Enterprise Weekly #533: Compute for Cognition, OpenAI Dev Day, and More
Work-Bench is a NYC-based $160M enterprise software Seed stage VC fund. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software, SaaS, or infrastructure software startup - we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat.
OpenAI had quite the week.
On Monday, OpenAI announced a partnership with AMD, which gives them the chance to take as big as 10% of a stake in the semiconductor manufacturer. They’ll deploy 6 gigawatts of AMDs Instinct GPUs over multiple years, with the initial rollout planned to begin in late 2026. This is not just compute for its own sake! Greg Brockman from OpenAI has alluded to compute constraints, saying that they’re unable to launch products and features that could be real revenue-drivers due to a lack of power. The steady state demand for AI may be more explosive than we could ever possibly fathom, and the ChatGPT-creator is betting big on the apparatus needed to satiate it. The “OpenAI halo effect” was real: AMD shares jumped 23.7% on Monday following the news.
And OpenAI showed that if there was anyone who deserved more compute to transform into cognition, it was them. That same day was their annual Dev Day, where they dropped three major launches: Apps SDK, AgentKit, and the general availability of Codex. These moves demonstrate OpenAI making their way into platform territory. Their Apps SDK makes ChatGPT a go-to place to interact with any AI application (making them the app store of sorts), and AgentKit aspires to be a platform upon which to create agents. Our teammate Proby posted some Probservations here.
Lastly, congratulations to our portfolio company Runhouse on their $5M seed round! Runhouse is a managed AI/ML infrastructure platform focused on enabling large-scale, efficient deployment of post-training workloads. Yesterday they launched their product Kubetorch: a powerful distributed framework for Kubernetes, purpose-built for enterprise ML and reinforcement learning at scale. If you’re a developer looking to run these post-training workloads at scale, make sure you check out the product. We continue to be excited by invention and innovation at the AI compute and infrastructure layer, read our teammate Priyanka’s blog post to see how we’re thinking about the space!
🗓️ Join more Work-Bench events:
🍻 Pre-Seed Happy Hour with NYC VCs (October 22nd): Work-Bench is partnering with our friends at Bloomberg Beta, Comma Capital, Opal Ventures, Slow Ventures, and more to bring together the early-stage B2B software community. We hosted the same event last year and are excited to be running it back! This event is for pre-seed & future founders looking to meet cofounders, customers, and collaborators. Sign up here to join us!
🌉 SF Pre-Seed Founder & Operator Happy Hour (November 4th): We’re bringing our pre-seed happy hour to San Francisco, looking to unite the founder and operator community for an evening of connection and conversation. Whether you’re building your first product, scaling your early team, or searching for cofounders and collaborators, this is a chance to meet like-minded builders at the earliest stages. Sign up here to join us!
🍂 Fall Developer Happy Hour (November 11th): AI engineers in NYC? This event is for you. Join us in NYC for a casual night with developers, engineers, and builders shaping the next wave of agentic software. If you’re looking to swap notes with peers, meet potential teammates, or just hang with the NYC dev community, RSVP here.
📚 Read more news:
Bloomberg: Amazon Reboots AI Agent for Workers, Taking on ChatGPT, Copilot
WSJ: How AMD Came From Behind to Mount a Challenge in the AI Chip Wars
TechCrunch: While OpenAI races to build AI data centers, Nadella reminds us that Microsoft already has them
VentureBeat: MCP stacks have a 92% exploit probability: How 10 plugins became enterprise security’s biggest blind spot
CNBC: CoreWeave stock rallies as company introduces new AI tools for developers
🧵 Read more threads:
Danny Chesley: Systems of Action
Johnny Ayers: Identity Verification Stats for Large Socure Telecom Customer
Lee Robinson: Context Engineering & Coding Agents with Cursor
Aaron Levie: The Change in Software Timelines
Claire Vo: The Realities of Enterprise GTM
Company: SKUSafe
Role: Senior Account Executive
Technology: Operating System for Food, Beverage & CPG brands
Funding: $4.3M from Work-Bench, Bienville Capital
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Supermemory raises $3M led by Susa Ventures, Browder Capital, and SF1.vc
Data / AI / Machine Learning - Pre-Seed - San Francisco, CA
Founder: Dhravya Shah
Ewake raises $2.3M led by Connect Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Paris, France
MokN raises $3M led by Moonfire
Risk / Security • Seed • Paris, France
Dragonfly raises $3.5M led by Episode 1
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Pre-Seed • London, UK
Reo.Dev raises $4M led by Heavybit
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Echelon raises $4.75M led by Bain Capital Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Appy AI raises $5M led by Four Rivers and Founder Collective
Future of Work • Seed • Denver, CO
Hipp Health raises $6.2M led by RTP Global
Future of Work • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Nozomio raises $6.2M led by CRV, LocalGlobe, and Y Combinator
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
PEAK:AIO raises $6.8M led by Pembroke VCT
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Manchester, UK
Arcjet raises $8.3M led by Plural and Ott Kauver
Risk / Security • Series A • San Francisco, CA
AnyTeam raises $10M led by SignalFire and Crosslink Capital
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
BlastPoint raises $10.6M led by MissionOG
Sales / Marketing • Series A • Pittsburgh, PA
Authentic8 raises $12M led by Vistara
Risk / Security • Private Equity • Redwood City, CA
Northbeam raises $15M led by HighPost Capital and Silversmith Capital Partners
Sales / Marketing • Venture • El Segundo, CA
Realm.Security raises $15M led by Jump Capital
Risk / Security • Series A • Boston, MA
Crosby raises $20M led by Index Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures
Future of Work • Series A • New York, NY
Glue raises $20M led by Abstract Ventures
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Kernel raises $22M led by Accel
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed & Series A • San Francisco, CA
Nexl raises $23M led by Tidemark Capital
Future of Work • Series B • Sydney, Australia
Relace raises $23M led by Andreessen Horowitz
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Spellbook raises $50M led by Khosla Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • Toronto, Canada
David AI raises $50M led by Meritech
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Filigran raises $58M led by Eurazeo
Risk / Security • Series C • Paris, France
Harvey raises $58.5M led by EQT Growth
Future of Work • Series E Extension • San Francisco, CA
EvenUp raises $150M led by Bessemer Venture Partners
Future of Work • Series E • San Francisco, CA
CyberCube raises $180M led by Spectrum Equity
Risk / Security • Private Equity • San Francisco, CA
n8n raises $180M led by Accel
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series C • Berlin, Germany
CoreWeave acquires Monolith for an Undisclosed Amount
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Acquisition • London, UK