Enterprise Weekly #489: Claude's Computer Takeover, DevOps Dinner, and More
Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm leading Seed rounds. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
Anthropic’s Computer Use took over news cycles this week. Available now in the updated Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, it’s a new capability that enables their AI to control a computer much like a human would with the capacity to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.
What’s the big deal? Surveys show:
15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI by 2028 (up from 0% in 2024).
10% of organizations are already using AI agents, and 82% plan to integrate them within the next three years.
Despite the impressive demos, the AI agent is in experimental mode and still struggles with basic actions like scrolling and zooming, and often misses notifications due to the way it captures and assembles screenshots. And in tests for modifying flight reservations, it completed less than half successfully, and in tasks like initiating returns, it failed about a third of the time.
Nevertheless, the pace of AI developments is exciting and enterprises are eager to identify use cases where it’ll have the most impact. On that topic, Kelley Mak is hosting an AI and DevOps Dinner for corporate IT leaders on November 14th in NYC to discuss what’s next on the horizon. If you’re interested in joining, please reach out.
Lastly, next week is our live NY Enterprise Tech Meetup podcast recording featuring Geoff Charles (VP of Product at Ramp) and Mihika Kapoor (Product Lead at Figma). If you could ask them anything…what would it be? 🤔 Tell us here.
🗓️ Join Work-Bench’s tactical, virtual Masterclasses:
October 29th: Enterprise Masterclass: Creating a Predictable Top-of-Funnel Engine for Growth featuring Robin Izsak-Tseng, growth marketing leader from BetterCloud and G2
November 6th: Enterprise Masterclass: How To Structure a Post-Sales Process featuring our trusted Sales Advisor Kiran Narsu
🗓️ Join Work-Bench’s IRL events:
November 19th: Exited Founders Dinner co-hosted with David Politis to bring together like minded builders to meet and discuss what’s next
📚 Read more news:
Business Insider: The AI Power List 2024
Business Insider: Amazon's AI Data Center Deam Runs Into the Reality of 'Zombie' Facilities, Higher Costs, and Labor Shortages
TechCrunch: Permira Completes Squarespace Acquisition After Upping Bid to $7.2B
WSJ: AI Startup Perplexity in Funding Talks to More Than Double Valuation to $8B
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: GovWell
Role: Founding Backend Engineer
Technology: Modern Software For Local Government
Funding: $4.5M from Work-Bench, Bienville Capital
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Sidero Labs raises $4M led by Hiro Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Venture • San Francisco, CA
Co-Founders: Steve Francis (CEO), Andrew Rynhard (CTO)
Averi AI raises $2M led by Right Side Capital and Singularity Capital
Sales / Marketing • Pre-Seed • New York, NY
Cascade AI raises $3.8M led by Gradient
HR Tech • Seed • Seattle, WA
Qpoint raises $4M led by Mango Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Pre-Seed • San Francisco, CA
Keel raises $6M led by Earlybird and LocalGlobe
Future of Work • Seed • London, UK
Authologic raises $8.2M led by OpenOcean
Risk / Security • Series A • New York, NY
Highlight raises $10M led by General Catalyst, Valor, and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • New York, NY
Rollstack raises $11M led by Insight Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • New York, NY
Oxla raises $11.5M led by TQ Ventures, Lead Ventures and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Warsaw, Poland
Attention raises $14M led by Alven
Sales / Marketing • Series A • New York, NY
BiltOn raises $15M led by PSG Equity
Future of Work • Series B • New York, NY
Genie AI raises $17.8M led by Google Ventures
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • London, UK
Crew AI raises $18M led by Boldstart Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Granola raises $20M led by Spark Capital
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • London, UK
Oriole Networks raises $22M led by Plural
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • London, UK
Fixify raises $25M led by Costanoa Ventures
Future of Work • Series A • Arlington, VA
Pantheon AI raises $25M led by Andreessen Horowitz
Collaboration / Productivity • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Genmo raises $28.4M led by NEA
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Interface.ai raises $30M led by Avataar Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Covina, CA
Stream.Security raises $30M led by US. Venture Partners
Risk / Security • Series B • Tel Aviv, Israel
Urbint raises $35M led by S2G Ventures
Risk / Security • Series C • Miami, FL
Tennr raises $37M led by Lightspeed Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • New York, NY
Socket raises $40M led by Abstract Ventures
Risk / Security • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Finix raises $75M led by Acrew Capital
Future of Work • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Zip raises $190M led by BOND
Future of Work • Series D • San Francisco, CA
Socure acquires Effectiv for $136M
Risk / Security • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA
Sophos acquires Secureworks for $859M
Risk / Security • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA