Two weeks in SF: fundraising goes binary, top devs now review agents not code
ai · x · 2026-10-21
After two weeks talking to builders, investors, developers and locals in San Francisco, the author shares several observations:
- Fundraising is increasingly binary: investors want either exceptional growth or a team tackling something really hard; raising on an "AI for X" pitch alone is over.
- The best developers barely look at code anymore: they write spec docs, orchestrate multiple coding agents, and spend their time reviewing outcomes rather than implementation. The bottleneck is shifting from generating code to verifying correctness and security.
- Agent security is now a serious priority: at several security events, CISOs of larger companies are actively thinking about what happens when AI agents get access to sensitive data, systems and permissions.
- Robotics was an incredibly hot topic last quarter.
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