I share design, growth & innovation stories for better, wealthier, and more creative people.
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Joined September 2008
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Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
NHTSA announced today that they are proposing new rules aimed at removing U.S. federal regulatory barriers for autonomous vehicles without steering wheels or pedals, such as @Tesla's Cybercab.
The proposed changes include:
• Eliminating requirements for manually operated turn signal controls in vehicles without steering wheels or pedals: "NHTSA has concluded that the self-canceling and manually operated control requirements in the current standard are unnecessary for turn signal operating units that are installed on vehicles without manually operated driving controls."
• Allowing autonomous driving systems to control turn signals, hazard lights, and high/low beams without traditional driver-operated switches.
• Removing certain dashboard indicator requirements for turn signals and high beams in vehicles without manual driving controls.
• Allowing optional cyan-colored exterior lights to indicate when a vehicle is operating autonomously, with standardized requirements for their placement, brightness, and operation.
• Eliminating outdated restrictions on vertical headlight arrangements, giving automakers greater design flexibility.
• Allowing modern integrated headlights to be tested at manufacturer-specified voltages rather than requiring 12.8 volts.
NHTSA says the changes are intended to eliminate unnecessary regulatory barriers, reduce costs, and enable innovation without compromising vehicle safety.
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Romania’s 🇷🇴 economic statistics are, in general, incredibly weird. I have repeatedly taken Romania out of charts I was making because it just seemed so far out there.
1.) The Bucharest metro area comes out as one of the richest in Europe, richer per capita than Geneva or Copenhagen (in PPS). Its GDP grew by 33% in five years, roughly Shenzhen-level growth, while the regions surrounding Bucharest shrank by more than 5%.
2.) Labour productivity per employed person in ICT and in professional, scientific and technical services is, in nominal terms (!!!), on par with or even higher than in Germany, and it swings wildly from year to year.
3.) Romania has higher actual individual consumption per capita than Czechia or Slovenia, which are well ahead of it in GDP per capita. This is fuelled by a near-zero or even negative household saving rate, the largest budget deficit in the EU and a current account deficit of around 8% of GDP.
Depending on which statistic you pick, Romania looks either like an absolute rocket or like an economy on the verge of collapse. My guess is that a lot of this is measurement rather than reality: a huge shadow economy that has to be estimated, millions of emigrants making “per capita” figures shaky, tax regimes that reshuffle how work and income get reported, companies booking their output at Bucharest headquarters, and national PPPs flattering an expensive capital.
I should visit Bucharest.
Between 2019 and 2024, outside of Ireland, the highest GDP growth rates in the EU were in the Romanian capital region of București-Ilfov: up 33.0% ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/pr…
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
BREAKING: 🇫🇷 BILLIONAIRE JACK DORSEY'S BITCHAT JUST BECAME THE MOST DOWNLOADED APP IN FRANCE
THE APP THAT LETS YOU SEND #BITCOIN WITHOUT INTERNET IS NOW #1 ON THE APP STORE
WHILE PROTESTS AND RIOTS HIT THE COUNTRY
OFFLINE FREEDOM TECH IS WINNING 🔥
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Roadster event livestream xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1yKAPwNgg…
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Huge day. $200M Series B at a $3.1B valuation for @arena and the release of our Alignment Index. I am proud of this team for solving one of the hardest problems in AI: evaluating AI under real-world conditions.
We're still a small team, about 90 people, and we're hiring across ML, product, engineering, design, marketing, BD, and more. If evaluations, safety, and measuring progress interest you, check out the open roles in @arena's bio.
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).
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Today, we’re launching an ambitious new school called The Horowitz Andreessen Academy.
Based in San Francisco, The Academy serves the most promising young high school graduates.
We think this can be an elite institution that attracts top tier talent. One that prepares students for the future rather than remaining stuck in the past.
The #1 goal is to help students learn to build, which is the most important skill in the AI era. They'll learn primarily by pursuing their own projects, either individually or in groups. There are classes and guest lectures, too, from some truly amazing people who have built modern-day Silicon Valley.
The Academy is designed as a network, since that’s the reason students go to school in the first place. Core to that network are our 10 Founding Partners: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe. The network includes over 50 hiring partners and over 200 speakers and mentors. To join as a hiring partner or faculty member, you can apply on our website.
We raised $42M in funding led by @a16z. I'll be CEO and @pmarca and @eriktorenberg will join me on the board.
Applications are open for our Founding Class Fellowship, which will be one year and tuition-free. Eventually, pending regulatory approval, we plan to offer a two-year program that charges tuition, similar in cost to an elite private university.
We're looking for the most unusually ambitious young builders on the planet. Come join us in San Francisco:
theacademysf.com/
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Open models continue taking share. Not just tokens, more $ now spent on open models than OpenAI.
Positive for the AI infra trade.
Open models taking share shift $ margin from the model layer to the infra and app layers.
Looks like today may be a record day for token volume % of open models on Vercel AI Gateway:
🟦 Open 78.4% 🟨 Closed 21.6%
While spend 💲 usually tells a different story, #3 and #4 today are Moonshot AI & DeepSeek. Adding Z.ai, their combined spend surpasses OpenAI (#2).
(Do note that's the spend for inference of the model across providers (mostly in the US), not revenue going directly to the open weight labs.)
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Introducing Reception, an AI receptionist platform for small businesses, built on ElevenAgents.
Every missed call could be a lost customer. Reception answers every call, answers questions, books the job, and texts confirmation.
Set up in minutes just by adding your website.
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
My conversation with Michael Moritz, one of the great venture investors of the last 40 years.
Michael joined Sequoia in 1986 and co-led the firm with Doug Leone (@dougleone) from 1995 to 2012. His investments include Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and Stripe.
His new book, Ausländer, traces his parents' escape from Nazi Germany and helps explain his lifelong interest in what shapes exceptional people.
We discuss:
- The infamous Steve Jobs profile
- Why Don Valentine hired him
- The question he finds most revealing when interviewing people
- Monomania and the cost of greatness
- Why he has never felt good at anything
- Writing, journalism and AI
- What he learned about himself writing Ausländer
I'd recommend watching this one if you can. Michael was incredibly thoughtful and reflective throughout, particularly when talking about his parents, childhood, and the more difficult parts of his personal story.
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:53 Family History & Identity
7:03 Survival & Outsider Instinct
18:53 Studying Exceptional People
33:50 Self-Doubt & Success
41:17 Steve Jobs & Obsession
52:50 Joining Sequoia
1:03:22 Leadership & Alex Ferguson
1:08:25 Elon Musk & AI
1:17:12 Becoming Who You Are
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
Hiring again at Autopilot
Looking to bring on a cracked video editor to help me make edits similar to this video
Some stats on the team you'd work with:
> 3.5M X followers
> 2M IG followers
> 500K tiktok followers
> 75M+ impressions/month
> $34M ARR
> Surplus of ideas to work on
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
I cannot stress how damaging it is to mental health to stay at home.
Do something, anything, but get out of the houses.
Weekends in particular are for doing stuff, going places.
Staying home tires you out and makes you anxious.
Climb a mountain or jump in a lake, anything.
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
How @RolandHorne turned, accidentally, a coffee shop into a $100 million empire.
0:00 The $100M headline and setting the record straight
1:16 From fish tanks to a coffee shop by accident
6:35 Cafe entrepreneur, not coffee entrepreneur
9:38 Building an authentic brand from a 200-year-old building
13:37 Hiring someone else to run day one
17:02 The minimum lovable product
21:24 Turning down £2 million
23:48 Raising capital just before Covid hit
26:30 Buying a dying chain and building the roastery
32:34 Racing the grave: mortality and urgency
37:33 Why crowdfunding beat a traditional VC raise
41:16 A second raise and the leap to New York
49:10 Running the business like an operating system
56:36 Watch House by the numbers and the franchise pivot
1:03:04 Blue Bottle, the Bezos rumor, and what it takes to win
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
The very first hire at Coinbase was a former lumberjack. That guy is a billionaire now:
Bogdan Ceobanu retweeted
The Greatest Man in History, Jesus. Had no servants yet they called him master.
Had no army yet Kings feared him.
Had no medicine yet they called him healer.
Had no degree yet they called him teacher.
Had no castle yet they called him Lord.
His Name is Jesus Christ 🎚️
