Hi everyone, welcome to Gray Matter, the podcast from GrayLock where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I'm Heather Mack, head of editorial at GrayLock. I'm joined today by Jerry Chen, who's a general partner here at GrayLock. Jerry works with starters building enterprise applications and infrastructure, particularly those purpose built for cloud-native ecosystems. Thanks for being here, Jerry.
Hey, thanks for having me, Heather. Always fun, too. I chatted about cloud stuff. Always.
嘿,谢谢你邀请我来,Heather。也很有趣。我一直在聊云端的东西。一直都是这样。
Jerry's also the mastermind, if you will, behind GrayLock's Castles in the Cloud project, which is an interactive database that maps activity in the venture capital funding startup ecosystem without the big three cloud providers.
Jerry 也是灰锁公司云端城堡项目的首席策划,这个项目是一个交互式数据库,用于绘制创业投资生态系统中未使用三大云服务提供商的活动。
Jerry and fellow GrayLock investor Jason Reese just completed our analysis of the 2022 fundraising landscape. Then they spent the first few months of 2023 looking at a few trends and comparing them with what's playing out in the market right now. You can read Jason's essay on the findings on the content section of our website and you can see the full castles in the cloud project, the latest figures at GrayLock.com slash castles. Both of those are linked in the show notes.
So Jerry, let's talk about what's happening. Top line, what are the funding figures tell you?
杰瑞,让我们谈谈发生了什么。首先,这些资金数字告诉你什么?
Well, first, I don't know if I've ever been called a mastermind, at least not since my last art heist, but take what I can get, Heather. It's interesting, but remember, these numbers are about 222 trends and Jason I and his blog and in this podcast, we'll talk about what we're seeing since the end of 22, but in 2022, we saw about 17, half billion dollars invested across a little bit over 400 companies.
Now, to put that in context, that's a huge drop from 2021. So remember, 2021 was probably the peak of the pandemic years when we saw over $50 billion of VC financing. So 50 to 17 or 50 to 18, which is a huge drop. But to put in broader context, 17, half billion is kind of consistent with the 2020 cloud funding number, which are about 15 billion. So 15 billion invested in 2020, a huge spike or peak in 2021, a 50 billion. And in 2022, you say 17, half billion is returning more towards kind of normalize VC investment in the cloud. Right. So it's kind of to be expected.
And do those lower figures translate to lower activity across the cloud ecosystem?
这些低数字是否意味着云生态系统中的较低活动水平?
Not really. I think it's a combination that the bigger late stage checks or bigger late stage investments really have gone away. Right. So it's a because of the macro economy and the public markets, those big dollar amounts have slowed down. But the smaller early seed series A checks are as busy as ever. So I would say back half of 2022, the first quarter of 2023, graylock and a bunch of repairs, I think are as busy as ever looking at a cloud companies and other startups. And we'll talk about some of those trends. But I would say there's a lot of interesting things happening.
So the checks are smaller, which would be indicative of kind of a sea change, a lot more early early stage companies, but the number has increased dramatically. Right.
因此,这些支票的金额更小,这表明了一种海变的趋势,有更多的早期初创公司,但数量大幅增加。对的。
And what's fueling all that?
这一切是由什么推动的?意思是问这种情况的推动因素是什么。
Well, I think there's this thing you probably heard of called AI, our large language models in general, yeah, just a little bit of two vowels and a couple constants, AI and LLM, sort of, a, I mean, it's easy to say it's all caused by AI, but we'll talk about that. We'll talk about other trends, but I think it's simplistic to say it's just all AI. But it would say the past couple of years, probably Erison's Google published the attention is all you need paper. This whole concept of the transform models have created a sea change of or in the industry by this huge advantage, these large language models or foundation models. So we're seeing a foundation models appear and that's like open a eyes, chat GBT. There's a bunch of startups like inflection, anthropic, adept all building foundation models. Google and the big clouds have their own foundation models. Google releases barred their kind of version of chat GBT.
So you will see there's a huge step function advancement in these foundation models, which leads to a downstream effect of thousands of thousands of startups building on top of these foundation models or exploring all the changes caused by foundation models, everything from management, security, explainability. So I think we're seeing kind of this bow wave of innovation right now and it's pretty exciting.
Break that down a little bit more. So it's happening both within the startup ecosystem and within the big three Amazon Google and Microsoft.
请再详细解释一下。这种情况正在创业生态系统内和亚马逊、谷歌和微软这三大巨头内部都出现。
Actually, it's pretty interesting because you see the big three players big cloud, we call it Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all fighting about AI now. I mean, if you look historically, it castles in the cloud, machine learning AI was always the largest funded category, both by VCs and the large number of cloud services offered by the big three.
So AI machine learning has been the forefront of the background between the big three, but also you see competition between startups that are kind of either playing between these giants or enabling these giants are right in the wave. So you can argue that Amazon was early on the machine learning AI wave with salesmaker, but then Microsoft clearly with a part of the open AI really has disrupted both Google in terms of search as well as Amazon as a cloud platform with this tight coupling of Azure plus open AI.
So I think super interesting what's going on there. And you saw recently in early 2023, Amazon just released something called bedrock, right? It's kind of it's really to connect to different foundation models from a theropik, etc. So Amazon tried to marketize access to these foundation models like it did to different cloud services. So it's a the battle between all three of these players is super interesting.
You know, Microsoft kind of did the parts of open AI, Google responded with Bard and then Amazon trying to play, hey, you come to Amazon for all things developer experience, come to Amazon for all things AI experience, right? But I'd say it's interesting. The big three are probably once a follow, but I would say recently we've heard a lot more about Oracle clouds, the OCI, both as a cloud platform like large startups like Uber, etc.
We're doing some capacity on Oracle. But in terms of training large language models, I hear from a lot of founders and engineers of OCI's actually a pretty amazing cloud to train these large models on.
And then I would say the stock that I think we all wish we bought, you know, five years ago was Nvidia, right? These between the crypto boon a few years ago and the AI boom, the need for GPUs kind of drive all the training of these large models has never been greater. So it's a top of just the hardware, Nvidia's released their own cloud, DGX, they released more software on top of their own hardware.
So I would say there are the big three Oracle making some headways into the cloud space both in just cloud platform as well as around AI. And then key parts of the ecosystem like Nvidia really kind of creating a beach headed and they're a part of every conversation right now.
We're talking about AI exists in multiple layers, kind of like the cloud. And so there's these different places for startups to play in like where are you seeing this happening on a startup level? But you know at the gray lock, you love layers and frameworks, obviously.
So gosh, how there are 30 years ago, almost we had the lamp stack was Linux Apache, my SQL PTP. That was kind of the default set of tools you built any web app. And then you had kind of the mean stack with Mongo, no JS, Angular JS, kind of these modern webb mobile apps. We had jam stack the past few years, kind of the nullify or sell kind of these JavaScript applications.
I don't know what it's going to look like going forward. But for sure, we're seeing evolving stack or application architecture around these large Linux models apps out there. And so we're super excited about how this develops. But for sure, there's one layer that is the foundation models.
And AI, coherent and throttpix, stability AI, companies out there like adept and inflection I play in that space. But for sure, you can see startups and big companies play in the kind of the low level. We're going to see the top level application innovation. So Jasper, even up in legal, tome in presentations, Harvey and legal AI applications.
Just so many companies out there taking advantage of these, you know, advances in AI to build applications, close to the gray lock portfolio is something called insubes that started document understanding and AI around there. They're really expanding on top of these foundation models.
But this middle layer in between is kind of an evolving middleware stack. So we're seeing companies and technology like Lama index. That's really defining the category for data ingestion, data indexing for data querying.
You have technology like Lange chain and Fixie that are really pioneering how you think about building agents doing prop development and prop operations. And then vector databases, right? Vector databases have been around for a long time. But also the idea of storing and querying these vector embeddings is becoming a key piece of all these applications. So you're seeing comes like Pinecon, Weavey, Chroma, all kind of take hold in terms of this kind of embedding stores. And then when you have a new stack, right? Just like when you build mobile apps or cloud apps, you break a bunch of things, you got to fix these things, you got to monitor these things. We're seeing starts like Helicone and Honeyhive around LM monitoring, right? And it's thing there'd be there'd be more monitoring tools, security tools, management tools kind of all around this new application stack. So look, if we had kind of a lamp stack years and years ago, I don't know what the stack looks like next three or four years, but we're seeing evolving, you know, set up best practices and how to build these applications. Got it. That's a lot to keep track of.
And then outside of AI, there's some other things that are fueling more of these trends. What are you seeing? For sure Heather, we're seeing a lot of more innovation, but let's just take a step back and we're still in the early early innings of cloud migration and companies going cloud data, right? So for us in my scene like cloud has been around for the beginning since like pretty much all the founders we deal with are born in the cloud and known as been building their own data centers for years, but just remember in terms of the total compute storage application used out there, were still early, early days cloud.
But within cloud development, we're seeing a lot more evolution and specialization and we're calling industry clouds or vertical clouds. So you're seeing different industries from healthcare, government, transportation. They have either a their own needs, right? Like application needs or they have their own kind of compliance, security needs or data sharing needs. So you think about vertical SaaS companies around healthcare, government or solution products around productivity around developer tools around security. So you can see some specialization and what's happening is is both the needs are evolving and how to build these applications. But also the cloud providers themselves can now cost effectively build specialized services around these different verticals, different industries. And so Jason, who's one of the Vesar teams wrote a lot about industry clouds and how they're evolving as well on our blogs and podcasts. So it's super interesting to see how this is going to be probably the next evolution of cloud is these verticals and these specializations.
Right, specialization sounds like a good place for startups. It's a great place for startups, right? If you think about how you build sustainable modes, for example, and defend against your competitors, is you have to either a own kind of a domain or you have to own a set of data, this proprietary. So I think different verticals are different solutions and a vertical could be like a market like healthcare, government or financial services or it could be a vertical solution like around CRM, customer support or BTC support or only one problem. So the own a data set or one workflow around an industry or one problem, you can actually kind of build an end to end solution and in the cloud that becomes a very viable, very attractive business model. And sometimes it's getting more complex, more security needs. Obviously, it's like an ongoing trend we see across every industry.
So what does that mean for a cloud? What security is great is, is it evergreen market? Like I said before, typically what happens when you have a new technology, a new platform like moving to mobile, moving to cloud. First thing first is you enable new applications to be built, but also you break a bunch of stuff, right? And so cloud really enabled a bunch of new stuff, but a broke a bunch of stuff. And the first thing you try to do is try to fix what's broken with the tools you have. Security is an evergreen need because when you go cloud, you create a bunch of new security vulnerabilities or security needs. First thing you do is try to fix these security needs with existing security tools, but largely when we see these platform shifts like going cloud, the old stuff you have, especially when security isn't good enough and you see this explosion in these security companies.
So last year we saw that over $3 billion from vested into security startups in the cloud. So they put over $3 billion into the security subsector, which is huge, but that's only half what they put in 2021. So that's a huge number, but they put between the last two, three years, north of over $10 billion in security startups because that is going to be an evergreen need as you go cloud, as you build AI to applications, as you go to different verticals, you're going to need to build these security solutions.
So should startups just always expect that enterprise organizations are going to have limitless budgets for security. It's always going to be something they're going to invest in and these are just ample opportunity for everybody. I would say it's not ample opportunity for everybody because a lot of great markets, there's always replacing the old stuff. So there's definitely security budget because security and compliance is a top three priority for every CEO is a top three priority for every public company board, and you're going to see dollar shift from old technology and platforms and new ones.
So you see companies like the cloud security vendors like Wiz growing faster in security companies seen a long time. Companies like an art portfolio like abnormal around email security that's growing super fast as you think about how email and identity changes when you go to the cloud. There's a whole bunch of other companies that were seeing around AI security that are kind of being born in the cloud now born in this AI generation.
Increasingly as you build more and more application in the cloud, you carry about what we call S bomb, your software bill materials, story, more than gradients, where the open source project is actually built your application out of to try and understand the proveness of all this code. So I think it's exciting for me as an investor because we see huge opportunity, but because there's new challenges. And also the old technology, the old companies often cannot make that transition.
So it's a really attractive area for great founders to have some deep IP to attack. And I think securities one that we're constantly looking at because we think there's always going to be innovation. And so what are you expecting throughout the next year like a generative AI to build its own cloud and then its own security company? So yeah, if the AI companies could build their own stuff and we're kind of getting there with projects like like AGI and Auto GBT, right, kind of this AI building AI or their coding themselves and proving themselves, I think we're still luckily for me.
I saw a job because we're still a little bit away from that. But we're definitely seeing advances around developer productivity, right? So some of these AI things can make your developers more productive. So you're going to see actually an interesting phenomenon where startups can actually probably develop farther and faster on the funding they have in different markets.
So one, exciting two, we're still in a business investing because we still need to pick the best founders, the best opportunities in front of us. But I think we're excited because I think 2021 is all huge spike in venture investing. 2022 kind of a lower level but returned to kind of normal levels historically. And I think 2023, we're probably about the same pace as 2022. I mean, check back with me in a year, Heather will you do the cast on the cloud looking back in 2023. But so far, I think 2023 will probably be close to where we were last year.
But we're going to see a bunch of new companies be the activity we're seeing just in the first three, four months of this year around the AI stuff, around security companies, around some of these vertical clouds has been pretty interesting. So we're super busy, I know my peers and other firms are super busy. And so I think it'll be fun to see kind of how those bubbles on our castle cloud chart have changed.
I mean, my early prediction is the AI and the one is still going to be the biggest circle on our two by two. For those listening, check out Castle and the cloud on gray lock. We have kind of a great visualization of where the money is going to. So I think security and AI will still be to the biggest bubbles. I think you can see a lot of activity at the seed and series a activity level for all the V season startups.
And then you're going to see a lot more coming from the big three, right? I think Google, Amazon, Microsoft are going to double trouble down on their efforts in AI. Google for example, it's reorganized or Google brain in their deep mind research teams to one org. So you can see, I think those big players come out. I think you haven't heard a lot yet from other companies like an Apple or a Facebook meta or Salesforce, which has their Einstein team.
So I think a lot of tensions around open AI around Google. But I think there are a whole bunch of other large companies out there that have great, great resources around AI that will be making big moves this year. That's awesome to call as waves. But on those waves will be great momentum for these startups to serve.
You know, as we're talking, obviously, this is all a reminder of your very popular essay, the new moats from a few years back in that essay. In that essay, you talked about why systems of intelligence are the next offensive business model. You made pretty prescient observations at the time, was it six years ago, which is like a million years ago in technology. But you said startups using AI would be the ones to build the next business vote.
It all seems to be coming true with the developments in the past year. I'd love to hear if you're going to dive into that further.
在过去的一年里,所有的一切似乎都在变得真实起来。我很想知道你是否会进一步深入探讨这个问题。
Yeah, I think six years is two lifetimes in technology. But for sure, I was talking to you a few other day about what we got right with the new moats and what we got wrong with the new moats and how we have this framework of the system of record, which is your big ERP CRM. So you had a system engagement, which is like your user experience chat or browser or the mobile app store and had what we call system intelligence using AI to power these applications.
But I think it's worth revisiting. We got a lot right. Think about this business models. I think you're seeing a bunch of new companies building system intelligence. We obviously got a lot wrong in terms of who would have predicted these large foundation models, who would have predicted chat GBT as the system engagement, for example. We mentioned chat slack as a system engagement for some applications. But now chat GBT really made a legitimate system engagement for your data interactions. And that plus these plugins that OpenEyes releasing have really created a new kind of stack for applications.
So I think it's probably worth while rethinking what we got right and wrong. But I still believe system intelligence, these AI powered applications really are core to building what we call the new moats.
Very cool. Well, I'm excited to hear the next wave of the new new moats. So I look forward to that. Jerry, thanks so much for being here with me today. And again, for our listeners, if you want to visit our castles in the cloud projects at relog.com slash castles, Jerry, thanks so much. Thanks a lot, Heather.