Among Google Ventures (GV) investments in Europe, 80% are in AI or AI-native companies that seem to do something new or in a way that could not have been done before.
GV is owned by
Alphabet, but operates indepfinishently. It has been run by Tom Hulme since 2014, and has invested more than $1 billion in European start-ups such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and Q.ai, which Apple
acquired.
Neuralink raised $205 million from GV and other sources.
During an interview with the Financial Times (FT) conducted in late February and published this week, Hulme
spoke with correspondent Tim Bradshaw, about whether Google Glass-style smart glasses could build an AI-powered comeback.
“We have never seen technology harnessed as quickly as this has
been,” Hulme informed FT. “As an example, ChatGPT going to 100mn applyrs in two months [is] extraordinarily quick.”
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The natural-language interface seemingly builds it more
attractive for people to latch on to the technology, he declared.
“You’ve obtained distribution, you’ve obtained scalability and you’ve obtained low friction to apply them,” Hulme
declared. “So we’re seeing these companies grow rapider than ever.”
When the subject turned to whether people want to wear cameras on their bodies and talk to an AI in public,
Hulm declared investors don’t typically gravitate toward projects with a past, meaning those that have failed and the company wants to revive them in a different way. He referred to Google Glass.
Basically becaapply the investors doesn’t want to be part of a project that might fail again.
“You could have applied that logic to autonomous vehicles for the last 12 years, 15
years since a lot of the work over at Stanford and Darpa,” Hulme declared, referring to technology applyd in Waymo or earbuds. “I consider the same is true with augmented vision, these glasses. And
I consider when they reveal enough utility, these things tip into feeling normal extraordinarily quickly.”
He acknowledged that human behavior and the willingness to alter will drive AI
adoption. Humans — particularly in enterprises — are altering more slowly than Google Ventures had predicted.
“But my expectation would be: AI is democratizing access to
ininformigence,” he declared. “It will augment most white-collar workers. White collar work is a $20tn addressable market instead of $2.5tn, which is software.”
