Sequoia’s Botha Says Venture Capital Firm Is Focusing on AI Apps After OpenAI Success

Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital Ltd., says his firm is “very enthusiastic” about the future for X Corp. after investing $800 million in the social-media platform last year. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in London.Source: Bloomberg

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By Sarah McBride

October 2, 2023 at 4:14 PM UTC

Updated on

October 3, 2023 at 1:33 AM UTC

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Sequoia Capital isn’t looking to become an active investor going forward in companies involved in the building blocks of artificial intelligence technology, its steward Roelof Botha said on the sidelines of a JPMorgan Chase & Co. conference in London on Monday.

“Our funds are just not designed to do that,” he said, referring to covering the huge costs for the computing power needed to build large language models and their equivalents in other media such as images. These building blocks are known as foundation models.