Barney Harford

An incredible deep dive from Nathan M. into the cultural and structural issues that are plaguing Boeing and how they got to where they are today. This article should be turned into a business school case study it's that good. And many of these issues aren't unique to Boeing. The focus on financial engineering over actual engineering is an issue at play in many scaled aerospace and defense companies. A definite must-read! https://lnkd.in/gkdpF2tM

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AI memory is fundamental for conversational AI and AI agents. It is critical for building personalized experiences and improving reasoning. Check out Letta’s course to understand how to use AI memory to enhance the customization and quality of your AI app.

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🌉 San Francisco's Surprising Comeback: From 'Doom Loop' to Renaissance? Recent data suggests that San Francisco, once trapped in a pandemic-induced 'doom loop', is showing strong signs of recovery. Here's what's changing: 📈 Positive Trends: - Population Growth: Net gains over the past two years, with domestic in-migration positive for the first time since 2012. - Housing Market: Median home sale prices up 1.2% YoY to $1,427,500 in June. - Job Growth: The Bay Area added 7,400 jobs between January and June. Downtown Revival: Foot traffic beyond typical work hours has recovered to over 90% of pre-pandemic levels. - Crime Reduction: Property crime down 32% and violent crime down 14% in Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023. - AI Boom: The city is positioning itself as a hub for the AI revolution. 🚧 Ongoing Challenges: - High office vacancy rates - Homelessness and drug crisis - Lagging tourism and business travel 🔑 Key Initiatives: - "Vacant to Vibrant" program offering free rent to businesses in empty storefronts - Increased police patrols and encampment sweeping - Crackdown on open-air drug dealing 💡 Expert Insight: "The rising AI empire is giving the city a new edge. Funding, talents, and culture related to the AI revolution will help the city turn the corner." - Lu Chen, Senior Economist at Moody's Analytics 🤔 What's Your Take? Are these positive trends sustainable, or is it too early to declare a comeback? How can other cities learn from San Francisco's recovery strategies? What role will AI play in reshaping urban economies, particularly in tech hubs? https://lnkd.in/gCnPCBRU

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📈 AI Startup Sierra Expands HQ in San Francisco (4K to 41K SF) 🌁 Artificial intelligence firm Sierra is making a bold move by relocating to a larger office within San Francisco. The startup has signed a lease for a 41,104-square-foot space at 235 Second St., significantly upsizing from its current 4,000-square-foot office. 🏢 This move to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, where office vacancy rates have started to decline for the first time since 2020, is a positive sign for the city's hard-hit office market. The area's office vacancy rate, though still high at 28.8%, is slightly lower than six months ago. 📉 The deal contributes to the increase in leasing activity in San Francisco, which is up by about 1 million square feet compared to last year. This uptick is driven by the region's reputation as a leading national hub for AI companies. 💼 Sierra joins other AI firms expanding in the South of Market area, including Scale AI, which signed the city's largest office lease of 2024 with a 178,000-square-foot deal. So far this year, office tenants have signed leases totaling 750,000 square feet in South of Market, a significant increase from last year's 370,000 square feet. 🚀 Co-founded in 2023 by former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor and former Google executive Clay Bavor, Sierra raised $85 million earlier this year to develop a customer support AI tool for businesses. The firm is set to relocate from its current space at 215 Second St. by next month. San Francisco's reputation as an AI hub, bolstered by its talent pool and six major AI research institutions, continues to attract companies. Recent significant deals include OpenAI’s sublease of over 400,000 square feet of Uber’s former headquarters and Anthropic’s takeover of Slack's former headquarters. These developments reflect a resilient and adaptive real estate market. As a commercial real estate professional, I’m excited to see how these trends shape the future of office space in our vibrant city.

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Chinese tech company SenseTime has launched SenseNova 5.0, its large language model that outperforms GPT-4 Turbo across nearly all key benchmarks. The ~600 billion parameter model has a 200,000 token context window and was trained on over 10TB of largely synthetic data. It shows significant advancements in knowledge, math, reasoning, and coding capabilities compared to top models like GPT-4T. While SenseNova 5.0's benchmark scores suggest China's AI capabilities are rapidly advancing and catching up to the U.S., the validity of these claimed capabilities is still uncertain without public access to test the model. Let's see how this plays out. #ai #openai #sensetime

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Worth reading: The Cost of Anticompetitive Pricing Algorithms in Rental Housing What is interesting here is the shift toward coordination at scale, which Teddy Roosevelt (Republican) referenced in his new nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas - on August 31, 1910. The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. . . . We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary. No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. Link: https://lnkd.in/gPrYK_ni --- "Pricing algorithms may help landlords and building managers set prices that are more responsive to market conditions, which could increase market efficiency in a competitive market. But the algorithms can also facilitate price coordination, which decreases market efficiency by harming competition. Small yet coordinated landlords can act as if they are a single dominant landlord, and use their collective market power to increase profits by setting higher prices." https://lnkd.in/gVzcZbzW

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Having a Cars and Capital event tomorrow in Southern California with Oren Klaff. If you want to join message me. https://lnkd.in/gDQ4D39u Oren Klaff Bridger Pennington #InvestorEvent #FamilyOffice #InvestmentOpportunity #CarlsbadEvent #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #InvestmentConference #CapitalRaising #NetworkingEvent #IndustryLeaders #FinancialGrowth #InvestorsMeetup #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentForum

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ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at Stanford this week. Lots of nuggets here, but most interesting for the near term, Schmidt believes in the next year AI is set to make a big leap forward. He predicts AI will combine three important features: 1. Vast knowledge retention (1 million token models) 2. Text-to-action capability 3. Personal AI agent fleets While the full impact is unknown, everyone may soon command their own AI teams. Here's an example: Imagine you're developing new quantum computing algorithms. Your AI assistants could: - Continuously scan and synthesize global quantum research papers - Generate novel algorithm ideas based on this knowledge - Simulate and test these algorithms across various quantum architectures - Automatically document findings and prepare draft papers - Identify potential collaborators and draft outreach emails All initiated by a command like "Advance our quantum algorithm research." This could dramatically accelerate R&D cycles and scientific breakthroughs.. https://lnkd.in/eJbg6cnD #frontiertech #AI #futurefrontier

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Stop this removal-only obsession in the carbon markets. What kind of hare-brained approach is that? We need avoidance even more than we need removals. This article reminds me of the analogy I made a few months ago about a sinking boat. No amount of bailing water with buckets will save you if the hole in the hull is getting bigger. Remember, if deforestation was a country, it would be the world's third largest emitter. And no, you cannot just demand/legislate that poor rural people stop deforesting without providing alternative income. That is why forest carbon exists. It takes some form of totalitarian mindset (and/or total lack of understanding of rural economies)to think one can just ban things they do not like. https://lnkd.in/eCddBRwt

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WAYMO -- WAYCOOL or GHOST RIDER? If you preside in San Francisco, Santa Monica or Phoenix you are now seeing driverless Waymo taxies making their way through town on an ever-increasing basis. The network is expanding, and I can honestly say that in the Santa Monica / West Los Angeles area I have not driven anywhere in the last two months without seeing one of them on the road every time. In fact, sometimes they are so prevalent that there might be three in a row waiting at a stop light. It still is kind of spooky seeing cars moving around with no driver, or anyone for that matter, in the front seat. It's not exactly the same as the Headless Horseman but it does conjure up that image in my imagination. I have not taken a ride in one, but several family members have and report their satisfaction. Waymo is a division of Alphabet (GOOGL). I have not seen any visible evidence of General Motors (GM) Cruise vehicles which I understand are still being road tested, while Tesla (TSLA) has been projecting their autonomous vehicle vision for some time. For now, Tesla seems to be behind but that could change quickly. GM is likely to use their own branded vehicles, and it would seem that Tesla will likely do the same. However, Waymo technology could be outfitted on any cars. That seems like a big advantage, staying out of the car business and just being like the "Intel/Microsoft" inside personal computers which is a much higher margin business. There has been a lot of noise in the business journals and chat rooms about a Waymo initial public offering but nothing from Alphabet itself. They recently concluded a $5.6 billion investment round; see TechCrunch post below. The autonomous race is on, and it will be expanding rapidly from here on out. I just wonder if we will ever see an autonomous police vehicle stop a wayward autonomous taxi and write it up for some violation as yet unknown. Will traffic school be an option? #waymo, #autonomousvehicles, #selfdrivingcars, #GM, #Generalmotors, #tesla, #Investing, #business,

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Have you ever noticed that the word Uber is both a noun and a verb? I have spent years studying shared economy, supply chain and logistics. The first and last mile space has proven profitable and lucrative but also fickle and unpredictable. And I love it. In the world of Yahoos and Googles, Ubers and AirBnBs, a person could argue that branding has very minimal impact on the potential success of a company. I have also spent years studying branding, marketing, product management and customer experience. People love all-inclusive. Sometimes when you're dealing with consumers, a little bit more goes a long way. In WebVans defense, while I'm sure they had the most advanced inventory management system, at the time, I'm sure they didn't have automated storage and retrieval, they didn't have the 5G ecosystem, they didn't have RFID and IOT, they didn't have shared economy and they obviously believed, like Jeff Bezos, that because they had figured out how to deliver a book to your door, they could innovate the entire supply chain. And I love the tenacity. They tried to create an all inclusive customer experience. But like, what happens when the name just kinda sucks? Is it possible that the plateau is being caused by a crappy name? Why would people think Cost Plus is a company that would give them a discount on pharmaceuticals? Why would people think WebVan or GoPuff is the best solution for getting things delivered? Branding is part of the customer experience. It's where the brand loyalty begins and creates the potential for evangelism. Don't forget that part.

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I have to wonder if the CDN government would ever look out for customers in this way. The rewards programs of the four largest US air carriers are being probed by the US government as it seeks to understand how consumers “are impacted by the devaluation of earned rewards, hidden or dynamic pricing, extra fees and reduced competition and choice.” The probe would be the first extensive government look at the programs that have expanded to produce billions of dollars for airlines annually—in some cases adding more revenue than flight operations. Federal regulators could demand changes that might disrupt these profit centers for both carriers and credit-card issuers, and remove a travel option highly valued by consumers.

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What do self-driving cars and AI agents have in common? Brooke, the founder of Coval (YC S24) and a former engineer at Waymo, came on the pod to explain. They seem different, but both face similar challenges. Whether it's a car navigating busy streets in SF or an AI agent managing complex customer interactions, both systems need to process real-time data, learn from their environment, and adapt their behavior accordingly. Self-driving cars are "agents on wheels"—deciding when to stop, go, and adjust based on what they see on the road. AI agents, meanwhile, are navigating decision trees, learning through simulations, and improving their ability to respond accurately to task as well. The testing processes are also alike. Like self-driving cars compare their performance to real-world human drivers, AI agents are evaluated on how they solve tasks compared to human operators. Both systems run thousands of simulations, tweaking and refining their responses to ensure they can handle unpredictable, non-deterministic scenarios. That's what Coval does. They help companies do simulations on their agents to help them run more effectively. Fascinating stuff. Our chat together made me feel like I was in the future. The learnings from testing self-driving cars are now being applied to AI agents, showing how interconnected these cutting-edge technologies are. The podcast will be out shortly - till then, this clip does a good job explaining this concept.

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The US NHTSA says it has opened a probe into about 2.6M Tesla vehicles. But the concern is not "Full Self Driving." It's the “Actually Smart Summon” driverless feature.

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Investors beware: The LLM hype might be hitting a plateau. As this story suggests, LLMs are resource-heavy and lack true reasoning. So what’s next for AI? Instead of chasing the same "brilliantly stupid" models, it’s time to focus on more efficient, innovative approaches that can scale. But here’s the real question—have you sunk so much money into the old on-prem proprietary LLM infrastructure that you’re stuck, or will you pivot before the bubble bursts? #AI #Innovation #Investing #TechLeadership #Disruption #FutureTech https://lnkd.in/gYyibFSK

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New Thesis - Beyond Language: An Introduction to The Transformational Potential of LxMs A core tenet of the new firm I am building is to generate sectoral theses in areas that I believe can lead to outlier returns. Over the years, I have been fascinated by novel foundational technology catalyzed by open ecosystems - and the impact they can have on areas beyond language. In this post, I introduce the concept of LxMs - a new thesis I am developing - and how they will impact various sectors. Follow along our series for in-depth insights and case studies on how LxMs are transforming various industries. We will explore how these advanced models are revolutionizing fields such as scientific intelligence (biology, chemistry), industrial intelligence (robotics, manufacturing) and gaming (design, engines, modeling, simulation). Read our intro and stay tuned for our subsequent posts. Huge props to Archit Gadhok for co-piloting this with me!

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Waymo's recent doubling of its paid ride volume is an impressive business result. But what does the feat say about the state of the self-driving industry? And how does Waymo stack up against self-driving rivals like Tesla, and ride-hailing giants like Uber? We dive into these questions on the latest episode of TWIST

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With the progress of Waymo and the Tesla event yesterday, something I wrote about in 2021 could become true as soon as 2027. In some industries (like ride sharing), marketplaces are just an intermediary step to aggregate independent suppliers. Ultimately, companies will figure out how to provide the service themselves at scale, and we'll have a few very large "super-suppliers". But in other industries (like e-commerce) where the consumer values creativity, consolidated suppliers won't be able to provide all of the new and interesting things that customers want, and we'll still need independent suppliers. Those industries will stay in marketplace mode much longer.

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Getting into personal aviation? It's like unlocking a whole new world! Think about it: with your own plane, you're breaking free from the confines of traditional travel. Whether it's zipping off for a weekend getaway or hopping between business meetings without the hassle of commercial flights, personal aviation opens up a world of possibilities. Also, time is our most valuable resource and taing advantage of opportunities through aviation allows you to make more impactful memroeis and connections. #personalaircraft #aircraft #airforce #aviation #aviationlovers #aviationgeek

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