In this episode, Sandhya Hegde and Wei Lien Dang chat about everything that happened in the world of AI Startups in 2023.

2023 was very much an Act 2 for Generative AI as GPT became a household name. We had a long Act 1 during Covid ending with some incredible launches in the second half of 2022 including Stable Diffusion and of course ChatGPT. We take a closer look at what the pivotal moments have been this year and more importantly what they mean for the startups ecosystem.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Preview: Strategy to defeat incumbent software companies

3:39 January 2023 — ChatGPT's Success and Consumer Adoption

7:16 February 2023 — Controversies and Legal Issues

12:09 March 2023 — GPT-4 Launch and Multimodal AI

16:04 April and May 2023 — Large infrastructure providers’ AI strategy

20:04 June 2023 — GPU Shortage and Infrastructure Challenges

22:41 July and August 2023 — Fine-Tuning and New Modalities

29:46 September 2023 — Governance and Safety Concerns

32:06 October 2023 — Revenue Generation and Open Source

33:18 November 2023 — OpenAI Leadership Changes

37:17 December 2023 — Google's Gemini and Future Predictions

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor.

Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tool. Wei was a co-founder of StackRox, a cloud-native security company prior to its acquisition by Red Hat.

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.

Further reading from Unusual Ventures:

Whose responsibility is responsible AI?

How do you navigate AI security in an evolving landscape?

Autonomous AI agents could change the world, but what do they actually do well?