The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Rejected It | The Four Bottlenecks in AI | Anj Midha

Anjney Midha is the founder of AMP, and a founding investor in Anthropic. Most recently, Anj was General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, leading frontier AI investments. He serves on the boards of Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Sesame, LMArena, OpenRouter, Luma AI and Periodic Labs and is an early angel in ElevenLabs among others. Prior to that, Anj was the cofounder/CEO of Ubiquity6 (acquired by Discord) and a partner at Kleiner Perkins. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:25 Are Scaling Laws Dead? 02:55 The Four Bottlenecks Holding AI Back 07:36 Why AI for Science Sucked 09:36 Sovereign Data & the Cloud Act 13:31 The Investment Thesis Behind Mistral 14:27 The Brutal Early Days of Anthropic 20:52 Public Benefit Corporations: Mission vs Profit in the Age of AI 23:06 The AMP Grid: Building the Electricity Grid for Compute 25:21 Co-Founding Companies Like Kleiner Used to 35:30 We're in a GPU Wastage Bubble, Not an AI Bubble 37:49 Why Compute Isn't Fungible 42:16 How China Is Winning the AI Race 45:15 Coordinating Defense Against AI Distillation Attacks 49:07 Perfect Competition Is for Losers 01:01:43 Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZ... Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Follow Harry Stebbings on X:   / harrystebbings   Follow Anjney Midha on X:   / anjneymidha   Follow 20VC on Instagram:   / 20vchq   Follow 20VC on TikTok:   / 20vc_tok   Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/con... ----------------------------------------------- Legal Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Any discussion of stocks, public markets, or investment strategies reflects the personal opinions of the speakers and should not be relied upon when making investment decisions. Figures, valuations, and financial data referenced may be estimates or subject to error. Always consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decision. The views expressed are those of the individual speakers and do not represent the views of 20VC or its affiliates. ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #anjneymidha #founder #investor #vc #anthropic #mistral #ai #amp