Memory: AI’s Missing Piece, Highlights From Cerebral Valley, Glean’s Enterprise Playbook, and a Big Welcome for Aizen

We have a full docket for you today as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday.

Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar partnered with Rhythms' Founder and CEO Vetri Vellore to explore the transformative potential of AI memory. Partner Jon Turow joined Investor Sabrina Wu on Aspiring for Intelligence to share their takeaways from last week's Cerebral Valley AI Summit. From last month's CIO Summit, Glean 's Tamar Yehoshua offers a tactical playbook for enterprise leaders on centralizing AI, improving data quality, and empowering teams with AI-driven workflows. We’re also celebrating the launch of Aizen Therapeutics , Madrona’s latest day-one investment, as they push the boundaries of AI-driven peptide design to pioneer new therapeutic frontiers. From the portfolio, we're celebrating Highspot 's jump to No. 1 on the GeekWire 200, Clerk.com launched EASIE SSO, eliminating SSO fees, Statsig announced a collaboration with Microsoft, Yoodli AI Communication Coach introduced an AI tutor, and so much more!

Perspective

AI Memory: Revolutionizing Individual and Organizational Productivity 

In today's article published on AIwire , Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar and Rhythms Founder and CEO Vetri Vellore explore the transformative potential of AI memory — a concept inspired by Soma's discussion with Mustafa Suleyman at our IA Summit last month.

AI memory is the next frontier, enabling systems to not only store information but to adapt, learn, and build lasting context. Founders have an incredible opportunity to build solutions that drive deeper personalization and lasting impact. 

Dive into the full article to learn how memory is poised to reshape AI’s role in both personal and organizational productivity.

Read the full article here.

Highlights From the Cerebral Valley AI Summit

Madrona Partner Jon Turow and Investor Sabrina Wu had a great time Wednesday at Eric Newcomer 's Cerebral Valley AI Summit, where they spoke about scaling laws, post-training, robotics, computer vision, and more.

In the latest edition of Aspiring for Intelligence, these two pulled together 4 key takeaways from the broader Summit:

1. AI agents are evolving, but unlocking their full potential requires better data on human decision-making and processes.
2. With high-quality internet data running out, companies are shifting to task-specific datasets and synthetic data generation.
3. Fine-tuning will play a bigger role in enterprise AI as models struggle with domain-specific reasoning using RAG alone.
4. AI is driving creative production costs to near-zero, shifting value to driving end-to-end workflows.

Read and subscribe to the newsletter here.

CIO Summit

How Glean’s Tamar Yehoshua Sees the Future of AI in Enterprises

Last month, we had the privilege of hosting Tamar Yehoshua , President of Product and Technology at Glean , at our CIO Summit in Seattle. Tamar’s tactical playbook for success makes her keynote a must-watch for anyone looking to drive meaningful change. Here are some of the key themes: 

• Start with an AI-Centric Workforce: To integrate AI effectively, begin by fostering a culture where employees are not only comfortable using AI but actively embrace it. Leaders should set the tone by using AI tools themselves and showcasing their impact.
• Centralize Your AI Infrastructure: Avoid fragmented solutions by adopting a centralized AI platform. A unified system ensures seamless access to data across teams, improves efficiency, and avoids the pitfalls of multiple disconnected tools.
• Focus on Data Quality and Context: High-quality, well-contextualized data is critical for AI to deliver meaningful results. Enterprises must address challenges like scattered, inconsistent, or poorly governed data before expecting AI to perform effectively.
• Adopt and Experiment Early: Waiting for the "perfect" solution is a mistake. Early adoption allows teams to learn, iterate, and discover what works—and what doesn’t—ensuring you stay ahead of the competition.
• Use AI Agents to Drive Productivity: Empower teams by automating routine tasks through AI agents. Whether summarizing documents, creating content, or operationalizing workflows, these tools save time and enable employees to focus on higher-value activities.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

Madrona News

Aizen Unlocks New Therapeutic Frontiers with AI-Driven Peptide Design

We are thrilled to announce Madrona's investment and the official launch of Aizen Therapeutics . We invested alongside Wilson Hill Ventures and Cercano to form the initial investing syndicate.

We met founder David Van Valen, M.D. Ph.D. and founding CEO Ajay Kshatriya early in their company-building journey and partnered with them from day one.

Aizen is taking on the challenge of designing and developing mirror peptides with its novel drug discovery platform, DaX — an AI-based platform for exploring, designing, and optimizing D-amino acid-based therapeutics. This platform emerged from research in David's lab at Caltech , which has long focused on developing leading AI approaches to challenging problems in biology.

Aizen represents another day-one investment for Madrona and our first investment in a Caltech spinout. We are always excited to partner with incredible founding teams at the beginning of their journey and help them achieve their visions from the start.

Partner Chris Picardo and Investor Joseph Horsman shared more details about why we invested and are excited about Aizen's vision and cutting-edge approach to developing mirror peptides.

Read the full blog here.

IA Summit

IA40 Winner Spotlights — Enablers

Learn how these 2024 IA40 enabler winners are leveraging AI and GenAI to define the next generation of innovation! Hear from unstructured.io Founder & CEO Brian S. Raymond , Coactive AI Co-founder & CEO Cody Coleman , and Hex Co-founder & CEO Barry McCardel .

You can also hear from application winners MultiOn Co-founder & CEO Div Garg and Factory Co-founder & CEO Matan Grinberg in this final recording from the IA Summit.

In the News

Highspot Takes the No. 1 Spot in GeekWire 200

There's a new name atop the GeekWire 200 — Highspot snagged the No. 1 spot on GeekWire 's annual ranking of privately held technology companies in the PNW.

Outreach (No. 7) previously held the No. 1 slot on the list, which provides a snapshot of the region's robust startup landscape and highlights companies that are gaining traction.

Congratulations Highspot — and our other portfolio listmakers: Statsig , Rec Room , iSpot.tv , Qumulo , Temporal Technologies , Amperity , Pulumi , Esper , MotherDuck , SeekOut , Read AI , Rhythms , Wrench, Inc. , Flexe , Outbound AI , Echodyne , WhyLabs , TrovaTrip , Crowd Cow , Common Room , TerraClear Inc , Vilya , Yoodli AI Communication Coach , Eclypsium, Inc. , A-Alpha Bio , Uplevel , Strike Graph , and Archway Software !

You can read more and view the full list here.

Portfolio Roundup

Clerk launched EASIE SSO, eliminating SSO fees. 

Statsig announced a collaboration with Microsoft to bring its experimentation to Azure AI.

Yoodli introduced an AI tutor, enabling live coaching with an AI avatar.

Shaped announced Semantic Search.

Direct Travel launched Avenir — A next-gen travel technology built on an open platform to harness the power of Spotnana, Center, and Troop.

Typeface and Tektonic AI joined Google Cloud's AI Agent Ecosystem Program.

Tangibly announced QuickStart, a new workflow in the Tangibly platform that simplifies trade secret management.

Eclypsium Global Director of Sales Engineering Wes Dobry joined the DALY Podcast.

Relational AI CEO Molham Aref joined the Startup Project Podcast.  

Congratulations to:

All our companies on the 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500: Observe, Pulumi, Esper, Amperity, Flexe, Tesorio, TaxBit, Highspot, and Clari.

To Temporal and Clari for being named two of 2024's top 100 software companies by The Software Report.

And to Spotnana, which was named one of Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech for 2024.