In Silicon Valley, venture capital (VC) once meant scouring garages and coffee shops for the next whiz kid with a napkin sketch of world domination. Today the pitch comes with polished decks and a pre-trained language model. If it can’t explain its AI advantage in 30 seconds, it rarely gets a second look.
Derek Idemoto, senior vice-president of corporate development at networking giant Cisco — who also heads up the Cisco Investments VC arm — has watched this shift from the front row. His portfolio spans more than 250 active investments...
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