This Week’s Top Talent Pools

Perplexity, the AI search and agent platform, is reportedly in talks with Nvidia over a new investment that would value the company at more than $30B, up from the $23B valuation set in its January round. The discussions also include a potential technology-licensing agreement between the companies. Perplexity now reports $750M+ in annualized revenue, roughly tripling from under $250M at the start of the year. The talks remain unconfirmed and no round size has been disclosed.

  1. Colin Dunn in SF (Founder @ Superstructure)

    1. Role: Head of Design, Computer @ Perplexity (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ Visual Electric ($5M from Sequoia —> acquired by Perplexity), Head of Design @ Universe, Product Designer @ Dropbox, Product Designer @ Facebook

    3. Description: Left Perplexity 4/26

  2. Alex Graveley in SF (CTO @ ufo.ai)

    1. Role: Director, Computer @ Perplexity (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Chief Architect, GitHub Copilot @ GitHub, Engineering @ Dropbox, Co-Founder & CEO @ Hackpad (YC W12; acq by Dropbox), Senior MTS @ VMware

    3. Description: Stealth since 8/26

  3. Marshall K. in US (Co-Founder @ ufo.ai)

    1. Role: MTS @ Perplexity (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Engineer @ Notable ($119M from Greylock, ICONIQ, Oak HC/FT), Princeton PhD Quantitative & Computational Biology

    3. Description: Left Perplexity 6/26

  4. Minh Pham in SF Bay Area (Founder & CEO @ Continuous)

    1. Role: Head of AI Agent Infra @ Perplexity (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ Invisible (acq by Perplexity 8/25), Infrastructure Lead @ CloudKitchens, Mobile Platform Lead @ Uber, Mobile Architect @ Amazon

    3. Description: Stealth since 5/26

    4. Contact: Twitter

  5. Stacy Galgashova in SF Bay Area (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Program Manager, Special Projects @ Perplexity (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & COO @ LegionFarm ($17M from Kismet Capital, YC)

    3. Description: Left Perplexity 1/26 with no updates

  6. Nikash Sethi in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 1st Growth Eng & MTS @ Perplexity (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Scale AI

    3. Description: Left Perplexity 8/26 with no updates

  7. Arsen Ohanyan in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 1st Eng & MTS @ Perplexity (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Palantir, SWE Intern @ Amazon

    3. Description: Left Perplexity 8/23 with no updates

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, is reportedly raising $10B at a $130B valuation led by Coatue — its first outside funding round ever.

  1. Glenn Case in Atlanta (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Propulsion Design and Development Eng @ Blue Origin (4.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founder & CTO @ Hermeus ($500M+ from Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, RTX Ventures; $1B valuation), Director of Propulsion and Structures @ Generation Orbit, Co-Founder @ Responsive Launch Systems, Purdue MEng

    3. Description: Left Hermeus on 10/25

  2. Lauren Lyons in LA (Stealth)

    1. Role: Lead Systems Engineer & Program SEIT Lead @ Blue Origin (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: COO @ Firefly Aerospace (IPO'd on Nasdaq 8/25 at $8.5B), Dragon Chief Engineer @ SpaceX, Founder @ BetaDater, Princeton, Harvard Kennedy School

    3. Description: "Space. Los Angeles ↔ France."

    4. Contact: Site, Twitter

  3. Keith Rosema in Seattle (Founder @ nvaluabl)

    1. Role: 1 of 5 original FTEs & MTS @ Blue Origin (5.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Partner @ Madrona Venture Labs, Co-Founder @ Disappearing Inc (KP-backed → acq by Liquid Computing), Sr. Computer Scientist @ NASA JPL, Caltech

    3. Description: “The AI native operating system for product development. Make better decisions, faster, from idea to launch.”

Hugging Face, the open-source AI hub where developers share and download models, has reportedly agreed to be acquired by Nvidia for $12.9B, per The Information — with Business Insider reporting the figure at more than $13B and the agreement not yet signed. The company last raised $235M at a $4.5B valuation in its August 2023 Series D, led by Salesforce Ventures with Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and IBM participating — so the deal is roughly a 3x markup in three years. Nvidia was an investor in that round. Business Insider reports Hugging Face previously held talks with Microsoft.

  1. Amanpreet Singh in SF Bay Area (Stealth)

    1. Role: Research Team Lead @ Hugging Face (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Contextual AI ($80M from Greycroft, Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed), Staff Research Engineer @ Facebook AI

    3. Description: Stealth since 8/25

  2. Victor Sanh in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: Lead Research Scientist, founding crew @ Hugging Face (6 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: AI builder @ H Company

    3. Description: Stealth since 4/25

  3. Léo Tronchon in Paris (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: ML Research Engineer, Research Scientist Intern @ Hugging Face (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Research Engineer @ UMA ($40M from Greycroft, Kima Ventures), Core Team Researcher @ H Company, ENS Paris-Saclay, McGill

    3. Description: Left UMA 5/26

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