> By May 2016, Kay was able to charm Y Combinator’s president and A-type startup whisperer Sam Altman. They created Human Advancement Research Community (HARC)

> By May 2016, Kay was able to charm Y Combinator’s president and A-type startup whisperer Sam Altman. They created Human Advancement Research Community (HARC) inside of YC Research and absorbed the CDG researchers there. Altman generously agreed to fund HARC out of pocket while they waited for other promised funding to come through. > That arrangement lasted a little over a year. In July 2017, just a few months after HARC moved into a beautifully renovated building in old Oakland, Altman abruptly defunded the lab. > It’s unclear why he pulled the plug. In his Y Combinator annual letter in February 2017, he said that the work coming out of Victor’s lab “remain one of the new technologies I think most about.” But a person close to Altman told me that by July his excitement had shifted from HARC to OpenAI, another YC Research project where he is now CEO. Amidst the ashes, a burned-out Kay left for London, and the research groups disbanded. I was so excited when HARC was first announced. It's great that they were funded for an extra year, but it's really too bad YC couldn't keep funding Bret Victor's lab :(