New article out today in Finance and Society: venture capital as an anti-politics machine — how VC-backed hypergrowth hollows out sovereign authority and renders the state a ratifier of transformations already imposed on society. Read it here, open access: doi.org/10.1017/fas....

PitchBook: >25% of unicorns likely sub-$1B, while total unicorn value holds steady (top 10 > 50%). Hypergrowth was always meta-growth -- valuation above fundamentals, organizing time, capital, expectation. Exit well: simulation becomes institution Miss the moment: undercorn

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25M to use living neurons as compute. Wow. Capital abides no limits. If biology = infrastructure, we’re not just solving an energy crunch but paving a path to biocommodification: life as circuit component. fortune.com/2026/02/11/t...

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25 million betting brain cells can (someday) outcompute silicon | Fortune

The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) has raised $25 million in seed funding, Fortune has learned.

fortune.com

Interesting piece on VCs using “AI second brains.” Legitimation dressed as efficiency. VC turns capital + audacity into “genius.” AI now accelerates it: faster theses, denser hype, cleaner inevitability. Future “necessity” can’t arrive fast enough it seems. www.businessinsider.com/how-venture-...

We asked 13 rising-star VCs how they use AI. Here's what they told us.

For up-and-coming venture capitalists, tools like ChatGPT and NotebookLM have become a core part of the job.

businessinsider.com

Musk’s SpaceX–xAI move is less “AI ambition,” more VC power logic at planetary scale. Loss-making xAI gets laundered through SpaceX’s future necessity; it’s an attempt to capitalize on anticipated dependence (orbital compute) before it exists. Contrarian optionality: burn now, monopolize later. 🚀📈

Sharing a great new paper on VC from David Kampmann, LSE really leading the way on the new critical scholarship on VC @jathansadowski.com @mrshoward.bsky.social @edwardongwesojr.com @parismarx.com @profhilaryallen.bsky.social @jacobsilverman.com academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...

The political economy of venture capital: winners-take-all and founder control

Abstract. In many US Tech corporations such as Meta, Alphabet, and SpaceX, founders still hold shareholder voting control. How can we better understand the

academic.oup.com

Seen at an AI investment summit hosted by UC Berkeley today. We need to stop being so overly deperndent on AI folks.

The second (excellent) article from Distinktion’s special issue on Silicon Valley imaginaries is now available. Check it out below.

Ali Rıza Taşkale@alirizataskale.bsky.social · 10mo ago

The second article has just been published! The always brilliant Sherryl Vint argues that Silicon Valley’s core product is a “science-fictional ideology". It promotes an identity where one aims to be capital itself, ever-growing and immortal, erasing the working class & undermining solidarity.

A recording of my seminar "A Critical Theory of VC" www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJy...

A Critical Theory of Venture Capital

YouTube video by Olivier Jutel

youtube.com

Check out my new article published @distinktionjournal.bsky.social on contrarianism as a cultural practice enabled by the institutional logic of Silicon Valley VC. Read it here (open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Contrarian optionality and negative mimesis: venture capital and the institutional logic of Silicon Valley

This paper offers a theorization of contrarianism in Silicon Valley, presenting it as a strategic rationality underpinned by institutional infrastructure. Rather than treating contrarianism as prin...

tandfonline.com

Having Jaron Lanier visit my Ethics and Technology class today to talk to my students was a real treat. Generous, thoughtful, and refreshingly optimistic - the class and I feel so very lucky to have had this opportunity.

What a time to be alive.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · last yr.

A headline for the ages. @politico.com www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Hey folks — my friend Randy is running for congress in a Republican-held district and needs support. Randy is running a grassroots campaign but the Democratic establishment wants someone who will take corporate money. Please, if you’re able, consider chipping in: secure.actblue.com/donate/callt...

I just gave to Randy Villegas!

Show your support with a contribution.

secure.actblue.com

I am very happy that my program is hosting @mrshoward.bsky.social in two weeks for a discussion of the role of contrarianism in the Silicon Valley founder/VC mythos. QR code for Zoom Deets

And so the FTC’s careers page has seemingly been deleted. That didn’t take long. It seems Silicon Valley’s cozying up to the incoming administration is already paying dividends. Prepare yourself for unprecedented monopolization and market manipulation.

One of my greatest dislikes about being an academic/writer is my ability to come up with perfect sentences (and sometimes even paragraphs) in the shower that I am somehow incapable of writing coherently 5 minutes later. Sigh.

Oh my. This is how a republic dies. There will no longer be any accountability or consequences for political actors. Even if Biden doesn’t do it, Pandora’s box is now open. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/u...

Biden Team Considers Blanket Pardons Before Trump’s Promised ‘Retribution’

White House officials believe President-elect Donald J. Trump’s selection of partisan warriors for top law enforcement jobs indicates that he will pursue revenge against his perceived enemies.

nytimes.com

Apparently Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI argues that latter violated antitrust law by asking investors not to back competitors. If he wins, this could all but make illegal a basic principle of VC investment: don’t spread your bets; monopoly FTW.

1/4. Excited to share our new article, "Alternative Archives: Researching Politics with Chunks of Reality". @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @luciavitale.bsky.social @henrymclaughlin.bsky.social @mrshoward.bsky.social #SAGE Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New open access article on generating insights from social science research failures. Written by myself and several excellent colleagues at UCSC. Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Alternative archives: Researching politics with chunks of reality - Sarah Cheikhali, Ingy Higazy, Mark Howard, Henry McLaughlin, Gabriela Segura-Ballar, Matthew Sparke, Lucia Vitale, 2024

The challenges and opportunities of accessing empirical material present a puzzle insofar as they index simultaneously the politics of research archives and the...

journals.sagepub.com

Axios reporting a second order boom in nuclear fusion tech investment to support the AI acceleration. No Roko’s basilisk for these VCs. Skynet thanks you.

We tried to warn. And yet the press “fact checked” anyone who dared to say Trump was going to implement Project 2025—because he said he wouldn’t. Insane.

Silicon Valley is seizing the levers of power, but we’re here to help you chart a course through the madness. I’m thrilled to announce SYSTEM CRASH, a new podcast I’ll be cohosting with my pal @bcmerchant.bsky.social. Join us as we dissect the tech dystopia. Starts Friday!

Myself and @garethbryant.bsky.social have been editing the blog @ppesydney.bsky.social for 10 years now addressing the worldliness of critical political economy issues. So here's a thread celebrating its practical and theoretical diversity #HappyBirthdayPPE www.ppesydney.net

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It’s still not clear to me who’s smarter, Musk or the AI. Guess It depends on whether X’s algorithm drives the man, or the man drives the algorithm.. fortune.com/2024/11/14/g...

And so OpenAI is set to become the next Google. I wonder if it will take the US DoJ 27 years to figure out it’s a monopoly as well. www.linkedin.com/news/story/o...