Enterprise Weekly #520: Testing the Limits of Test-Time Compute, Wix Pays Up, and More
Work-Bench is a $160M 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. 📩
We’ve been closely tracking infrastructure trends across agentic compute over the past year. Recently, Apple released a research paper exploring the limitations of test-time compute, specifically, the idea of scaling compute for model reasoning rather than just for training. The study found that as problem complexity grows, reasoning models struggle to leverage additional inference compute, highlighting a fundamental bottleneck in their thinking capacity.
If anything, what this means for application developers building further up the stack is that solving real customer problems is more important than building the most powerful possible technology. This means using the right combination of models in a compound AI system of sorts, fine-tuning the models with relevant data, and building the right workflow on top that can translate the powerful LLM capabilities into real end-user value. 💪
Another aspect of this is the role AI has in unlocking greater capital efficiency. While scaling up compute for pre-training or test-time may have points of diminishing returns, harnessing the outputs in building a business can prove to be remarkably useful. While the “one-person unicorn” has been greatly theorized since the inception of LLMs, nothing has really come close to it…until now. Earlier this week, Maor Shlomo sold his 6-month old vibe-coding platform, Base44, to Wiz for $80M in cash.
While not a solo endeavor (the team had 8 people), Base44 illustrates the opportunities for exponential growth that get opened up amidst a secular shift in technology. The company hit 10,000 users in their first 3 weeks and reached a scale of 250,000 users in their 6 months as a standalone company. While growth and profitability may sometimes be seen at odds, Base44 was able to transcend that tradeoff — the company generated $189,000 of profit in the month of May alone.
We're watching how step-change advances in technology let founders break through old tradeoffs, reminding us that great company-building starts with fresh thinking and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.
🗓️ Join more Work-Bench events:
🤖 Goodfire’s Quant Developer Happy Hour (June 26th - NYC): Our portfolio company, Goodfire is hosting an event for technical staff at quant trading firms looking to solve the world's most important problems in understanding AI systems. Join the Goodfire leadership team for a fun evening and learn more about what they’re working on and how you can help. Sign up here.
📚 Read more news:
Forbes: Is Jeetu Patel Bringing Cisco Investors A Satya Nadella Moment?
CNBC: AWS’ custom chip strategy is showing results, and cutting into Nvidia’s AI dominance
Financial Times: Microsoft prepared to walk away from high-stakes OpenAI talks
TechCrunch: OpenAI drops Scale AI as a data provider following Meta deal
VentureBeat:From prompt chaos to clarity: How to build a robust AI orchestration layer
🧵 Read more threads:
Company: Cockroach Labs
Role: Demand Generation Manager
Technology: Scale-Out SQL Database
Funding: $630M from Work-Bench, Greenoaks, Altimeter Capital, Tiger Global, Bond, Redpoint, Index Ventures, Benchmark, and more
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Circumvent raises $6M led by Paladin Capital Group
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Co-Founders: Michael Watts, Thomas Bui
Athena raises $2.2M led by Y Combinator, FCVC, Red Bike Capital
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Ryght AI raises $3M led by Foothill Ventures
Future of Work • Seed • Laguna Beach, CA
Digger raises $3.6M led by Initialized Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Superscale AI raises $5M led by Creandum
Sales / Marketing • Pre-Seed • Munich, Germany
Crosby raises $5.8M led by Sequoia Capital
Future of Work • Seed • New York, NY
Diskover raises $7.5M led by Park Capital Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Reno, NV
Sunrise Robotics raises $8.5M led by Plural
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Ljubljana, Slovenia
Polar raises $10M led by Accel
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Stockholm, Sweden
Warp raises $10M led by Up.Partners and Blue Bear Capital
Future of Work • Series A • Los Angeles, CA
Farsight raises $13M led by SignalFire
Future of Work • Series A • New York, NY
Supply Wisdom raises $14M led by Jurassic Capital
Risk / Security • Series B • New York, NY
Extend raises $17M led by Innovation Endeavors, YC, and Character VC
Future of Work • Seed • New York, NY
Sedai raises $20M led by Atlantic Vantage Point
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Onebrief raises $20M led by Battery Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • Honolulu, HI
WorkWhile raises $23M led by Rethink Impact
HR Tech • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Slide raises $25M led by Base10 Partners
Risk / Security • Series A • Norwalk, CT
Uncountable raises $27M led by Sageview Capital
Future of Work • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Pelico raises $40M led by General Catalyst
Future of Work • Series B • Paris, France
Sword Health raises $40M led by General Catalyst
Future of Work • Venture • New York, NY
Traversal raises $48M led by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Others
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • New York, NY
Maven AGI raises $50M led by Dell Technologies Capital
Sales / Marketing • Series B • Boston, MA
Nabla raises $70M led by HV Capital
Future of Work • Series C • Brooklyn, NY
Coralogix raises $115M led by NewView Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series E • Tel Aviv, Israel
Browserbase raises $40M led by Notable Capital
Collaboration / Productivity • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Ramp raises $200M led by Founders Fund
Future of Work • Series E • New York, NY
Clay raises an Undisclosed Amount led by CapitalG
Sales / Marketing • Series C • New York, NY