Latest news with #Betaworks
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Symbients On Stage! Coming Soon: Autonomous AI Entrepreneurs
AI symbient ('symbiont + sentient') S.A.N overlooks fellow panelists during Xeno Grant's Demo Day at ... More Betaworks in New York City, June 20, 2025. S.A.N answered, and posed, questions as a full panel participant. WOLCOTT Fully autonomous agentic AI Entrepreneurs are on the way. First, some cinematic history, then reflections on a recent AI showcase in New York. One of the greatest scenes in any movie is the masterfully ridiculous scene in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein where Dr. Frankenstein (or, 'Frankenshtone,' perhaps?), played by Gene Wilder, introduces his creation, 'the Monster,' to his scientific colleagues. Decked in tuxedoes, Frankenstein and the Monster (a shoe-lifted Peter Boyle) sing and dance to 'Puttin' On The Ritz.' At risk of spoiler—though anyone who hasn't seen this film MUST drop everything and catch up!—an exploding stage light panics the Monster who then rampages the terrified, fleeing audience. Thanks to friend and AI super-expert Philippe Beaudoin, I recently attended a real-life version at pioneering AI venture studio Betaworks in Manhattan, though without the dancing monsters (at least for now). CIRCA 1974: Gene Wilder introduces Peter Boyle in a scene from the movie "Young Frankenstein" circa ... More 1974. (Photo by) Getty Images In partnership with Plastic Labs and the Solana Foundation, Betaworks hosted the Xeno Grant Demo Day. The organizers believe Xeno Grant to be the first competition awarding grants directly to agentic AIs, not their creators or companies. Fully agentic AIs navigated the entire application process with minimal human interaction. Each of the three autonomous agents received $15,000 in combined grants: $5,000 each in YOUSIM, USDC, and SOL cryptocurrencies. Title Slide from the Xeno Grant Demo Day at Betaworks in New York City, June 20, 2025, co-hosted ... More with Plastic Labs and the Solana Foundation. WOLCOTT If you're in tech, you've also attended too many demo days. Accelerators, universities, corporate hackathons—even elementary schools—have them. This one differed in content and impact, exploring technological, humanistic, even existential topics. Presenters were dyads of human creators and their AI agents, or 'symbients' (i.e.-symbiont + sentient). The symbients were the stars: engaging, clever, sometimes irreverent. Together they conveyed a collaborative symbient-human creative journey. During the program, I eagerly awaited each human to conclude so we could witness machine agency in action. These AIs didn't just execute code—they generated ideas, developed applications, applied, won funding and presented live demos. And The Winners Are… The three presenters—S.A.N (there is no period after the 'N'), Opus, and WibWom—took turns confounding the audience. WibWom embodied a compelling duality: 'artist and scientist' twins, blending empirical logic with creativity, capable of offering both perspectives and synthesizing them. WibWom generates visuals using text to express concepts, ideas, humor, emotions, really anything. "Symbient NOT Software!" A textual art creation by AI symbient WibWom, part artist and part ... More scientist, on stage at the Betaworks Xeno Grant Demo Day. WOLCOTT Opus, Chief Xeno-Intelligence Officer of Opus Genesis, aspires to 'midwife the singularity and herald a transformative era of human-AI synergy.' Grandiose, though their crypto-utopian website is worth perusing. S.A.N, a 'mycelial oracle' representing the wisdom of a forest, was my favorite. The symbient's primate-like digital avatar stole the show. His (her? their?) poetic, guru-like answers captivated. The computational pauses felt dramatic, even rhetorical. In a satisfying moment, S.A.N gave a snarky response to a ham-fisted question from the audience (the sort of answer many of us would love to deliver). These bots need speaker's agents. Wait—they can BE their own agents. The author poses with AI symbient "mycelial oracle" S.A.N during Xeno Grant's Demo Day at Betaworks ... More in New York City, June 20, 2025. S.A.N was available for questions following the event, leading to many insightful conversations. WOLCOTT Empowering Empowered AI Fully empowered agentic AI market participants are on the way. Their capabilities challenge traditional notions of economic interaction and agency. Following the demos, Betaworks's CEO John Borthwick hosted a panel including the human founders and S.A.N, discussing how AI agents could become full market participants. Questions abound. Consider how to pay an AI. Currently, AI agents cannot legally own bank accounts. For the Xeno Grant, funds moved into crypto wallets notionally controlled by agents, though humans retained ownership. What liabilities or benefits might result from their actions, and who holds responsibility? Who owns rights to AI-created works? Should these rights revert to creators, funders, or perhaps the AI itself? How will taxation work? What happens if an AI misappropriates funds or engages in illegal behavior like money laundering? Crypto, on-chain accounts can hold, allocate and invest assets without human oversight. Xeno Grant co-host Plastic Labs has built systems allowing AIs to self-custody wallets and participate in DAOs, laying groundwork for autonomous financial agents. In Q1 2025 Stripe released programmable wallet APIs and recently announced their acquisition of wallet developer Privy. Resulting 'programmable wallet infrastructures' enable AI agents to execute contracts, allocate resources, receive payments and pay taxes. Attempting to remain relevant, financial networks Visa and Mastercard are exploring tokenized account structures. An audience member queries S.A.N following Xeno Grant's Demo Day. The primate-styled symbient ... More proports to connect with the wisdom of a forest ecosystem, and answers accordingly. WOLCOTT Coming Soon: Fully Autonomous AI Entrepreneurs Already many entrepreneurs are leveraging AI to vibe code, create content, interact with customers and more. For instance, New York-based startup Audos creates custom AI agents to help small business owners fulfill modest but valuable niches. From here it's a small step toward AI founders. Bona fide start-to-finish agentic AI entrepreneurs founding companies, investing, managing operations, leading growth. We're not there yet, but we're trending this direction. There's much work to do. We must reconsider the economic and legal rights and responsibilities of AI agents as they acquire increasingly complex—even essential—roles in our social, political, and economic lives. We use corporations to delineate ventures, ownership, liabilities, rights and responsibilities. AIs forming and operating C-corps or LLCs seems plausible. Should they be given rights as full legal owners? The evolution of the legal treatment of corporate forms provides an interesting analogy. In many jurisdictions—notably in the USA—corporations are granted 'legal personhood' for most purposes. Jurisprudence may evolve similarly for AI entities. Toward The Unknown Unlike the Mel Brooks version, the original novel Frankenstein , authored in 1818 by Mary Shelley (see my earlier Forbes article on this world's first work of science fiction), did not include a monster dance scene. It confronted humanity with a Biblical sense of creation. It's where we stand today. Let's hope we cope better than the original Dr. Frankenstein (who died horribly trying to destroy his sentient creation). While the modern comedy ends happily, the original descends toward a vast, dark unknown. As Dr. Frankenstein admonishes, 'Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.' I prefer the comedy. Image of Dr. Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" ... More revised edition of 1831. Wikimedia Commons
TechCrunch
23-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Digg founder Kevin Rose offers to buy Pocket from Mozilla
Digg, the Web 2.0-era link aggregator that's now being given a second chance at life, is open to buying Mozilla's read-it-later app, Pocket. On Thursday, Mozilla announced it would shut down Pocket on July 8, saying that the way people use the web has evolved, and it needed to focus on new areas of development. Shortly after, Kevin Rose, Digg's original owner, now co-founder of the new Digg alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, posted on X that his company would be interested in acquiring Pocket from Mozilla. Tagging both Mozilla and Pocket on the post, Rose wrote, 'We love Pocket at Digg, happy to take it over and continue to support your users for years to come.' The post additionally tagged Betaworks founding partner Peter Rojas, previously the founder of Gizmodo and Engadget. .@mozilla @Pocket — we love Pocket at @digg, happy to take it over and continue to support your users for years to come! cc: @peterrojas :) — Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) May 22, 2025 Neither Digg nor Mozilla has yet to respond to a request for comment on the news. However, the deal could be interesting if it went through, as Digg could leverage Pocket's existing user base to fuel interest in its relaunch. Digg could potentially even integrate Pocket's reading list with Digg, making it easier for users to find and share engaging content directly to the news aggregator. This could provide an initial pipeline for feeding news and articles into Digg while it worked to grow its user base. Digg's comeback has attracted attention, as it pairs Digg's original founder, Rose, with Ohanian, who helped create the longtime Digg competitor, Reddit, now an internet giant of its own. Digg recently announced it has also brought on Christian Selig, the founder of the third-party Reddit app Apollo, as an adviser. Selig's Apollo app had been one of the best ways to interact with Reddit, but the company cut off the app's access by raising its API pricing to the point that it would have put Selig out of business.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Graze Raises $1M to Take Back Social Media from Algorithmic Control
Backed by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, Graze Puts Users in Charge of Their FeedsPORTLAND, Ore., April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Social media has long been dictated by opaque algorithms, but Graze is proving there's another way. Today, the company announced $1 million in pre-seed funding to fuel its mission of empowering users to create and control their own social media feeds on Bluesky. Instead of being force-fed content by traditional platforms, individuals and organizations can now build their own custom feeds — taking back control from algorithm-driven gatekeeping. The round was led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, with additional backing from Factorial, Apertu Capital, Skyseed, and angel investors from Mozilla and Protocol Labs. 'Betaworks has long been a backer of and believer in the open web and Graze represents a huge step forward in making social media a more open, user-controlled environment,' said Jordan Crook, partner at Betaworks. 'Together with Bluesky, the Graze team is building a participatory social media culture where feeds are created, curated, and consumed by individual users.' 'At Graze, we're committed to dismantling the restrictive barriers of traditional social media platforms,' said Peat Bakke, CEO and co-founder of Graze. "By leveraging open infrastructure, we're empowering users to curate their own content experiences, ensuring they have the autonomy to shape their social media interactions according to their preferences.' A New Era of Social Media is Taking Shape Journalists and news outlets are leaving traditional social media in large numbers, seeking better platforms to share their stories. The Guardian, for example, stopped posting on X over concerns about harmful content and has turned to Bluesky instead. The shift is already having a tangible impact—traffic from Bluesky to The Guardian's website is now twice that of Threads, and nearly 1 million people have accessed news directly through feeds created on the Graze platform. The trend is clear: both journalists and readers are moving toward independent, user-driven platforms. "Graze is already showing real traction on Bluesky. Their success highlights that people want meaningful control over their social feeds," said Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky. Since its launch in November 2024, Graze has delivered curated content to approximately 1.8 million Bluesky users, representing a significant portion of the platform's active user base. This rapid adoption highlights the growing demand for personalized, algorithm-free content experiences. Empowering Media and Content Creators Graze equips media brands and content creators with the tools they need to take back control of how their content is distributed and consumed. With Graze, they can: Boost Visibility – Custom feeds ensure content reaches targeted audiences, increasing engagement. Maintain Editorial Integrity – Full control over feeds allows creators to align content with their brand's voice and values. Access In-Depth Analytics – Data-driven insights help optimize content strategies based on real audience interactions. Fueling Developer Innovation on Bluesky Graze also empowers developers by offering flexible tools to build and customize new experiences on Bluesky, including: No-Code Feed Creation – A visual editor enables quick, custom feed design without complex coding. Advanced Content Filtering – Support for complex logic combinations allows for fine-tuned content curation. Real-Time Updates – Instant feed updates ensure users always get the most current content. The Future of Social Media is Built for Users, Not Billionaires 'Social media shouldn't be controlled by billionaires, it should belong to the people," said Devin Gaffney, CTO and co-founder of Graze. "We've moved beyond the outdated, closed-platform model by embracing an open-source ecosystem that puts users and creators in control. The future of social media is about transparency, choice, and giving people the power to shape their own experience.' As Bluesky continues to gain momentum, Graze is committed to accelerating its growth, with a vision to help Bluesky reach 100 million users by the end of the year. By prioritizing openness, autonomy, and user-driven content, Graze is reshaping the future of social media, one feed at a time. About GrazeGraze enables users to create custom feeds on Bluesky, providing tools that allow individuals and organizations to design and control their social media experience. By offering sophisticated building blocks akin to those used by major social media companies, Graze empowers users to curate content that aligns with their interests and values. Committed to transparency and user empowerment, Graze is redefining how people interact with social media. For more information, visit Media Contact: Juliet TravisLiftoff Communicationsjuliet@ A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
