Perspectives

AI-Native Support for One of Life’s Hardest Processes

July 16, 2026

people think probate forced upon someone passes families expect grief anticipate administrative legal burden follows forms missing documents court requirements financial accounts family coordination decisions wait take year cost tens thousands dollars middle members suddenly responsible understanding organizing managing entire estate moments demand trusted guidance wealth management wedge studied industry ways AI reshape kept circling back trust market comes product Clients rarely switch managers relationship established making customer acquisition slow expensive shortcuts next winning entrants need real reason present major made settlement reasons start largest intergenerational transfer history roughly 84 trillion expected change hands coming decades Assets move current process antiquated fragmented confusing historically handled attorneys reserved institutions higher-net-worth estates leaves unattractive options go alone hire help EverSettled stood earns helping work already front customers begins immediate value sales pitch Emergence proud lead 5M seed round alongside Entrepreneurs First Seedcamp Bridge Ventures Alumni several angel investors AI-native building operating service navigate admin death guides users administration inheritance structured document support squarely fits category call Services companies deliver outcome using core regulated high-stakes offline changing squeezing old model taking full rebuilding around changes serve obvious place build always top 10 larger wills trusts high-touch ultimately higher ROI focused remaining 90 settle priced meaningful changed navigating today 50s 60s spent adult lives modern technology find stuck feel closer DMV digital products use every day delicate strange difficult space discussing money responsibility loss time member legally Another left grieving differently Everyone needs clarity matters involved EverSettled's Sage assistant executors answers questions 2am simplifies processes coordinates tasks trained side dynamics surface collide line keep asking information needed forward show form gets filled sensitive requires founding team understands human stakes technical demands writing code months fiduciaries paralegals understand breaks CEO Arum Kempster lived problem served executor father's took 27 later grandfather's felt confusion invisible labor firsthand brings rare context national policy growth go-to-market roles consumer startups met combination experience insight intensity walk walls make happen CTO Jacob Effenberger foundation built implemented industries including defense oil gas accuracy reliability matter seriousness involves personal system useful careful trustworthy beginning brand Together turn seen emerge key life stages pregnancy fertility menopause universal destination aftermath void looking fill Settling never simple feels ready leave pay designed wealthiest third path everyday moment fix become name remember showed hardest weeks earned everything company set

Breaking Open the AI Cost Curve

July 1, 2026

Together AI Emergence first invested 2023 enterprises wanted train run models terms existing stack fragmented expensive dependent closed systems view future enterprise built single model provider Companies use concert customized job hand building platform Today applications moving core workflows deploying agents write code resolve customer issues analyze documents automate tasks across business usage grows cost carving efficient path open custom frontier performance greater control better economics company announced 800M Series 8.3B valuation proud continue support doubling now serves thousands paying customers including world's fastest-growing Cursor Cognition Decagon ElevenLabs Suno Annual bookings crossed 1.15B last quarter seeing 6x 60x savings compared closed-model pricing equal watching Whether limits next wave adoption weaving daily processes risk ration sacrifice margins Scaling without tradeoff requires infrastructure makes high-quality economically sustainable positioned become production open-source team research depth traction execution velocity lead market's phase Joe Floyd General Partner Read investment

Beyond Benchmarks 2026: Five Data Sets Grounded in the Real World

June 26, 2026

Every founder investor 2026 already working hypothesis AI concentrating capital leaning teams reshaping gets funded seen anecdotes felt firsthand directional story surprise 2026's Beyond Benchmarks designed simply confirm know useful data kind shows intuition wrong next year's report Emergence partnered Carta Ashby Pave Stackpack Standard Metrics bring together proprietary thousands operating companies survey sentiment Actual cap tables software spend comp decisions hiring outcomes bringing view reveals beneath surface findings consensus Others genuinely biggest takeaways delivering efficiency gains expected Across segment non-AI generate revenue per employee Today remains investment productivity changing businesses measure success longer enough business Founders need actually inside moment transition adapt fastest define decade goal help make better build hire invest compete AI-native economy full five concrete actions surprising perspective patterns telling download Read

The Patient Journey Is Becoming AI-Native

June 22, 2026

Prosper AI Emergence September 2025 first invested administrative burden healthcare impossible ignore knew voice move beyond point tasks appointment scheduling affirmed conviction platform handles messy voice-heavy work happens visit reducing patient headaches endless provider admin Today announced 30M Series continued participation doubling Since initial investment grown 5 six months now powers 60 organizations supporting 150 000+ providers coordinated 1.3B care showing AI-native services take complex workflows end-to-end watching administration long relied disconnected calls disorganized handoffs manual follow-ups building toward new model fully patients need faster less friction Xavier Josep team taken healthcare's hardest operational problems proven coordinate real scale traction reflects believed beginning future built around better experiences Jake Saper General Partner Read backed

At $2.6B, the Agentic Workplace Is No Longer a Theory

June 17, 2026

Genspark Emergence Three months ago closed Series Today closing extension 63 valuation premium happens enterprise teams stop using product start depending automates actual output knowledge work presentations financial models research cross-team deliverables describe need comes back done doubling General Partner Joe Floyd backed thesis lasting value go companies building full system context around foundation scaffolding turns generic intelligence specific results 645M raised nearly doubled quarter motion Customers offloading different relationship copilot creates watching Whether agentic workplace consolidates single platform productivity Microsoft Office fragments function making compelling case consolidation speed adoption tell goes crossed 50M ARR five point numbers milestone message going Partne Read behind

The $50M Bet That Voice AI Is Enterprise Infrastructure

June 16, 2026

Bland Emergence year ago question whether AI trusted phone call actually mattered spent time answering regulated industry now running 3.5 million calls week customers healthcare financial services insurance verticals forgive mistakes 50M series round total funding crosses 100M doubling Yaz El-Baba Gordon Ritter first backed bet voice become serious enterprise infrastructure layer companies earn trust environments define category done exactly Production volume scale signal separates real promising demo watching becomes primary interface workflows Salesforce became system record sales keeps compounding building Founders Isaiah Granet Sobhan Nejad consistently harder dismissed serving industries earned assumed discipline working General Partner Read start

Biology Just Entered Its Read-Write Era

June 15, 2026

sixty years read code life small team now taught AI write changes company next era medicine 2024 pair molecular scissors cut strand DNA precision working synthetic CRISPR system designed Evo trained raw model authored target spent career around software lives dies screen something else digital reached physical world made biology told entire history start different moment became learned sequence genome trace disease back single misplaced letter Eventually edit reach correct typo time never author new functional blank page line crossed creators call field generative genomics raised question define decade trusted build foundational infrastructure written found answer dinner Il Fornaio Burlingame February 23rd alongside colleague Kyle Murphy investor former entrepreneur grow numb certain kind founder performs arrives over-rehearsed story scaled size round Eric Nguyen opposite Calm precise focused problem rather impressing anyone table Driven questions signals answers reminded early conversations watched Dario Amodei building Anthropic instinct underneath powerful seriously take risk co-founders Radical Numerics behind 2 models turned thought experiment result lab bench broader narrow predicts protein folds another reads stretch learns across RNA proteins simultaneously actually work together inside living cell calls general biological intelligence breadth point reaches problems diagnosing rare cancers defending engineered pathogens single-purpose touch conviction comes experience 2008 sat Peter Gassner running 25-person less million dollars revenue quiet questioning sense understood industry deeply incumbents run decades invested Veeva stayed Today worth tens billions runs global sciences 2021 first publicly traded convert Public Benefit Corporation best companies tie commercial success larger Spending fifteen close world's leading teaches recognize shape forms see intention serve balance sheet Emergence 50 seed Obvious Ventures Triatomic Capital Spark Factory already largest open-source project date researchers used generate bacteriophage virus infects bacteria leaves people unharmed concrete points Consider recent silencing PCSK9 gene base-editing change liver handles cholesterol potential one-time alternative lifelong statins produce exactly outcome becomes reachable repeatable design instead merely reading caught earlier Treatments shaped person's genetics Durable cures diseases manage clear-eyed Teaching poses real capability designs cure threat treat disclaimer treats architecture dual mandate advance transform human health biodefenses protect defenses scale rate discoveries second commitment footnote reason technology deserves exist whole read-only read-write starts glad

Above the Model

June 11, 2026

human advantage compounds automated decade business history reward companies back people ones retire version article originally appeared Fortune.com June 2025 Jim Farley CEO Ford stood stage Aspen Ideas Festival said artificial intelligence replace half white-collar workers United States first put number month earlier Dario Amodei Anthropic told Axios AI wipe entry-level jobs within five years drive unemployment high twenty percent year executive reframed future knowledge work countdown clock predictions grown starker want make opposite case stays inside company become valuable asset firms understand going pull away everyone else something ironic Farley's warning Ford's assembly line famous act automation American erase labor moved moving built middle class afford cars coming real lesson last century Machines change spend time less hopeful story industry tells difference comes wrapped fear scarcity hard trust technology consequential designing believe anyway made argument almost ago honest leaves witness rather neutral 2017 wrote called Coaching Networks software uses machine learning guide toward better gathering data distributed network techniques actually idea mattered piece small argued mutation engine system learns practices already proven genuinely new moves model predicted come creative finding spreads beneficial mutations cycle repeats early exist now aged great deal doom gets wrong extraordinary optimization Give goal find faster cheaper path team assemble decide worth pursuing judgment call moment answer moments move markets start hardest automate nothing imitate survives sits durable layer career spent investing around say think together captured sustained thought experiment furthest ahead organizing exotic sounds turning individual institutional keeping building Bridgewater current wave recording decisions codifying criteria algorithms compounded Ray Dalio recently went trained decades principles pattern recognition else's behavior consulting show clearly McKinsey Lilli internal assistant indexes firm's proprietary tens thousands consultants Bain custom GPTs top partnership OpenAI EY described agents production millions processes documented science project remaking created reached Ramp's Glass Framework shows looks daily level Every employee agentic capability someone finds workflow works packaged reusable skill shared across surfaces right person's breakthrough becomes everyone's starting point Veeva principle entire deep integration dozens applications run life sciences kind depth exactly outside reconstruct watching distance share direction pointing inward compounding contained losing ground outward letting best thinking drain tools control technical reason underappreciated enterprise person interaction trace record responded correction preference edge Traces buy scrape earned use feed whatever foundation happen running domain-specific training loops orchestration turn raw steadily performance drives produces gap widens providers capture general customer serve encode analysts build operators decides belong whoever builds starts today holds competitor next simply purchase structurally exclusive intellectual property grows needs founders reading opportunity agent Generic never worked shelf always bent fit operate different winners ship good platform underneath slider-1 watch putting section purpose near end risk manage slow public describe teaching exposure leaders worry sensitive file leaving subtler process long multi-step session encodes sequencing priorities decision logic reasoning among learn contracts usually prohibit protection behavioral synthetic far settled Anthropic's latest Claude Fable 5 requires retention safety classifiers operating Zero rules govern models customers remembering changed consumer terms August chats free Pro Max accounts train default unless user opts extended protections directly labs actively hiring domain experts lawyers doctors financial specialists teach insiders Thomson Reuters CTO internet 80 legal finance useful solution pay industry's practitioners close competitors effect recruiting talent pool makes tick strong employees habits encouraging study LayerX Security found 77 paste generative 82 activity personal managing law caught Recent analysis suggests inputs courts stop treating protectable trade secret OECD report broader questions unresolved major jurisdictions deeper tension discussing Industries gone cycles open sharing periods reveal operational know-how whole field advances result shareable files setting standard gravity handing blueprint anyone knows Knowing standing job disruption vertical released plugins 2026 market reaction immediate fell roughly 18 single worst day RELX Wolters Kluwer dropped double digits estimates 285 billion came stocks week Plenty overdone whether losses hold question signal volatility matters copied ships lands land landed everything money take soon changes creativity seen truly defensible algorithm since specific organization thinks adapts reconstructed billions lived experiences accumulated lifetime contact world recombined fresh whenever meets problem solved captures Keep

Roll Up or Build? Why the Fastest Path to a Venture-Scale AINS Business Is the One Founders Keep Avoiding

June 2, 2026

version AI-native services pitch goes pick fragmented professional category raise enough capital roll three four traditional players layer AI top 50M ARR business eighteen months sounds clean kind plan gets nods room full people think spreadsheets want make case mostly wrong least starting move Building organically harder first years almost always faster durable scale mistake founders making right now treating inorganic shortcut closer tax cheap acquire expensive keep difficult compound note terminology going coined term AINS Emergence describe specific company built day deliver service AI-first operating model firm bolted distinction organic AI-flavored roll-ups exactly piece reason needed name roll-up logic usually rests tell common reach customer acquisition reasonable categories relationship-driven distribution hard buying book problem best companies actually struggle example Harper Insure insurance broker throttle inbound demand Hanover Park fund administration private markets hit constraint GPs staff bottleneck never supply hiring adjusters brokers accountants already generating Customers find refer switch product meaningfully better cheaper sharper implication struggling win market none competitors likely explanation meaning good merits next year incumbents figuring incorporate winning easy part fix cements papered gap acquired revenue added workforce easier close identity roll-up's culture weighted average bought hundred add twenty ones accounting veneer math care deck matters selling outcome software tool quality produced systems build around learned craft pre-AI world manage outcomes look everyone else's slightly operational compounds cultural Running full-time job demands attention executives engineers operators Every hour spent keeping legacy reinforcing habits expectations rhythms shaped spend practitioners unlock underestimating single important decision whether AI-pilled mean claims adjuster accountant lawyer Across portfolio seen genuinely live breathe tools ten times throughput non-AI-native counterparts comparable work directional range observed published benchmark spread depends task magnitude consistent change implications follow obviously headcount smaller firm's means margins stage growth Second funnel firms take commitment without immediately panicking staffing Third miss practitioner wide mixing org creates real friction frustrated feel watched practical ruthlessly selective delivers clients feedback loop runs earliest adopters getting understand possible thinking acquiring whose self-image formed different paradigm taking management cost moving large slow frequently underestimated impossible truly know pre-acquisition Leakage underappreciated churn rates consistently underestimate reasons structural rather executional kinds stickiness anchor Process workflow integration knows data reporting cadence Relationship personal trust partner known client collapsing lowers re-platforming onto new multi-month project multi-week used lock time held place primarily inertia expect seller's historical numbers suggest overestimate assuming relationships moat past future call loyalty absence alternative adult life liked trusted ever met equally mediocre switching worth upside wearing moat's costume experience reveals tie question deep not-so-deep evaluating eyes open together genuine multi-decade probably travel else notably books finally gives elsewhere net effect moats weaker dying breaks Pricing lock-in trap economics come contracts cages Consider BPO processing paperwork medical practices 100k per multi-year deal acquirer deploy fewer humans improves contract prevents capturing additional value delivered errors accrues builder faces drag go price generate document scope player positioned offer thesis costs expands ceiling businesses Sequence argument acquisitions Organic-then-inorganic game inorganic-then-organic platform solidified setting standard done becomes accelerant bringing teams system gravity conform opposite absorbing run gravitational field try retrofit cement set risk indigestion badly too-large too-different break young consumes engineering executive culture-shaping bandwidth moment resources compounding promising lose looked accretive turned tar pit looks wins disciplined practice inside knowing earned Playbook short small team delivering produce earning brand purchased balance sheet unlikely winner-take-all differentiation perceived buy foundation become use later position strength skip trying graft something decided evidence leaks baked lets escape decays whole