Technology

When it comes to large format displays, 75-inch screens have found a happy middle ground between size and affordability.

The price premium between a 60-inch and 75-inch model from the same cohort can be as little as 100 percent - not bad for 20 percent extra diagonal inches. The price difference between 75-inch and 80-inch is often triple or more.

Tw

A few days ago, Andreessen HorowitzMartin Casado and Matt Bornstein published an interesting piece digging into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) startups, and, more specifically, how those companies perform as businesses. Core to the argument presented is that while founders and investors are wagering &that AI businesses will resemble traditional software companies,& the well-known venture firm is ¬ so sure.&

Given that TechCrunch cares a lot about startup business fundamentals, the notion that one oft-discussed and well-funded category of venture-backed startup might sport materially less attractive economics than we expected captured our attention.

The Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) perspective is straightforward, arguing that AI-focused companies have lesser gross margins than software companies due to cloud compute and human-input costs, endure issues stemming from &edge-cases& and enjoy less product differentiation from competing companies when compared to software concerns. Today, we&re drilling into the gross margin point, as itsomething inherently numerical that we can get other, informed market participants to weigh in on.

If a16z is correct about AI startups having slimmer gross margins than SaaS companies, they should — all other things held equal — be worth less per dollar of revenue generated; or in simpler terms, they should trade at a revenue multiple discount to SaaS companies, leaving the latter category of technology company still atop the valuation hierarchy.

This matters, given the amount of capital that AI-focused startups have raised.

Is a16z correct about AI gross margins? I wanted to find out. So this week I spoke to a number of investors from firms that have made AI-focused bets to get a handle on their views. Read the full a16z piece, mind. Itinteresting and worth your time.

Today we&re hearing from Rohit Sharma of True Ventures, Jeremy Kaufmann of Scale Venture Partners, Nick Washburn of Intel Capitaland Ben Blume of Atomico. We&ll start with a digest of their responses to our questions, with their unedited notes at the end.

AI economics and optimism

We asked our group of venture investors(selected with the help of research from TechCrunchArman Tabatabai) three questions. The first dealt with margins themselves, the second dealt with resulting valuations and, finally, we asked about their current optimism interval regarding AI-focused companies.

Hot Wheels will ship you a Cybertruck long before Tesla is likely to make any deliveries on their electric retro-future wheeled trapezoid: The toy maker just unveiled two different RC Cybertruck models, including a 1:64 scale model at just $20, and a much larger 1:10 scale version for $400.

These are available to pre-order now, but like most of Teslacars, just because they&re introduced doesn&t mean you can go out and buy one immediately. They&re set to ship in time for the holidays, however, with a December 15, 2020 estimated availability date, according to the Hot Wheels website.

These look like very faithful representations of the Cybertruck that Tesla unveiled at a special event back in November, and the large version includes a &reusable cracked window vinyl sticker& that you can use to recreate the onstage flub that happened at the actual reveal. You&ll have to supply your own large metal medicine ball.

[gallery ids="1949609,1949608,1949607,1949606,1949605,1949604,1949602"]

Other features of the 1:10 scale Cybertruck include functioning headlights and taillights, all-wheel drive, true to form &Chill& and &Sport& modes, a removable tonneau cover, a working telescopic tailgate and more.

The smaller and much more affordable version is just three inches long, which is basically what you&d expect from a traditional Hot Wheels mini model, and it can achieve an &up to 500mph scale speed,& which someone who is better than me at math can figure out what that translates to.

These are available to people in the U.S. and Canada, but I expect them to be pretty hot sellers based on the general fervor and interest around all things Cybertruck to date.