TechCrunch+ roundup: Beyond the Turing test, 3 VCs on SVB, usage-based pricing tactics

When I moved to San Francisco, the quirky rotunda at 532 Market Street was a Sharper Image store full of plasma balls and tourists trying out massage chairs.

The ETrade branch that took over the space closed a few years ago, but last August, it got a new tenant: Silicon Valley Bank. Sigh.

Downtown SF hasn't bounced back from the pandemic, but this is a prime location with lots of foot traffic. Hopefully, after Silicon Valley Bridge Bank winds up its operations, a viable business will move in.

But that's just one street corner. The second-largest bank failure in U.S. history is going to reshape the startup ecosystem for years to come.

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Silicon Valley Bank was more than just a preferred choice for managing payroll and investor cash: It also offered wealth management services and below-market-rate home loans and helped coordinate private stock sales. It was also a required choice for many clients whose contracts required them to "use the firm for all or most of their banking services," CNBC reported.

So where does this bank's collapse leave the tech industry? Who's most vulnerable, who stands to benefit, and what are some of the long-term implications for VC? To learn more, Karan Bhasin and Ram Iyer interviewed:

• Maëlle Gavet, CEO, Techstars

• Niko Bonatsos, managing director, General Catalyst

• Colin Beirne, partner, Two Sigma Ventures

"We’re probably going to see consolidation in the VC class," said Gavet.

"It was already on the way, but this is probably going to accelerate it, because SVB was also a preeminent provider of loans for GPs to make their capital commitment polls."

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

The AI revolution has outgrown the Turing test: Introducing a new framework

Image Credits: themacx / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

A friend recently asked me to identify a block of ChatGPT text that they'd embedded in an email. I was able to easily, but only because the passage was particularly boring and didn't sound like them at all.

Although generative AI is exceeding my expectations, the Turing test is mostly intact in my personal experience. But for how much longer?

Entrepreneur/investor Chris Saad says we need a new benchmark that goes beyond Turing's "simplistic pass/fail basis," which is why he developed "a new approach to evaluating AI capabilities based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences."