Nathan Benaich: Building AI-first companies

Nathan Benaich is the Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage AI-first technology and life science companies. His investments include Allcyte (acq. Exscientia), Intenseye, Tractable, Graphcore, V7, Mapillary (acq. Facebook), and Thought Machine. Nathan is the co-author of the annual State of AI Report and the newsletter, your guide to AI. Nathan also leads Spinout.fyi, which seeks to improve university spinout creation starting with open data on deal terms, and The RAAIS Foundation, a non-profit that runs the annual RAAIS summit and funds open source AI fellowships. He holds a Ph.D. in cancer biology from the University of Cambridge and a BA from Williams College.

In this talk, he will make the case for building AI-first companies along with the opportunities and challenges that this presents in the context of the current state of AI. He will also discuss how to form a spinout from academic research and how to maximize your success in doing so.