Why They Raised.
Why They're Known.
What this is
We mapped 420 successful people in the Core AI industry and 1,700+ public ties between them. Then we analyzed how they broke in, built trust, raised capital, and became powerful. The patterns are below. The interactive map and book turn those patterns into something you can explore.
From the book: 4 of 30+ patterns
- Google and DeepMind alumni appear as founders or key leaders at an unusual share of frontier AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Inflection, Character, and Cohere.
- The 8 authors of the Transformer paper went on to found, co-found, or lead at least 6 different AI companies.
- Several of the largest AI funding rounds went to teams with zero revenue but deep prior institutional trust. The map shows which trust chains predicted those rounds.
- People who break into AI from outside the core circle almost always enter through a "wedge": a public artifact, domain advantage, or problem insiders haven't solved.
The book covers 30+ patterns on AI careers, funding, and power.
Explore the full map and book
Search 420+ people. See how they're connected. Read the 30+ patterns behind AI careers, funding, and power.