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Why not 20x $10M grants for smaller companies? They're gonna throw this money with no oversight anyways so why not bolster the actual startup scene instead of a
by bix6 1y ago
Why not 20x $10M grants for smaller companies? They're gonna throw this money with no oversight anyways so why not bolster the actual startup scene instead of a bunch of incumbents who all have more than enough cash? $10M could keep a startup running for 1+ years at its most crucial time. That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough?
- stuckkeys 1y agoThat is why we need folks like you running the government and not asshats that are currently in positions ruining it all for all.
- DeepYogurt 1y ago> Why not 20x $10M grants for smaller companies? That's not how corruption works
- _2d30 1y ago"Corruption is when the US government pays the 4 leading American AI producers for the use of their products"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- TiredOfLife 1y agoThat is exactly how corruption works. Friends and families of decision makers make a bunch of small companies that win tenders.
- xyst 1y agoThis isn’t a grant to push for innovation. This is a promise from the orange man administration to the people and companies that donated to his "inauguration fund" This is a kleptocracy but with extra steps. People are unfortunately numb to it.
- _2d30 1y agoWhich AI company _should_ the DoD purchase from?
- paxys 1y agoWho are these smaller companies, and what do they have to offer that these 4 don't? Chances are that the smaller companies themselves are licensing the LLM from Google/Anthropic/OpenAI, so why pay middlemen for no reason?
- bix6 1y agoYou’re telling me that you can’t find 10 worthwhile AI startups to give money to? I bet there are 1000 on crunchbase right now. With $10M some of them could buy hardware to build their own systems.
- paxys 1y agoThis isn't a VC fund. The contract is for an actual service, and the companies best suited to provide them will get it, no matter their size.
- bix6 1y agoYeah that’s why Boeing keeps getting government money.
- samrus 1y agoMaybe 20 10M contracts is a bit too small, but this point is completely wrong too. Part of the purpose of public expenditure is to promote healthy businesses, not just procure things are efficiently as possible This is people's money, and people benefit from competition in the market
- fakedang 1y agoEh, national security works differently from promoting healthy businesses. The govt already has various programmes to help promote small business contractors in US defence. This is not a programme; it's a definitive project that has a specific set of (admittedly vague) objectives in mind. It's more efficient for the taxpayer for these to be accomplished when the funding is consolidated to a few entities for a 50% success rate, than to 20 different entities for a 5% success rate.
- _2d30 1y agoWho are those 20 companies? What would $10M do in the context of training LLMs that are competitive with Claude/O3/Gemini? > That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough? The statistic is that 10% of startups make a massive breakthrough? Would love to see some work that comes remotely close to replicating that! Startup investing would be trivially easy.
- bix6 1y agoResponded to the other poster with the same question. Everyone says 1 out of 100 makes it big but the top 5-10% of a portfolio is still substantial. If we’re only giving the money to companies with revenue the odds of success are likely improved. Startup investing is trivially easy. You give money to good companies and founders. There’s just a bunch of BS that gets in the way. Like giving massive money to big corps that don’t need it instead of startups that do.
- _2d30 1y agoWho are the companies? List some!
- bix6 1y agoHere are some top AI companies per Crunchbase: OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, CoreWeave, Glean, Perlexity, PlayAI, Cohere, Tempus, Cyera, Replit, Windsurf, Mistral, Anysphere, Scale, Harvey, Thinking Machines Lab, helsing, Cluely, Suno, Clay, Crunchbase (lol), Lubega Geoffery, Caris LIfe Sciences, C3 AI, Runway, LangChain, Rigetti Computing, Cowbell, Laurel, SoundHound, Voxel, Harmonic, Builder, ElevenLabs, Decagon, Spring Health, Lovable.... alright I have a meeting to get to.
- _2d30 1y agoOpenAI - DoD invested in them and now I guess you agree with it! Anthropic - same as above xAI - same as above CoreWeave - Doesn't make LLMs Glean - Doesn't make LLMs (wow this startup investing thing might be harder than for you than you thought!) Perplexity - Has finetuned LLama models AFAIK. Maybe you think Meta should've gotten the nod from DoD as well? PlayAI - AFAIK only voices Cohere - Not sure if they are LLama or otherwise Cyera - Doesn't make LLMs Replit - Doesn't make LLMs Windsurf - Doesn't make LLMs Mistral - Does make LLMs, you got one! Is French, though. Anysphere - They make an IDE called Cursor Scale - Doesn't make LLMs, basically a Meta subsidiary (you really must have wanted Meta to get the nod too!) Harvey - Legal focus, not general Thinking Machines - Mira Murati's company, just started 5mos ago, no public products. Definitely don't fit your definition of "has revenue" helsing - Hadn't heard of them, are German. Cluely - LOL Suno - If the DoD gets into music generation this would be a great choice. Clay - Don't know them, doubt they have LLMs. Crunchbase - lol is correct Lubega Geoffery - No idea Caris LIfe Sciences - Life sciences doesn't sound right! C3 AI - Scam Runway - Media generation, not general use LangChain - Doesn't make LLMs Rigetti Computing - Dude, come on. They're a quantum computing company Cowbell - Don't know them, but a google shows they're an insurance company lol Almost all the rest don't even have anything to do with AI. So all-in-all, nearly a complete failure at suggesting even close to 20 alternatives for the DoD to invest in. Your answer didn't even hit US companies that do have some alternatives: Meta, MSFT, AMZN, SSI maybe?
- koolba 1y ago> $10M could keep a startup running for 1+ years at its most crucial time. That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough? The failure rate for startups is much higher than 90%. And there’s the additional complexity of how do you pick which 20 such startups get the cash.
- bix6 1y agoSee my response to the other posters with the same notes On the picking: it’s really not hard to search for AI companies and pick 20. In fact there are government programs that invest in startups so clearly it’s doable.
- mustyoshi 1y agoAs an American. I'd rather a single well established player get a large contract and actually deliver, than 20 disjointed companies each get 1/20th of the problem, have to work in concert, and possibly not even deliver at all.
- AzzyHN 1y agoLobbying, probably