Wyoming Passes New Law for AI and Crypto

Author

Alpha
March 12, 2024

∆ Tech in the News

Apple AI - Siri co-creator, Dag Kittlaus, tweeted that the assistant app will "accelerate and become a real force in the AI arena." Apple is also testing an AI-driven platform that automates ad placements in its App Store.

Musk To Open Source Grok - Elon Musk vowed that xAI will open-source the Grok LLM doubling down on his suit against OpenAI (or “ClosedAI”.)

OpenAI Reshuffle - The new OpenAI Board members include reinstated CEO, Sam Altman, former Gates Foundation and Sony execs and the Instacart CEO.

"Extinction-Level Threat” - A new State Department-commissioned report called for U.S. intervention to curb emerging threats posed by advanced AI, including its weaponization and losing control of the tech. 

Nvidia Sued - Three authors are suing Nvidia over the alleged use of their copyrighted books without consent to train its AI model, NeMo.

[POLL] Would you give capital or GPU space to a DAO-governed AI agent?

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The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

Code is Law: Wyoming Bill Paves the Way for Autonomous AI

Wyoming just established a legal framework last week that will change the game for corporate governance and M&A. In short, code is now law, M&A transactions can now be codified through software, and most importantly, this opens up a pathway for AI Agents to become fully autonomous financial actors on behalf of an organization. This is the future of business, and it's happening now.

The new Wyoming law enables a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to be hard-coded through smart contracts and software with ability to:

  • Merge with (or acquire) any company

  • Make contractual agreements through smart contracts (i.e., smart contracts are now real contracts)

  • Own companies and property

  • Assume liability (like an LLC with limited member liability)

  • Pay 3rd parties (e.g., contractors)

Under the bill's provisions, DAOs with over 100 members gain legal status, perpetual existence, and limited liability for members. 

The new Wyoming law could open new doors for driving value creation as more companies will explore mergers between DAOs. Imagine an overnight DAO-DAO acquisition or a potentially novel collaboration such as a DAO with expertise in issuing digital assets merging with a financial institution.

Emmet Halm, cofounder of DAOHQ, predicts that many DAOs will build on top of Open AI models as the unique value distribution mechanisms of DAOs make it easier to distribute wealth that’s generated from their AI products and services. 

Companies like Fetch.ai are creating rails where AI bots can be tasked with any income-generating activity. AI agents, controlled by decentralized organizations, will handle complex transactions, own property, and even execute M&As, all without human intervention, and pass revenue back to the DAO and its members.

It's a scenario reminiscent of the early days of Bitcoin and its potential impact on the economy as a “decentralized currency”. Legendary shareholder activist, Bill Ackman, just wrote last week that he might be buying some bitcoin. How long before he is talking about how AI-backed DAOs are eating corporations?

"AI could be one of the most powerful wealth creation tools in history, DAOs are a way to distribute ownership of it. DAOs allow this wealth to flow to a much larger group.”

- Emmet Halm, cofounder of the DAO dashboard and marketplace DAOHQ

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  2. Outbound B2B Campaign AI Co-Pilot - Lexington, MA - Turn any CRM into an AI optimized sales agent for personalized customer campaigns. Hubspot and Saleforce API integration. Post revenue. Pre-Seed Stage.

  3. AI-agent for Professional Intros - Irvine, CA - Existing Tech/finance media company looking for growth funding to launch autonomous co-pilot that introduces founders/builders to individuals that can support their growth. Audience of ~600k active members. (Open to financing discussions).

  4. AI/ML for Healthcare Admin Billing - Los Angeles - Simplify health documentation with translatable billing and QA for faster Dx coding. Post revenue. 20 Major healthcare clients in pipeline. Multiple awards for top 1% in industry. PMF/FMF. Serial entrepreneur/founder of medical group. Early traction. Raising Pre-A round.

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Closed Deals:

Hyperscale Data Warehouse - Chicago big data vendor Ocient raised $49.4M to expand its cross-industry capabilities and meet AI demand.

LLM Training - Paris/New York Startup Adaptive helps businesses train LLMs and raised a $20M Seed at $100M backed by Databricks, and HuggingFund.

Large Agentic Models - Newark startup SuperAGI landed a $10M Series A to build open source AGI using LAMs with 20k devs from Microsoft, Google, JPM, Tesla, Tencent, and OpenAI already using its tools.

Biomedical Alerts - Seattle startup PreemptiveAI raised a $6.4M Seed from AI2, Inspired Capital and more to use AI to interpret signals from smartphones and wearables to predict health events. It also partnered with Duke University.

Space Clouds - Wash. startup Lumen Orbit closed a $2.4M pre-seed round to process data via satellites in orbit before downloading it to Earth.

Companies to Watch:

Command-R  - NY/Toronto enterprise-focused AI startup Cohere released a new LLM with RAG for enhanced performance and longer context windows up to 128K tokens. Cohere is partnered with Accenture and raising up to $1B.

IPO Watch

RDDT - Reddit plans to sell 22M shares at IPO priced at $31-$34 each, raising as much as $748M at an implied valuation of $6.5B.

Bullish? - Israel-based trading platform eToro is eying a U.S. IPO listing at a valuation of $3.5B+. It has 3M users and ~$11.3B of AUM.

Chipper - California chipmaker Astera Labs aims to raise $534M at $4.5B at its upcoming IPO listing by selling 14.8M shares, priced at $27-$30 each

The Funding Buzz

Artemis Fund - Closed the 2nd Artemis Fund, at $36M to invest in underrepresented founders backed by Amazon, BOA, The Rockwell Fund and various major banks.

Nvidia - With $2.1T market cap Nvidia has quietly developed an ambitious VC unit with $1.5B of investments in 2023 alone per WSJ.

AI2 Incubator - Secured $200M cloud computing credits from several providers to allocate to portfolio startups incorporating AI into its software products.

Thomson Reuters - The Media Giant plans to invest $8B in AI to expand in the realm of AI-driven professional services and information.

Pika Labs - New ‘Sound Effects’ tool generates audio via prompt or auto.

Google - Pixel 9 will feature new Tensor G4 chipset for better heat and power.

Moonbird - A handheld “breathing” device to pace your breath for relaxation.

Buzzy Tech

Covariant - OpenAI Spinoff builds “ChatGPT for robotics”.

Insilico - First AI-generated and AI-discovered drug unveiled.

Kscalelabs - Garage startup-built $8k humanoid robot for YC Demo day.

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