

AI Infra Hot Coffee, Hot Takes | OpenAI Dev Day Edition SF
We're putting the hottest controversial takes in front of a room and letting them go at it. No slides, no panel of five people politely agreeing. Hard questions from the audience required. In the end you vote for the most fire take of the morning.
The lineup:
Kevin Whinnery, DevX Engineer, OpenAI
Tim Chen, General Partner, Essence VC
Ashley Smith, Founder and General Partner, Vermilion Cliffs Ventures
Cole Gawin, CTO and Co-founder, Lemma
Christian Ondaatje, Co-founder + CEO, Aranya
Boris Tane, Founder and CEO, Polylane
Ian Livingstone, Co-founder and CEO, Keycard
Allie Howe, Technical Staff, Keycard
Grace Gong, Founder, Smart Venture Media
Drinks, debate, and the people building AI infrastructure underneath all of this. Agents, runtime, evals, observability, identity, security, whatever nobody has standardized yet.
Vermilion Cliffs Ventures writes early checks into AI infra, so if you're building in that neighborhood, come find us.
Entrepreneurs First (EF) turns exceptional individuals into funded founders. Some might have an early idea, others may need a cofounder. What matters is their potential. We back these founders first, then give them a bridge to Silicon Valley. To date, their companies are worth > $16B.