Cory Virok

MIT dropped a report that’s shook some enterprise AI folks…Forbes was hustling last night to cover it, and I shared as many thoughts as I could. Here’s what matters: We’ve been saying enterprise AI fails because it’s “confidently wrong”. Now MIT has the data to back it up: 95% of AI pilots deliver zero ROI. That stat validates what PromptQL has been solving for quietly and steadily over the last 2 years — the reliability gap in enterprise AI connected to data. The problem isn’t what most people think. And the solution isn’t what most companies are building. Here’s the real insight that didn’t make it into the article: Most enterprises are asking the wrong question. They ask “Is our AI smart enough?” when they should ask “Would our AI hold up under oath?” Because every AI answer is testimony. In finance, healthcare, and government, if your AI can’t show its sources and reasoning like evidence in court, it’s not enterprise-ready. It’s just an expensive demo. Full Forbes piece on PromptQL here: https://lnkd.in/ggjDJSzH

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Today, we’re thrilled to publicly launch Phoebe and announce $17M in seed funding, in rounds led by GV and Cherry Ventures. We are building the immune system for software: An AI agent platform that continuously investigates live data, diagnoses emerging issues and generates preemptive fixes. As AI accelerates how software is built, reliability must keep pace. Phoebe started with faster troubleshooting, and our aim is to prevent the overwhelming majority of emergent problems before becoming customer-impacting failures. Huge thanks to the hundreds of early users at customers such as Trainline and PPRO. Thanks to our investors, including 20 CTOs and tech veterans joining as angels. And of course, thanks to the small and mighty Phoebe team! This is just the beginning! 🚀 Shoutout to Mark Kleinman at Sky News for breaking the news this morning (linked in the comments) Some of the many backers we're grateful for 🤗 🙏 GV (Google Ventures), Cherry Ventures, Anthony Danon, Carmen Alfonso Rico 🍫, William Gaybrick, Shola Akinlade, Yaron Shaer, Christian Dorffer, Tom Stafford, Thomas Wolf, Andrew Tan, Victor Riparbelli, Harsh Sinha, Jeanne DeWitt Grosser and more

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Today in “Scott Learns How Silicon Valley Works”: I’ve apparently been quoting ARR wrong this whole time. At Metronome we run a usage-based business. Customers sign up for committed contracts, find value, expand, and then negotiate new ones. It’s a virtuous cycle of NRR growth. To stay disciplined, we usually talk about cARR - the literal book value of our signed contracts. It’s conservative by design. But here’s the truth: most customers expand well beyond that number, often for multiple years. The confusion: I recently told an investor, “Our cARR is $X.” They assumed that meant a run-rate from last month’s revenue - and mentally discounted it by 50%. In reality, history says that $X in cARR is more likely to yield ~150% of X in actual revenue. A 3x swing, all in the framing. That’s just part of the fun (and pain) of building usage-based businesses: explaining why NRR, not ARR, is the real determining force. If you’re wrestling with usage-based monetization, let us know - we’ve had to learn this the hard way.

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