Leena Rao

2 days ago | businessinsider.com | Leena Rao |Alistair Barr |Henry Blodget

AI companies want everyone to use AI. In fact, they often warn that if you don't AI, you'll get left behind, a penniless luddite that no one will hire. There may be only one area of modern life where the technorati might think it's bad to use AI. That's when you apply for a job at their company. That's the situation at Anthropic, one of the leading AI labs run by a slew of early OpenAI researchers and executives. Anthropic is hiring a lot right now.

2 days ago | businessinsider.com | Leena Rao |Monica Melton |Henry Blodget

It may seem like AI adoption has taken off rapidly, but there are some notable holdouts. Emily Bender, a UW linguistics professor, and Alex Hanna, the research director of the Distributed AI Research Institute and former Google AI ethicist, would like readers to take away from their new book, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" that AI isn't want it's marketed to be.

3 days ago | businessinsider.com | Vishal Persaud |Ben Bergman |Julia Hornstein |Leena Rao

Behind every great company, there was a prescient early investor who planted the seed that helped it grow into a redwood. For Facebook, that investor was Peter Thiel. For DoorDash and Opendoor, it was Keith Rabois. Seed-stage investors arguably have the hardest job in venture capital. They often write a check after hearing just the smallest kernel of an idea, long before there is even a product.

3 days ago | businessinsider.com | Leena Rao |Julia Hornstein |Henry Blodget

Salesforce chair and CEO Marc Benioff says angel investing is a "side hustle." His returns say otherwise. Benioff — who shared his investing strategy with Business Insider in an interview — has backed some of Silicon Valley's biggest winners. Salesforce Ventures has $6.8 billion under management and has deployed $600 million of its $1 billion Generative AI Fund, including a first-quarter investment in Anthropic, according to a spokesperson.

5 days ago | businessinsider.com | Leena Rao |Samantha Stokes |Henry Blodget

Agentic AI continues to be a bright spot for VC investing in 2025, and one startup in the space just landed a fresh round of funding to bring no-code agents into the workplace. The startup, StackAI, just raised a $16 million Series A funding round led by Lobby Capital. LifeX Ventures, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Weaviate CEO Bob Van, Gradient, startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Epakon Capital also participated in the round.