Jack Altman, founder of the VC firm Alt Capital, is joining Benchmark as a general partner, the firm announced today. The move marks a significant shift in Altman's career, who has been running Alt Capital since at least 2024, and comes as the AI industry sees major developments.
Altman's Alt Capital, which invested in at least 52 companies including Rippling, Antares Nuclear, and CompLabs, raised a $150 million Fund I in early 2024 and a $274 million Fund II last September, raised in just a week, according to PitchBook and TechCrunch. On LinkedIn, Altman called the past two years running Alt Capital the most rewarding of his life, adding that he loved new ideas and being part of a team with a mission. It is unclear what will happen to Alt Capital or whether Benchmark has acquired its portfolio, as Altman also announced that his teammates from the fund will be.
In other news, the chatbot era may have just received its obituary, according to VentureBeat. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent, is joining OpenAI to "work on bringing agents to everyone." The OpenClaw project will transition to an independent foundation, though OpenAI is already sponsoring it and may have influence over its direction. This move represents OpenAI's most aggressive bet yet on the idea that the future of AI isn't about what models can say, but what they can do, according to VentureBeat.
Meanwhile, Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.6, a model that delivers near-flagship intelligence at mid-tier cost, according to VentureBeat. The model is a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. It features a 1M token context window in beta and is now the default model in claude.ai and Claude Cowork. Pricing holds steady at $315 per million tokens, the same as its predecessor, Sonnet 4.5.
In the tech world, Apple's latest laptops are all receiving some kind of discount right now, as is the Mac Mini, according to The Verge.
The shift to remote work has also spurred innovation in communication technologies. "Audio and video just working is a baseline for collaboration," says Brendan Ittelson, chief ecosystem officer at Zoom, according to MIT Technology Review.
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