development tools now allow lean founding teams to achieve as much operational progress on $2 million to $3 million as startups required far more capital to achieve a decade ago. Outside capital-intensive research labs, disciplined initial rounds help limit dilution and preserve healthy fund mechanics.
6. Should We Invest in Jev at $10 Billion?
Running top-tier frontier models for 10 to 12 hours a day is economically unsustainable for many enterprise workflows. Lower-cost alternatives like Jev, operating at a fraction of the price and up to 100x the speed, are already capturing significant token volume. As compute budgets become more constrained, specialized efficiency models could represent a major venture opportunity.
(links in comments)