The New Third Rail in Silicon Valley: Investing in Chinese AI
Benchmark declined to comment. But the grumbling came as a surprise to Bill Gurley, a longtime partner at the firm who scaled back his responsibilities in 2020 and wasn't involved directly in the deal. In a May episode of BG2, his podcast, Gurley supported the firm's decision to lead a $75 million investment in Butterfly Effect, the creator of the AI agent Manus. The product, he noted, only operates atop large language models developed in the US, such as Anthropic's Claude; and the startup has offices outside China and doesn't store any customer data there. He rejected the notion that it posed a threat to US national security. 'In not being a China hawk, people accuse you of being a sinophile. And there's a lot of room in between those things,' said the 6-foot-9-inch Gurley, one of the most recognizable figures in the venture industry.
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