Chief Marketing Officer at @LightspeedVP, previously Partner at @Redpoint and Chief Digital Officer at @Nasdaq
Greenwich Village, Manhattan
Joined July 2008
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today i'm joining @lightspeedvp as Chief Marketing Officer.
after doing thousands of IPOs at Nasdaq and building Redpoint's exceptional platform team, i've learned:
it's not just one launch video. it's the relentless drumbeat that get you heard.
and that's what i'm here to build for Lightspeed and our founders.
let's make some noise!
Josh Machiz retweeted
AI is knocking on your front door.
Apple unveiled HomeView, a smart display that recognizes household members and brings Siri AI into the home, alongside an updated Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini 2.
On Lightwork, @clairejyz describes trading privacy for more capable agents on her phone. At home, it’s a different story.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to let Instinct or Claude into my home… But am I ready for it to have 24/7 ambient access into my conversations at home and pick up on things?”
She sees Apple’s emphasis on privacy as a potential advantage in earning that invitation.
@Machiz calls HomeView “a wedge into a very old market.” He sees an opening for Apple as other AI companies focus on apps and give the home experience less attention.
Check out the full Lightwork episode below!
If labs set their own benchmarks, who defines the frontier?
We are seeing the top models sit within ~5 points of each other as labs often compete on specific benchmarks, how they sell, and price.
This week on Lightwork:
→ Gemini Argon vs. Muse Wonder: Optimizing for different workflows. Argon leans into legal, business, and finance. Wonder bets on long-horizon agent memory.
→ Apple HomeView: Privacy, personalization, and ambient intelligence could give Apple an opening in the AI-powered home.
→ SpaceX received FCC approval to launch 15,000 satellites in a push to becoming a major mobile carrier in the U.S.
0:00 Welcome to Lightwork
1:04 Meta Muse Wonder vs. Google Gemini 4
5:00 On AI Agent Memory and Focus
6:23 Gemini’s Advanced Reasoning and Task Automation
8:37 Apple HomeView: Siri Comes Home
11:33 AI Privacy and Smart Homes
16:52 SpaceX’s Plans To Be a Carrier
22:12 Updates from the Lightspeed Universe
@clairejyz @Machiz
Josh Machiz retweeted
Booking a flight doesn’t require superintelligence.
Meta and Google have introduced models they describe as frontier, highlighting different strengths.
Meta’s Muse Wonder emphasizes memory and sustained task completion, while Google’s Gemini 4 Argon combines visual understanding, coding, and reasoning.
On Lightwork, @clairejyz questions how those frontier claims are judged. “Everyone’s a frontier when they’re benchmarking against whatever they’re picking and choosing.”
“It does seem like everybody’s benchmaxxing,” @Machiz adds.
For everyday users, the practical test is whether an assistant can remember what they need and finish the task.
“Can you help me book a flight? Can you help me clean up my emails? Those don’t require superintelligence. It requires focus and memory,” says Claire.
Tune in to the full episode of Lightwork!
If labs set their own benchmarks, who defines the frontier?
We are seeing the top models sit within ~5 points of each other as labs often compete on specific benchmarks, how they sell, and price.
This week on Lightwork:
→ Gemini Argon vs. Muse Wonder: Optimizing for different workflows. Argon leans into legal, business, and finance. Wonder bets on long-horizon agent memory.
→ Apple HomeView: Privacy, personalization, and ambient intelligence could give Apple an opening in the AI-powered home.
→ SpaceX received FCC approval to launch 15,000 satellites in a push to becoming a major mobile carrier in the U.S.
0:00 Welcome to Lightwork
1:04 Meta Muse Wonder vs. Google Gemini 4
5:00 On AI Agent Memory and Focus
6:23 Gemini’s Advanced Reasoning and Task Automation
8:37 Apple HomeView: Siri Comes Home
11:33 AI Privacy and Smart Homes
16:52 SpaceX’s Plans To Be a Carrier
22:12 Updates from the Lightspeed Universe
@clairejyz @Machiz
Josh Machiz retweeted
Loved chatting with @alexrkonrad about tough times, running a moonshot in stealth for almost 5 years and what's next for Neko after NY
Neko CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne was licking his wounds after "crash landing" a climate startup. Then he got a fateful DM from Spotify's Daniel Ek
Together, @HjalmarNilsonne and @eldsjal co-founded @Neko, a $7B startup that calls itself "the most valuable hour you can spend on your health."
After years operating in Europe, Neko recently launched in NYC, where it's quickly built a waitlist of 50,000 people, and started work on 3 more locations. Miami, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are next.
“People sometimes think that there’s some machine, and you go in, and you get a kind of paper receipt telling you if you’re gonna die or not,” Hjalmar tells me. “In reality, it’s the exact opposite.”
On The Upstarts Podcast, Nilsonne talks about the fateful Twitter DM from Ek that got Neko going; why the doctor visit hasn’t changed much in 100 years; and how to keep a startup team motivated while chasing a long-term “moonshot.”
Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: a bet-the-company pivot driven by an internal memo he wrote, “Free Is Not Enough.”
A big thanks to this season's sponsors @Atlassian and @chargebee for supporting unfiltered founder interviews like this 🫡
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:48 Mapping Your Body In One Hour
03:54 Why The Doctor’s Visit Hasn’t Changed In 100 Years
07:31 Building Four Businesses In One: Devices, Hardware, Software, Clinics
09:22 Breaking Down A Neko Visit First-Hand
12:58 Why Half of Neko’s U.K. Members Never Had A Health Check
16:59 ‘Brutally Efficient With Your Time’: Why Every Second Counts
19:04 Helping Human Doctors, Not Replacing Them
22:40 Delivering Outcomes For the 92% Of Members Not At Risk
26:47 A Climate ‘Crash Landing’ And A DM From Daniel Ek
33:12 Motivating A Team To Chase A Moonshot
37:42 Neko’s Upstart Moment: The ‘Free Is Not Enough’ Memo And Pivot
41:30 Pricing Neko Accessibly For The 99.9%
45:44 What The Tesla Roadster Can Teach Founders About Change
48:33 Space-Age Scan, Old-School Advice: Cut The Coffee
Thanks for watching!
the smart home has been stuck for a decade.
my google home can't keep up with ai agents today, let alone chatgpt voice.
the labs all went after apps and assistants and left the home behind. HomeView is apple walking into that gap.
whether siri can deliver is the whole question. but if it works, the smart home finally gets smart.
If labs set their own benchmarks, who defines the frontier?
We are seeing the top models sit within ~5 points of each other as labs often compete on specific benchmarks, how they sell, and price.
This week on Lightwork:
→ Gemini Argon vs. Muse Wonder: Optimizing for different workflows. Argon leans into legal, business, and finance. Wonder bets on long-horizon agent memory.
→ Apple HomeView: Privacy, personalization, and ambient intelligence could give Apple an opening in the AI-powered home.
→ SpaceX received FCC approval to launch 15,000 satellites in a push to becoming a major mobile carrier in the U.S.
0:00 Welcome to Lightwork
1:04 Meta Muse Wonder vs. Google Gemini 4
5:00 On AI Agent Memory and Focus
6:23 Gemini’s Advanced Reasoning and Task Automation
8:37 Apple HomeView: Siri Comes Home
11:33 AI Privacy and Smart Homes
16:52 SpaceX’s Plans To Be a Carrier
22:12 Updates from the Lightspeed Universe
@clairejyz @Machiz
Josh Machiz retweeted
Neko CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne was licking his wounds after "crash landing" a climate startup. Then he got a fateful DM from Spotify's Daniel Ek
Together, @HjalmarNilsonne and @eldsjal co-founded @Neko, a $7B startup that calls itself "the most valuable hour you can spend on your health."
After years operating in Europe, Neko recently launched in NYC, where it's quickly built a waitlist of 50,000 people, and started work on 3 more locations. Miami, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are next.
“People sometimes think that there’s some machine, and you go in, and you get a kind of paper receipt telling you if you’re gonna die or not,” Hjalmar tells me. “In reality, it’s the exact opposite.”
On The Upstarts Podcast, Nilsonne talks about the fateful Twitter DM from Ek that got Neko going; why the doctor visit hasn’t changed much in 100 years; and how to keep a startup team motivated while chasing a long-term “moonshot.”
Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: a bet-the-company pivot driven by an internal memo he wrote, “Free Is Not Enough.”
A big thanks to this season's sponsors @Atlassian and @chargebee for supporting unfiltered founder interviews like this 🫡
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:48 Mapping Your Body In One Hour
03:54 Why The Doctor’s Visit Hasn’t Changed In 100 Years
07:31 Building Four Businesses In One: Devices, Hardware, Software, Clinics
09:22 Breaking Down A Neko Visit First-Hand
12:58 Why Half of Neko’s U.K. Members Never Had A Health Check
16:59 ‘Brutally Efficient With Your Time’: Why Every Second Counts
19:04 Helping Human Doctors, Not Replacing Them
22:40 Delivering Outcomes For the 92% Of Members Not At Risk
26:47 A Climate ‘Crash Landing’ And A DM From Daniel Ek
33:12 Motivating A Team To Chase A Moonshot
37:42 Neko’s Upstart Moment: The ‘Free Is Not Enough’ Memo And Pivot
41:30 Pricing Neko Accessibly For The 99.9%
45:44 What The Tesla Roadster Can Teach Founders About Change
48:33 Space-Age Scan, Old-School Advice: Cut The Coffee
Thanks for watching!
when the guest's bow tie matches the midcentury set, you know it's going to be a good conversation
@Farzad_MD with @BrentonFargnoli and @GalymImanbayev on Venture Doctors
Healthcare’s last technology revolution didn’t prevent patient strokes. New incentives might help.
@Farzad_MD has been working to improve health outcomes like reducing the stroke rate for much of his career in medicine and public health.
He believed that converting to electronic health records (EHR) would help, but after transitioning physicians over, the numbers didn’t change.
Farzad co-founded @aledadeaco to financially reward higher value care.
He joined Partners Dr. @BrentonFargnoli and Dr. @GalymImanbayev on Venture Doctors to discuss the company he’s building and his mission to help independent primary care physicians thrive.
Farzad dives into how Aledade is leveraging AI, why he thinks founders in their forties are underestimated, and why he believes the real differentiator in healthcare AI is trust rather than capability.
0:00 Why There's No Billing Code for Preventing a Stroke
7:52 Public Health Surveillance to the National EHR Rollout
15:01 Will AI Just Serve Fee for Service?
19:25 Inside Aledade and Its Three Flywheels
23:00 When AI Becomes a Commodity, Trust Is an Edge
30:59 Rapid Fire on Bow Ties and Overrated AI
$100m arr looks good in times square.
huge congrats to @skildai. thx @nasdaq team for giving this milestone the spotlight it deserves. xitter.cf/SkildAI/status/2110116…
Josh Machiz retweeted
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s your DoorDash on a drone.
At Dash Forward, DoorDash unveiled its own delivery drone and opened a beta waitlist for an AI ordering experience over text.
“My lunch order from DoorDash is pretty much the same. I eat the same thing every day… Does making it conversational make you try new things?” @Machiz asks.
A personal AI agent could also change where the order goes: to DoorDash, Uber Eats, or directly to a restaurant.
“Being able to actually have the connection with the end user is so important,” says @AggShaurya.
Watch the full segment below.
Two new open-weight models in two days.
Lightspeed portfolio companies Reflection and Mistral unveiled Beam and Large 4, all striving to bring greater control, customization, and efficiency to enterprise AI.
More on Lightwork from @Machiz and guest co-host, Partner @AggShaurya:
→ DoorDash builds its own delivery drone and AI ordering agent.
→ Instinct brings agents into group chats as Meta and Sierra develop new rules for agent access.
→ Oura postpones its IPO despite reported strong demand.
00:00 Open Models, Drone Delivery, and AI Agents
01:08 Mistral's Le Chonk Meme and Naming Story
02:33 What Open-Weight Models Mean for the AI Race
03:56 When to Consider Open Models Over Frontier AI
05:30 Why Open Models Compete on Cost Efficiency
06:35 Mixture of Experts Explained
07:32 Is Reflection the DeepSeek of the West?
07:58 Why DoorDash Is Building Its Own Delivery Drones
09:38 DoorDash's Competitive Edge
12:28 DoorDash's Moat Against AI Agents
14:34 Personal AI Agents in Group Chats
16:08 How AI Agents Could Change Consumer Spending
17:26 Meta, Sierra, and the Future of Personal AI Agents
19:56 Oura Postpones Its IPO
22:13 Lightspeed Universe
Josh Machiz retweeted
What brings a doctor into venture capital?
Lightspeed Partners Dr. @BrentonFargnoli and Dr. @GalymImanbayev share what drew them to healthcare and how those experiences inform their work today.
Galym recalls following his father on rural medical trips to underserved communities in Kazakhstan.
Brenton explains how his clinical experience led him toward venture: “There’s got to be better technology to help these physicians. Seeing venture as a vehicle for that has been really, really exciting.”
Get to know the hosts of Venture Doctors below.
New episode this Thursday!
open weights: @reflection_ai’s Beam, @MistralAI’s Large 4
open skies: DoorDash drones
open question: if your agent orders your food, what is DoorDash’s moat?
fun having @AggShaurya in the co-host chair for this one
Two new open-weight models in two days.
Lightspeed portfolio companies Reflection and Mistral unveiled Beam and Large 4, all striving to bring greater control, customization, and efficiency to enterprise AI.
More on Lightwork from @Machiz and guest co-host, Partner @AggShaurya:
→ DoorDash builds its own delivery drone and AI ordering agent.
→ Instinct brings agents into group chats as Meta and Sierra develop new rules for agent access.
→ Oura postpones its IPO despite reported strong demand.
00:00 Open Models, Drone Delivery, and AI Agents
01:08 Mistral's Le Chonk Meme and Naming Story
02:33 What Open-Weight Models Mean for the AI Race
03:56 When to Consider Open Models Over Frontier AI
05:30 Why Open Models Compete on Cost Efficiency
06:35 Mixture of Experts Explained
07:32 Is Reflection the DeepSeek of the West?
07:58 Why DoorDash Is Building Its Own Delivery Drones
09:38 DoorDash's Competitive Edge
12:28 DoorDash's Moat Against AI Agents
14:34 Personal AI Agents in Group Chats
16:08 How AI Agents Could Change Consumer Spending
17:26 Meta, Sierra, and the Future of Personal AI Agents
19:56 Oura Postpones Its IPO
22:13 Lightspeed Universe
Josh Machiz retweeted
Huge milestone for @AmcaInc and American engineering!
Amca has secured a unique partnership with the U.S. Army to re-engineer and produce critical components. It’s the Army’s first Active Capability Gap award.
By tackling the engineering challenges behind critical supply chain bottlenecks, Amca is helping rebuild America’s industrial capabilities. The work will address missing engineering data and outdated designs to make essential parts easier to produce.
Congratulations to @jaimalik and the entire Amca team!
cc @ravi_lsvp, @lightspeedvp
Amca has been awarded a contract by the @USArmy, establishing an enterprise-wide partnership with Army Materiel Command for rapid engineering, qualification, and component production.
This is the first partnership of its kind, designed to increase readiness for a priority missile system by re-engineering and improving manufacturability of critical components and subsystems.
We're grateful for the Army’s trust, urgency, and leadership, and look forward to re-engineering American industry together.
welcome to lightspeed Adil 👋
So excited to welcome Adil Haque as Partner and Head of Capital Partnerships at Lightspeed.
We’ve spent most of 2026 getting to know Adil and came away more impressed each time we met. 20+ years at Apax and EQT, where AUM grew from $25B to $300B+ during his tenure. A builder with the rare gift of listening closely to what each LP partner needs.
Welcome aboard!
wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/…
meta needs to kill the meta ai app and fold the whole thing into muse. you don’t need two consumer ai apps competing for attention when one already has the cultural momentum.
it's incredible what @arena has built.
what started as a research experiment has become one of the most important benchmarks in AI.
today they announced a $200M Series B. loved having @istoica05 on Lightwork back in July to explain how it all works:
Today, we're announcing our Series B: $200M at a $3.1B valuation, and the release of Arena's Alignment Index.
AI is advancing faster than our ability to evaluate it. The world needs a neutral third party to measure how safe and aligned AI actually is once it's in the hands of real people. That's the role Arena is stepping into today.
The Alignment Index is built from real-world agent traces, starting with three signals: Unauthorized Action, False Attribution, and Deceptive Completion, with results for over 20 frontier models launching today.
Hear more from our CEO @ml_angelopoulos below, and read the full breakdown, and more details about our company growth in thread.
This funding will allow us to go further on safety signals, agentic capabilities, and modalities. It will also allow us to grow the company to match the scale of our mission. Today, we’re still a nimble team of 90, and we're looking for people to join us across research, product, engineering, and more. Come build with us.
As AI gets more capable and autonomous, understanding how well it can safely and effectively work for people only matters more. That's what Arena is built to measure and advance.
Thank you to our community, our investors, and everyone building with us!
Take a look at our open roles if you want to join us (link in bio).
nilam went from employee #12 at Instacart to president, managing 2,000 people.
now @nilamg is on a new journey, bringing AI capabilities to the real economy with his company @beaconholdings.
software enterprises hold value in their relationships, not just their code.
businesses that have already established the trust layer shouldn’t be left behind as AI becomes more commonplace.
learn more in his interview with @bsomaia:
“Software really isn’t about the code or the technology… It’s about the relationships.”
Nilam (@beaconholdings Founder & CEO) argues that AI will reach small and mid-sized businesses through the software providers they already trust.
@nilamg joined Lightspeed Partner @bsomaia on The Investment Memo to break down the thesis behind Beacon and how they’re operating.
As he considered what kind of company he wanted to build, Nilam reflected on a recurring mission in his career:
“I realized there was this common theme around making things fair for the people who otherwise are not given the same tools that I say that I was given,” he said.
With that in mind, Nilam decided he could merge this passion and his vision for AI into Beacon, his company designed to expand AI capabilities for trusted software businesses across the country, from campgrounds to construction to transportation.
He follows three key stages: finding and acquiring the right businesses, integrating them onto the Beacon platform, and building the AI products their customers need next.
00:00 Intro Nilam Ganenthiran
02:41 Why Nilam Left Investing to Build Beacon
05:51 What Is the Real Economy?
06:49 Why Small Businesses Adopt AI Slower
08:37 Why Beacon Needs to Exist Now
10:22 Finding and Buying Businesses With AI
12:12 Integrating and Running Acquired Companies
13:20 Growing Net Dollar Retention as the Hero Metric
14:03 Lessons From Instacart Applied to Beacon
17:25 How Big Can Beacon Get?
19:45 Beacon vs. Traditional Software Roll-Ups
25:27 What Happens to Founders After Acquisition
28:02 The Data Flywheel Across 40+ Companies
29:47 Change Management Is the Hard Part
Josh Machiz retweeted
Choosing an AI assistant is starting to feel a little like choosing a pet.
@clairejyz calls it “the Tamagotchification of tech.”
OpenAI unveiled Dots, always-on agents with their own cloud computers that can use browsers and connected apps to complete tasks. As assistants learn your preferences and get things done, personality could become another reason to keep the same one around.
@Machiz asks, “Do you want the smartest intelligence or do you want the one that makes you want to give it a hug?”
Watch the full segment below.
AI could radically change how people access government resources. The US is starting with a chatbot.
This week on Lightwork:
→ America.gov is now live. Designed as a front door to the federal government, the chatbot aims to make information easier to find across 29,000+ government websites.
→ Leaders across technology and government gathered for lunch at the White House to discuss the state of AI and what “Superintelligence” could mean for the US public.
→ OpenAI launched over twenty features at DevDay, including a system of “always-on” agents called Dots. Is consumer tech headed toward personal background workers?
→ SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit on Flight 14 and deployed its first operational payload, twenty-six Starlink V3 satellites.
Full video below.
@clairejyz @Machiz
Josh Machiz retweeted
What if AI could handle the paperwork you’ve been putting off?
“Being able to file a passport online and have it be done through a chatbot just feels like the future,” says @Machiz.
That’s part of the longer-term ambition for America.gov, which adds an AI search-and-answer layer over roughly 29,000 government websites.
“That is the value of AI: it’s able to take a lot of information and make it navigable and searchable,” shares @clairejyz.
Meanwhile, AI leaders signed a voluntary safety accord at the White House as Congress weighs its next steps on AI oversight.
Watch the full segment below.
AI could radically change how people access government resources. The US is starting with a chatbot.
This week on Lightwork:
→ America.gov is now live. Designed as a front door to the federal government, the chatbot aims to make information easier to find across 29,000+ government websites.
→ Leaders across technology and government gathered for lunch at the White House to discuss the state of AI and what “Superintelligence” could mean for the US public.
→ OpenAI launched over twenty features at DevDay, including a system of “always-on” agents called Dots. Is consumer tech headed toward personal background workers?
→ SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit on Flight 14 and deployed its first operational payload, twenty-six Starlink V3 satellites.
Full video below.
@clairejyz @Machiz
Josh Machiz retweeted
Congrats to @reflection_ai on the launch of Beam: Reflection’s first open-weight model.
501B total parameters, 23B active, built for coding, reasoning, and agentic workloads.
We believe this is a meaningful step towards more accessible AI for enterprises, public sector, and developers. We’re incredibly proud to support @MishaLaskin, @real_ioannis and the team.
CC: @ravirajjain @JamesAlcorn94
Introducing Beam: a highly efficient agentic open model with 501B total parameters and 23B active.
- Frontier reasoning efficiency
- Advances the Western open frontier on coding & agentic tasks
- Trained end-to-end from scratch
Full weights release this month.
Learn more about Beam: reflection.ai/beam
Josh Machiz retweeted
Incredible milestone for the Western open-weight ecosystem!!!
@reflection_ai announced Beam - a 23b A / 501b MoE model that advances the Western open-weight frontier on coding and agentic tasks, competitive with GLM 5.2 and approaching Qwen 3.8 Max in capability with a 4x smaller size.
All this with 4x more efficiency at inference than open models with similar capability.
A strong pretrained base model and one of the largest sustained RL runs documented in open source.
And the team did all this in less than a year!
Congratulations to @MishaLaskin, @real_ioannis and the entire Reflection team
cc @lightspeedvp, @ravi_lsvp, @JamesAlcorn94
Introducing Beam: a highly efficient agentic open model with 501B total parameters and 23B active.
- Frontier reasoning efficiency
- Advances the Western open frontier on coding & agentic tasks
- Trained end-to-end from scratch
Full weights release this month.
Learn more about Beam: reflection.ai/beam