Deep Tech Startups in the Age of AI by Fifty Years

​Most founders fail before they even start by picking the wrong idea. In this talk, Scott Phoenix, Partner at Fifty Years and former co-founder and CEO of Vicarious AI (acquired by Alphabet in 2022), shares his insights on choosing what to build as we race toward AGI.

​Scott raised ~$250M for Vicarious, one of the first successful AI startups before selling it to Alphabet and Google DeepMind. He has published peer-reviewed research in Science, ICML, and NeurlP, designed award winning digital art and games, and authored multiple patents, while serving as an investor and advisor to many unicorns and deep tech startups.

​Come Learn:
- What becomes exponentially more valuable on the path to AGI (and what becomes worthless)
- The physical constraints and bottlenecks that will define our thriving future
- How to identify ideas worth a decade of your life
- Why most AI startups are building the wrong thing

​Come for Scott's unfiltered take on the opportunities that matter as we approach the hinge of history. Whether you're validating an idea or just curious about deep tech entrepreneurship, see you at CMU!

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​At Fifty Years, we’ve built deep tech companies ourselves. We’ve backed over 100 deep tech companies from the earliest stages and helped them raise over $4.6 billion. This includes companies like Solugen (makes carbon-negative chemicals, now a $2B company), Astranis (delivering internet to billions of people via satellites, now a $1.4B company), and Opentrons (low-cost lab robots, now a $1.8B company).

​We've distilled everything we know about deep tech entrepreneurship into 5050, a free program to help great scientists and engineers become great founders.

​Applications for our next cohort are open: https://fiftyyears.com/5050

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​This event is co-hosted in partnership with the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, focused on catalyzing the Carnegie Mellon University entrepreneurship ecosystem.