$126 billion in AI funding has been raised across 30+ "neo-labs". Most of them will fail.

Pierce and Rich map the landscape - from Thinking Machines' $12B valuation on vibes alone to Ilya's SSI. Plus: why OpenAI might be the Fairchild Semiconductor of AI, whether Stanford professors make good founders, and the Sauron's Eye problem of building in a frontier lab's blind spot.