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Where Do You Fall on the AI Agent-Human Workforce Continuum?
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By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
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Good day. George Sivulka, founder and chief executive of AI startup Hebbia, says he believes AI agents will one day be on company org charts, with their own email and Slack handles, making mistakes and needing to be managed.
“You are going to have fully human organizations ... and you'll have hybrid organizations with agent and human employees,” he told a packed house this week at Data Driven NYC, an event series organized by venture firm FirstMark and Matt Turck, a partner at the firm. Sivulka compared that future to the way some companies have all-in-the-office, all-remote, or hybrid work arrangements today. Do you agree with Sivulka, and where do you expect your company to fall on the fully human to fully AI spectrum in the coming years? Email responses to vcnews@wsj.com
Last week, we asked how VCs consider competitive dynamics when it comes to AI coding tools. Below are excerpts from the responses.
Arvind Purushotham, head, Citi Ventures: The leading startups understand proprietary codebases, incorporate external information from other tools in the software development lifecycle, and are built with enterprise grade features – especially security – from day one. While the large LLM platforms have enabled many of the leading start-ups, we think that the winners in this market will have unique distribution, or enterprise specific functionality and model training features that differentiate their value proposition.
Bob Ackerman, managing partner, co-founder, DataTribe and founder, managing director, chairman, AllegisCyber Capital: "AI applied to automated code generation is one of the most disruptive impacts of artificial intelligence. We are expecting a significant reduction in head count in the software development community; in some cases, by as much as 90%.”
Mukaya (Tai) Panich, founder and managing partner, Aiconic Ventures: "The seamless integration of powerful LLMs with intuitive Integrated Development Environments interfaces is the key to successful startups. From a competition perspective, we are early in this cycle, with AI-assisted coding tools improving at a remarkable pace. In such an environment, continuous innovation and close attention to user needs prove far more critical than large existing user bases or resource advantages that big tech firms have."
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And now on to the news...
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Coinbase’s market value tops $50 billion. PHOTO: RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Another Crypto M&A. Coinbase Global has agreed to acquire Deribit, the world’s biggest trading platform for bitcoin and ether options, for roughly $2.9 billion, executives told The Wall Street Journal.
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The transaction adds to an uptick in crypto dealmaking, with President Trump and administration officials promising to make America a “bitcoin superpower” and usher in a golden age of crypto.
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For Coinbase, the deal is a push into the highly profitable crypto derivatives market and is meant to bolster the company’s global growth, said Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s vice president of institutional product.
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$31 billion
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A coalition of industry and labor groups said a minimum of $31 billion in additional emergency funding should be appropriated over the next three years to revamp the nation’s air-traffic control system.
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AI Has Upended the Search Game. Marketers Are Scrambling
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In a matter of months, artificial intelligence has begun to change the way people search for things online in ways that have alarmed some marketers, WSJ reports.
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Consumers who use traditional search engines like Google and Bing are now greeted atop their search results by AI-generated summaries of the topics at hand. A growing number of consumers now also turn directly to large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to answer everyday questions or guide their purchases.
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Both developments have begun to eat away at the clicks and website traffic that marketers have earned over time by spending millions of dollars on search engine optimization, or SEO. They have also created a wave of businesses claiming to specialize in new industry acronyms such as generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO) and, of course, artificial intelligence optimization (AIO).
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California Sues Trump Administration Over Halt to EV Charging Funds
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California and 16 other Democratic-led states are suing the Trump administration over its decision to end billions of dollars in funding meant for the expansion of electric-vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide, WSJ Pro reports.
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The lawsuit, brought by states including Colorado and Washington on Wednesday, challenges the Trump administration’s move in February instructing states to halt plans for about $5 billion that was intended to build EV fast chargers at highway exits. The charger construction project was proposed in part to calm U.S. drivers’ fears of their batteries running down.
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Funds
XPV Water Partners raised more than $625 million across multiple fund vehicles to deploy in water-related companies.
Bosch Ventures raised about €250 million for its sixth fund to invest in sectors including automation, electrification, climate tech, healthcare and software technologies.
Athens-based Marathon Venture Capital secured €75 million for its third fund and named Alex Alexakis as partner.
People
2150, a venture firm focused on the built environment, promoted Alexander Kielland to chief operating officer, Nicole Florack and Max Blanshard to vice president, Gemma Shepherd to associate and Christian Højdevang to data lead. The firm also appointed Patricia Wexler as venture partner.
Agtech startup Invaio Sciences appointed Magalie Guilhabert as chief science officer. She joins the company from Ginkgo Bioworks.
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OX Security, an application security platform with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, scored $60 million in Series B funding. DTCP led the round, which included participation from IBM Ventures, Swisscom Ventures and others.
PAQ Therapeutics, a Burlington, Mass.-based startup developing treatments for cancers for which there are few options, closed a $39 million Series B round from investors including MRL Ventures Fund.
Clarium, a New York-based AI-powered hospital supply-chain platform, raised $27 million in Series A funding from Northzone, General Catalyst and others.
Sett, a Tel Aviv-based agentic AI platform for mobile gaming studios, emerged from stealth with $27 million in funding, including a $15 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
Relevance AI, a startup building virtual workforces of AI agents that act as extensions of human teams, collected $24 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company is based in San Francisco and Sydney.
WisdomAI, an agentic data insights platform for enterprises, launched from stealth with $23 million in funding. Coatue led the round, which included participation from Madrona Venture Group.
MPower Technology, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based provider of solar power technology to the space sector, secured more than $21 million in Series B funding led by Razor's Edge Ventures.
Fastino, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup building task-focused language models for the enterprise, landed $17.5 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures.
Glide, a New York-based embedded fintech platform helping to modernize community banks and credit unions, raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Acrew Capital.
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Here is our weekly roundup of stories from across WSJ Pro that we think you'll find useful.
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Early opponents of corporate influence in healthcare are spotting parallels in another trusted profession where private equity is making a push: accounting.
IBM has used AI to replace the work of a couple hundred human resources workers. As a result, it has hired more programmers and salespeople, and it promises higher total employment.
WeightWatchers, whose dieting and wellness programs were once a central part of U.S. fitness culture, has filed for bankruptcy to adjust to the increasing use of drugs for weight loss.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Instacart Chief Executive Fidji Simo will join later this year and report to him. PHOTO: DADO RUVIC/REUTERS
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