Partnering With Flapping Airplanes

• Sequoia bets on bio-inspired AI lab focused on data efficiency, not scale.
  • Founders: Ben & Asher Spector (25/26), co-founder Aidan Smith (Thiel fellow, ex-Neuralink).
  • Contrarian hire thesis: raw talent over brand-name AI pedigree.
• Data is today’s AI bottleneck — we’ve exhausted the internet.
  • Karpathy, Sutton interviews (via Dwarkesh) reinforce models are wildly inefficient.
• Scaling vs. research divide: Cahn sides with research-first for AGI timeline.
  • Starving PhDs to feed GPU clusters may delay AGI, not accelerate it.
  • Corporate politics kills radical ideas; Flapping Airplanes offers PhD-like independence + Big Tech pay.
• Two coherent AI motives: profit (app builders) and AGI (fundamental research).
  • Application layer still massively underpenetrated — golden age for builders regardless.
• Young-person thesis: fundamental science has always been unlocked by the young.
  • Einstein’s Miracle Year at 26 is the archetype.
  • AI research is learnable, not mystical — explicit anti-prestige stance.

David Cahn (Sequoia Capital) · 2026-01-28 · Read on sequoiacap.com