“The flood is coming, yet many are still living in a 'quiet years' illusion.” —— Yuandong Tian, Former Research Director at Meta AI On February 28, 2026, Qinyun Cao, host of Silicon Valley Coordinates, interviewed Yuandong Tian in Silicon Valley. Having spent 11 years at Meta, Tian led pioneering research in reinforcement learning, LLM reasoning, and long context. He recently embarked on a new entrepreneurial journey as a Co-founder. This conversation covers LLM competition,

Over the past year, many SaaS companies have experienced a counter-intuitive phenomenon: while retention metrics (GRR/NRR) don’t appear to be collapsing, the market is still pricing "future growth" at significantly lower multiples. This feels less like a market crash and more like a discount on growth certainty. Since the emergence of AI, investors have arrived at a very different set of answers regarding how software will continue to scale in the future. "Workflow Differenti

Another noteworthy signal comes from the vertical sector: Basis , an AI agent platform tailored for accounting firms, has announced a $100M funding round at a $1.15B valuation to accelerate product development and team expansion. The platform focuses on using agents to automate structured accounting workflows—including tax, audit, and advisory services—by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) with rule-based controls, audit trails, and compliance frameworks, all while mai