Co founder @valthostech | Partner @Lux_Capital
Joined September 2020
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More capable models will introduce increased biological risk. The magnitude is fiercely debated, the direction is not.
We need more resilient biodefense.
The best way to build safe AI, is secure the risks it creates with defensive capabilities faster than they can proliferate.
As AI becomes more capable at finding vulnerabilities, defenders need to put it to work before attackers do.
We’re planning our next internal security sprint at OpenAI and partnering with Cathedral Systems, whose researchers will use our models alongside our teams to challenge our defenses. They’ll bring differentiated expertise and approaches to our ongoing work to find and fix weaknesses with AI.
We’re also raising bug bounty rewards, including more than quadrupling rewards for critical findings. Exceptional findings will be eligible for up to $172,000, including bonuses.
We’ll keep advancing our models, using them to strengthen our own systems, and expanding access for trusted defenders.
openai.com/index/preparing-o…
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
anthropic is massively underplaying the recent security breach. i'm hearing cathedral achieved full administrator access of the slack workspace (see every message, log in as arbitrary users) where literally every single research secret is contained
to those unfamiliar: Ant & OAI keep literally everything in Slack. it sounds exactly the same incident that happened to OpenAI in 2023, where OpenAI was hacked by a random guy who got access to an access token from an external app service
"we're critical to national security, we must beat China, and yes we keep all our crown jewels in Salesforce's Slack messenger. yes we have admin API tokens everywhere. why do you ask?"
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Excited to lead Series A in @lumaril 🔥
AI for physical production by one of the best teams from @PalantirTech
Today we’re launching Lumaril.
We’re an industrial autonomy company helping America’s existing factories run at their true capacity, with more production and less waste.
The US is home to hundreds of thousands of plants, run by senior operators with decades of tacit knowledge. Much of it is unwritten, and a growing wave of retirements is taking it out the door.
If we let these facilities go dark, we don't just lose great companies and the towns that depend on them. We lose the living blueprints for making the goods and materials this country can’t afford to do without.
Reindustrialization won’t come from new factories alone. The plants we already have are great American businesses, built over generations, with enormous potential to grow. We believe helping them scale is the fastest path to restoring industrial capacity.
AI should help us make more things.
Mark (@_markelliot) and Ben (@bbavardage) are legends at Palantir.
I worked closely with Ben in the early days of Valthos while they were getting Lumaril started. His reputation is deserved.
Honored for @Lux_Capital to co-lead the seed!
Today we’re launching Lumaril.
We’re an industrial autonomy company helping America’s existing factories run at their true capacity, with more production and less waste.
The US is home to hundreds of thousands of plants, run by senior operators with decades of tacit knowledge. Much of it is unwritten, and a growing wave of retirements is taking it out the door.
If we let these facilities go dark, we don't just lose great companies and the towns that depend on them. We lose the living blueprints for making the goods and materials this country can’t afford to do without.
Reindustrialization won’t come from new factories alone. The plants we already have are great American businesses, built over generations, with enormous potential to grow. We believe helping them scale is the fastest path to restoring industrial capacity.
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Today, we're announcing that Nominal was selected for a $71.2M STRATFI.
All Aircraft Nominal. nominal.io/blog/stratfi
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
fact check: even truer
rumor is Cathedral got a lot of Slack, maybe all of research. what the fuck are we doing guys
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
I realize that Cathedral (the vulnerability researchers) didn't access Anthropic's weights or customer data, but there is no question that Anthropic has a ton of immensely sensitive information about model architecture research strategy etc in their Slack.
Between this event and white hat researchers gaining access to OpenAI's mono-repo, the argument that we need to breakneck race to beat China looks more than a bit off when it seems like China will currently just be able to just take the fruits of research (and these small white hat teams are so much less capable than Chinese state backed hackers).
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Applied Intuition has been awarded a contract by the @USNavy to scale Data Engine across its fleet.
As the infrastructure layer for maritime autonomy, Data Engine collects operational data through passive navigation capabilities installed on Navy ships.
Here’s how the loop works:
🔵 Collect data from ships at sea
🔵 Curate it and train perception models
🔵 Evaluate the models
🔵 Deploy them back to vessels over the air
The result is what one ship learns now reaches the entire fleet – a threat encountered by a single vessel is turned into an improved model and deployed over the air, so every ship can detect it.
Our goal is for each military service to run its own Data Engine, tailored to its domain and feeding into a common infrastructure.
Learn more about our work with the U.S. Navy here:
appliedintuition.com/blog/na…
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Every time I talk to @breeves08 and @velvetatom, I realize that they are the best in the business and we have to get them maximally involved.
They have been amazing partners since the seed, and we could not be more excited to have them colead the Series A.
Thanks to the whole @Lux_Capital team and so psyched for what's to come!
Every so often, you meet a team that changes your expectations of what’s possible. Ben, Asher, Aidan, and the team at @flappyairplanes are exactly that.
They have brought together a very special group of people (with an average age of 24!) to go after one of the most important challenges in AI: reimagining how machines learn and how we unlock the full potential of our compute.
Proud to partner with this exceptional team as they fundamentally change how intelligence gets built.
Honored to deepen our partnership with the Flappy family, and for @Lux_Capital to co-lead this next chapter in unlocking radical breakthroughs in efficiency of intelligence.
It has been a pleasure getting to know @spectorb @amspector100 & @aidanmantine more deeply, and witnessing them continue to raise their level of ambition every time we meet.
Congrats @jaimalik Lux family co @AmcaInc & @USArmy on teaming up to strengthening our capacity for critical components.
Amca has been awarded a contract by the @USArmy, establishing an enterprise-wide partnership with Army Materiel Command for rapid engineering, qualification, and component production.
This is the first partnership of its kind, designed to increase readiness for a priority missile system by re-engineering and improving manufacturability of critical components and subsystems.
We're grateful for the Army’s trust, urgency, and leadership, and look forward to re-engineering American industry together.
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
S-F Magazine was launched in 1959 by Hayakawa Publishing, making it Japan’s first and longest-running science fiction magazine. It became a central platform for both Japanese and international writers, introducing readers to the works of Asimov, Clarke, Le Guin, and Sterling, while also nurturing homegrown voices.
By the 1980s, the magazine leaned heavily into striking covers that matched the speculative futures within its pages. In 1986, S-F Magazine dedicated a special feature to Mead, showcasing his work as both exhibition and visual benchmark for science fiction in Japan. His covers didn’t just illustrate science fiction, they defined what the future looked like to a Japanese readership at the height of techno-optimism.
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
A 3rd dimension to the AI-enabled bio debate: How AI can also develop countermeasures, detect threats, and develop tools to (try and) stop an outbreak in the first critical hours.
For BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, I interviewed computational neuroscientist Tess van Stekelenburg. This is her take on where we are now.
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
One funny part about how DC works is that government often reaches for off the shelf policy in moments of crisis
So it stands to reason that Washington will likely discover an enormous appetite for biodefense immediately after a potential biological attack
But today, the only available policy solution is restricting AI, which is far easier than deploying biodefenses post hoc
We should probably have more options — and certainly more effective ones — ready before then
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Believe before others understand.
And keep believing….
Six investments in, including leading two rounds, our conviction in Cognition has only grown.
@ScottWu46 @russelljkaplan @stevenkplus1 @walden_yan are building one of the most consequential companies in the AI era. They’re going after a trillion-dollar opportunity with unmatched talent, speed, and ambition to define the future of software.
The world needs more Devin.
Tess van Stekelenburg retweeted
Last night, @isaraerospace achieved the first launch to orbit from continental Europe.
The Spectrum launcher lifted off from Andøya Spaceport in Norway at 21:12 BST/22:12 CEST.
Isar Aerospace is the first to reach orbit under @ESA_transport's European Launcher Challenge. Congratulations to all involved!
More 👉 esa.int/Enabling_Support/Spa…
📷 Isar Aerospace
ALT Rocket launch at dusk, leaving a bright curved trail across the sky above a coastal landscape and calm sea.