AI, Startups, & Competition: Shaping California’s Tech Future

Hey guys, please find your seats. We're going to get started. It's great to see you all! We have a very exciting topic today with some very exciting speakers. I'm so excited to be here with you to talk about AI competition and startups.

Before I recognize our speakers and special guests from Washington, I want to tell you a little bit about why we're here and YC's public policy program. Last October, we hired Luther Low to be YC's first head of public policy. Where is he? All right, you'll hear more from him later.

Why does YC have to have—like, why should YC have a DC presence? It's pretty simple. For the longest time, only the largest players in the tech ecosystem have had a seat at the table. But to paraphrase Pericles, you may not be paying attention to politics, but politics is paying attention to you. YC wants to fight for little tech in Washington and make sure all of you have a seat at the table.

One of the most interesting spaces where we're seeing a lot of fierce competition is at the model layer of AI. Today, we're going to be speaking with the top antitrust enforcers, whose job it is to keep the markets free and fair. Joining us from Washington are FTC Chair Lena Khan and DOJ Antitrust head Jonathan Kanter.

These two are probably best known as Joe Biden's trustbusters and lead antitrust enforcement for the FTC and DOJ. Combined, they oversee literally thousands of attorneys and nearly a billion dollars per year of budget. And of course, we will end things with a fireside chat with our very own State Senator Scott Wiener.

We also have some important partners I want to recognize for this event, including the Omar Network, Electronic Freedom Foundation, and Mozilla, who will be on a panel later. And finally, it wouldn't be a YC event if we weren't ultimately bringing it back to our founders.

So in between these presentations, we'll actually have amazing demos, exhibiting some of the incredible stuff that you all are building as we stand at the forefront of the AI revolution. Understanding the regulatory landscape is crucial for every founder in this room, and that's why I'm thrilled to introduce our next speaker, Jonathan Kanter.

As Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division at the US Department of Justice, he is at the center of shaping how AI will be regulated and how competition in this space will unfold. He's currently overseeing major antitrust cases that could significantly impact the AI ecosystem. His insights on antitrust concerns in AI, data monopolies, and fostering fair competition in this rapidly evolving field will be invaluable as you build and scale your AI startups.

So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Jonathan Kanter to discuss the future of AI regulation and competition.

Thank you, Gary, and thank you to YC and Marzil, our hosts for today. I'm thrilled to be here. I have some prepared remarks, and I'll deliver them, but I think it's important for me to start really from the heart, which is I'm an antitrust enforcer.

What does that mean? What does that mean about the work that you do? I want to be very clear about this: our goal is to make sure that you can build businesses that succeed, that thrive, and that take on new ideas, new problems, and solve them, right? Antitrust enforcement is about making sure that there is opportunity for people to have great ideas, to build funding around those ideas, and to succeed.

That's our goal. Our goal is to make sure that the markets and the marketplace have room for all the people who are building businesses, for all the people who are starting up companies, for all the people who are daring to take on incumbents and build new products and services that are disruptive. That's successful, and in a nutshell, that's what we're doing.

That's why we're here. It's no secret that AI is creating a transformative moment. It's wonderful! Technological revolutions are inflection points that lead to major change and major opportunity. It is an invitation for new technology and technological innovations and platforms are an invitation for people...