Essay · 18 min read

Generative AI's Act o1: The Reasoning Era Begins

Sonya Huang and Pat Grady · Sequoia Capital Free Advanced

To spot what is newly possible you need to know what the models can suddenly do that they could not before, and this essay maps the jump to reasoning and agentic capability. It points at the killer apps and new interfaces that jump unlocks. Read it to update your sense of the frontier so you are hunting for ideas that need the latest capability, not last year's.

  • Reasoning models open jobs that pure chat could not touch
  • New capability creates a short window of open opportunity
  • The interface and workflow around the model is where apps win

The question it answers

  1. How do I spot an idea that AI just made possible that was not viable two years ago?

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