Good day. Brian Halligan, co-founder and former chief executive of public software company HubSpot and a partner at Sequoia Capital, helps artificial-intelligence startups tackle age-old management challenges.

Halligan advises a host of generative-AI startups, including coding company Lovable, speech-software developer ElevenLabs, customer-support business Sierra AI and legal services provider Harvey AI.

We spoke with Halligan, who started a new podcast series called “Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO With Brian Halligan” and is releasing a book on management lessons, about the culture at today’s AI startups, as well as the initial public offering market and pitfalls of scaling a rapidly growing startup today. Here are excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

WSJ Pro: The public markets are choppy. Are founders you work with considering going public?

Halligan: The IPO window opened up, but the companies haven’t performed that well. Public markets are kind of rational, but private markets are in a bubble.

Founders aren’t as excited about going public for a couple of reasons. It’s become very common that they can take a lot of money off the table during their rounds, like tens of millions. So there’s no urgency. They are already pretty wealthy. There’s also a lot of overhead of going public, and a lot of work. And they don’t want a down-round IPO.

WSJ Pro: AI startups are growing revenue very quickly. What are the pitfalls of scaling up so fast?

Halligan: Some are struggling with hiring and with converting pilots into enterprise deals. Some are selling the dream to the customer and then they do a $500,000 pilot project and it doesn’t convert. That’s my number one worry about the next-gen startups. There’s more sizzle than steak. I’m also seeing pilots that are working and starting to convert. It depends on the application.

Read the full story.

And now on to the news...

Global AI. As China and the U.S. race to dominate artificial intelligence, countries are increasingly wary of becoming overly dependent on the superpowers for a technology that could profoundly affect their economic competitiveness and national security.

• In response, a select few are seeking to build out their own AI capabilities and become leaders alongside the U.S. and China.
   
• South Korea, with its rich and advanced tech sector, is a strong believer in the idea that smaller countries can succeed in developing a wide degree of autonomy in AI—a buzzy concept now known as “sovereign AI.”

Steve Picciotti’s Amazon.com purchases in April included an $8 USB cable, a $90 beard trimmer and a $45,000 Hyundai Santa Fe SUV. Picciotti is the sort of die-hard customer the company is banking on to prove that people are finally ready to buy cars and Chanel handbags from the same place they get toilet paper and generic batteries. While convincing companies to work with Amazon was slow, this year’s Black Friday shoppers will be able to browse Saks Fifth Avenue’s shoe department, as well as Hermés Birkins and Rolex watches from luxury reseller Rebag. Last week, Ford announced that its dealers would offer used cars for sale on Amazon, joining Hyundai and rental car company Hertz.

When Olga López heard she would lose access to her collection of role-playing chatbots, she felt a surge of emotions: sadness, outrage, bewilderment. Olga, who is 13, turns to her chatbots from artificial-intelligence company Character.AI for romantic role playing when she doesn’t have homework. Like the company’s other under-18 customers, she was notified in October that she would no longer be able to have ongoing chat interactions with digital characters soon. “I’m losing the memories I had with these bots,” she said. “It’s not fair.” After the company said it would begin time-limiting underage users’ chats ahead of the policy change, Olga attempted to rally fellow teens to resist the change in a post on Reddit: “HOW DO I USE IT FOR 2 HOURS AND HAVE TO WAIT A DAY? HELLO?”

Guardio, a Tel Aviv-based consumer cybersecurity provider, picked up an $80 million investment led by ION Crossover Partners.

Model ML, a New York-based workflow automation platform for financial services, scored $75 million in Series A financing. FT Partners led the round, which included participation from Y Combinator, LocalGlobe and others.

Wispr, a San Francisco-based voice-to-text AI startup, collected $25 million in Series A extension funding. Notable Capital led the investment, which included additional support from Flight Fund.

Opti, a New York-based identity security platform, landed $20 million in seed funding led by YL Ventures, Mayfield Fund and Hetz Ventures.

Coverbase, a San Francisco-based procurement orchestration platform, closed a $16.5 million Series A round led by Canapi Ventures.

MindImmune Therapeutics, a Kingston, R.I.-based developer of new treatments targeting the inflammatory drivers of neurodegenerative disease, added $10.2 million in Series A extension funding. Dolby Family Ventures led the investment, which included participation from Pfizer Ventures, Gates Frontier and Slater Technology Fund. The company also named Isaac Stoner as chief executive officer.

Cordance Medical, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup developing noninvasive-focused ultrasound technology for brain disease treatment, said it surpassed the $8 million target of a seed round led by Sonder Capital.

Zinit, a Dubai-headquartered AI-powered procurement platform operating across India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East, was seeded with an $8 million investment led by AltaIR Capital.

• How the U.S. Economy Became Hooked on AI Spending
   
• Amazon to Invest $50 Billion Building Data Centers to Support U.S. Government
   
• AI Meets Aggressive Accounting at Meta’s Gigantic New Data Center
   
• Inside Marriott’s Disastrous Bet on Short-Term Rental Company Sonder
   
• Should Investors Be Concerned About Oracle?
   
• NASA and Boeing Scale Back Starliner Missions After Fumbled Astronaut Flight

• What’s next for AlphaFold (MIT Technology Review) 
   
• Europe is bending the knee to the U.S. on tech policy (Wired)
   
• An auto holy grail: motors that don’t rely on Chinese rare earths (New York Times)
   
• Do brain-decoding devices threaten peoples’ privacy? (Scientific American)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Marc Vartabedian and Brian Gormley. 

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.