Category: Perspectives
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Stepmark Partners’ AI Predictions for 2026
Executive Summary Building on our 2025 Year in Review report, which highlighted the rapid advancements and challenges in the AI landscape, Stepmark Partners presents our forward-looking predictions for 2026. These insights draw from emerging trends in technology, regulation, and market dynamics, offering a glimpse into potential developments in the AI industry. While these predictions may…
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The State of AI: 2025 Year in Review
Table of Contents Introduction 1. 2025 in Review: Macroeconomic Backdrop 1.1 Markets and Monetary Policy 1.2 Asset Class Performance 2. 2025 in Review: Technology Sector 2.1 Industrial Policy and Sovereign Capital 2.2 Selected Technology Transactions 2.3 Energy and Power for AI 2.4 Hyperscaler Capital Deployment 2.5 Neocloud Infrastructure Buildout 3. 2025 in Review: Frontier AI…
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Meta and AI Ads
Zuck’s vision of having AI generate marketing collateral and automatically run ads is closer to reality than most people think. Ironic that Gemini is making this process so easy, which means Meta has a clear path in making it happen. Shrimp cocktail (Fri/Sat only) from Cook’s Seafood in Menlo Park. From Meta’s Q2 2024 earnings…
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Oura Ring: Using AI Image Recognition to Track Meals
My wife recently stopped using the Oura Ring and became a Fitbit user, so I became a proud owner of a new tech gadget. If you haven’t heard of the Oura Ring before, it’s a ring-like device that you wear on your finger and throughout the day, it records your biometrics data such as heart…
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Consumer GPUs Might Make Neoclouds Optional
Open Source Catches Up, and Consumer Hardware Is Ready Open-source large language models have quietly caught up to their closed-source cousins. Models like OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20B, Meta’s Llama, and many models coming out of China can now deliver reasoning, code generation, and conversational ability that would have seemed like science fiction three years ago. And they’re…
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How Big Tech Is Rewriting M&A: The License and Acqui-hire Era
Authors: Justin Wang (Analyst), Evelyn Xie (Analyst) Table of Contents Introduction Inflection & Microsoft (Mar 2024) Adept AI & Amazon (Jun 2024) Covariant & Amazon (Aug 2024) Character.AI & Google (Aug 2024) Windsurf & Google + Cognition AI (Jul 2025) Scale AI & Meta (Jun 2025) Enfabrica & Nvidia (Sep 2025) Takeaways Introduction A new…
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Reflections on China’s Tech Scene: EVs, AI, and Everyday Innovation
After a month-long trip to China this August, I found myself reflecting on the rapid pace of technological change and how much of it is shaped by China’s state-managed economy. As I rest on my flight back to the U.S., I could not help but notice how different the consumer experience felt, from transportation to…
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Overview of AI Coding Landscape
By Pranil Arsid, Analyst AI has crossed from novelty to norm: assistants produced 41% of code in 2024, about 256 billion lines. Drawing on GitHub’s billion-repository and public Q&A, the repetitive, well-commented data allows models to logically suggest additional lines of code; Copilot trials shows tasks are finished 55% faster. Open-source entrants like DeepSeek intensify…
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Jony Ive’s startup, io, merges with OpenAI
Today’s big announcement in AI is the merger of Jony Ive’s startup, io, with OpenAI. Note, I’m using the term “merge” here because that’s how OpenAI is describing this transaction. This transaction would normally be considered an acquisition by most observers. After watching the video, my biggest takeaways are: Given the above, and plans to…
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AI Valuation for Founders
Recent tech financings show clear trends: increased valuations at Series B and later stages and significant investor interest in AI-native companies. Funding rounds have become more spaced out, reflecting cautious investor behavior after the 2022 funding slowdown, yet valuations are rising again. AI companies, boosted by advances in generative models, continue to attract high revenue…
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