AI trends for 2024 & predictions for 2025

Ray is a seasoned venture capitalist with over 20 years of investing experience across a wide range of industries and geographies. Before joining Alumni Ventures, Ray was a partner and adviser at several global venture funds focusing on AI, Web3, FinTech and SaaS investment opportunities across the U.S. and Asia Pacific. Earlier, he spent more than 10 years in the corporate venture space: He was the managing director of HP’s new business ventures, responsible for startup technology evaluation, new business incubation, VC relationships, and minority investments, and earlier at Cisco Systems, holding several senior positions leading investment, M&A, internal incubation, and global consulting. Previously, Ray was a managing partner of a leading Internet consulting firm working with Fortune 1000 companies across North America. He earned a dual MBA degree from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University.

Chris Yeh is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman, of Blitzscaling, the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time. A writer, investor, and entrepreneur, Chris has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations. Hundreds of companies, from garage-dwelling startups to Fortune 50 titans have tapped his knowledge and insights to accelerate and transform their businesses.

Spencer Foust is a Partner at Sozo Ventures where he invests in leading global technology companies. Since joining in 2016, the firm has invested over $250M in and helped the international expansion efforts of companies such as Twitter, Palantir, Project44, Square, Coinbase, Chainalysis, MongoDB, Flexport, Zoom, Servicemax, Applied Intuition, Attentive, Clear Co, Cohesity, Harmonic AI and others. Spencer has led a number of these deals, and is a Board Observer at Project44 and other companies. Sozo focuses on helping companies with global ambitions launch and fuel growth their Asia and Japan operations. Before joining Sozo Ventures, Spencer previously worked with Apple on global iPhone Operations as a Program Manager, and worked on the B61 Nuclear Weapon program at Sandia National Labs as a Systems Engineer. He was one of the youngest in the history of the lab to receive a Top Secret ‘Q’ Security Clearance at 20 years old, and was awarded the NNSA Defense Programs Award of Excellence.

Spencer received a Master’s in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and also graduated from the University of Arkansas with a BS and honors in Mechanical Engineering. He was heavily involved in leadership positions for on-campus organizations, and serves as a mentor for the Stanford GP2A program. He’s also involved with the Associate Board of the American Cancer Society in the Bay Area, the UNICEF NextGen SF Board, and is on the board of Stanford Alumni Association’s SIAA group. Spencer was awarded the Forbes 30 Under 30 award in 2020.

Rashmi Gopinath is a General Partner at B Capital Group where she focuses on enterprise software investments in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. She brings over two decades of experience investing and operating in enterprise technologies. She led B Capital’s investments in companies such as DataRobot, FalconX, OwnBackup, Pendo, Clari, Phenom People, Synack, Innovaccer, Hypersonix, Yalo, Labelbox, Armory, Fabric among others.Rashmi was previously a Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, where she led investments globally in enterprise software and sat on several Boards including Synack, Innovaccer, Contrast Security, Incorta, Frame, Paxata, among others. She earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Mumbai in India.

Denise is an investor at Gradient Ventures, Google’s early-stage fund focusing on investments in AI, open-source software, developer tools, SaaS, and various other sectors. Before her role at Gradient Ventures, she worked for six years as a product manager, including positions at Meta AI, Twitter, and MuleSoft, where she was involved in launching various products in both infrastructure and application layers. Denise holds an M.S. in software management from Carnegie Mellon University and has a computer science background.