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🧠Are We Losing Our Minds (To AI)?

AI isn’t just changing the world it’s changing our brains, sometimes in ways we barely notice. As Greg Shove argued in a recent viral piece, today’s AI isn’t just another calculator or spell-checker. It’s a cognitive shortcut that can take over our thinking, memory, even creativity if we let it.

Recent studies from MIT have ignited public debate by claiming that overreliance on AI, like ChatGPT, can “rot” the brain. But what does that really mean?

In an episode of The Diary Of A CEO, Dr. Daniel Amen, renowned psychiatrist and brain health expert, and Dr. Terry Sejnowski, AI pioneer, broke down the science and the evolutionary reasons why our love for AI may come with unintended cognitive penalties.

Key points from the debate:

• Discomfort Is Growth: The "pain" of struggling with a task (remember learning to ride a bike, or grasping long division?) is fundamentally how our brains grow. AI, with its ability to instantly answer questions and finish our work, trains us to avoid even mild discomfort depriving our brains of essential growth signals.

• Creativity and Memory: The act of generating ideas, wrestling with uncertainty, and making mistakes is how we build lasting memories and creative capacity. Dr. Amen warns that when AI handles our brainstorming, outlining, and even minor decisions, our memory circuits literally weaken from lack of use.

• The Young Are Most Vulnerable: Kids and teens are still developing emotional resilience and executive function. Early overuse of tools like ChatGPT may set lifelong habits of passivity, shallow thinking, and stunted creativity.

The New Divide: Drivers vs. Passengers

As AI rapidly evolves, we’re splitting into two camps. One chooses to conduct their AIs using them as collaborative tools, questioning, shaping, and pushing back. The other lets AI make all the moves, becoming passive “passengers.” Research shows that in the short run, passengers may look just as productive. But over years, they risk invisible skill atrophy, memory problems, and ultimately, less original thought.

What Does Science Really Say?

• Cognitive Atrophy Is Real: MIT researchers found users of ChatGPT score lower on retention and creativity tasks, and even describe their own thinking as “rusty.”

• Critical Thinking Declines: Microsoft’s large-scale studies find knowledge workers who over-trust AI check work less, resulting in sloppier decisions over time.

• Confidence Traps: As Dr. Sejnowski notes, AI’s “fluent” language tricks our brains into overestimating the quality and accuracy of its output. The easier it gets to generate a draft or an answer, the more likely we are to skip the hard work of true understanding.

To Rot, or Not to Rot…

If we delegate all our thinking to machines, we risk not only losing our edge, but losing the very skills that make us human: creativity, memory, and resilience. AI is here to stay. The question is, will you use it to enhance your mind, or lose it?

AI INFRA SUMMIT / NOV7 / SAN FRANCISCO

Only the most agile, ecosystem-scale partnerships between founders, hyper-scalers, energy innovators, investors, and policymakers will win in this new race. The AI INFRA SUMMIT 4, taking place November 7 in San Francisco, is positioned as the only forum capable of convening this coalition and igniting the operational alliances required to build at speed and at scale.

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BA Startups Collectively Secured $1.85B this week

Bay Area startups closed on $1.85B in fundings in the fourth week of September, including five megadeals. The largest of the week was Kraken's $500M round, followed by Modular ($250M), Appzen ($180M), Distyl AI ($175M) and Empower Semiconductor ($140).

The Venture Market Report for Q2 & H1 2025 is now available for browsing or download. It focuses on startups in Silicon Valley and Northern California and provides an in-depth look at the state of our startup ecosystem. The data for the Venture Market Report comes directly from the Pulse of the Valley weekday newsletter and summarizes fundings by sector and series, acquisitions and IPOs (with details) plus new funds raised by investors and new VC firms launched. Check it out and sign up for a 1 week free trial of the Pulse if you'd like to get the data when it first comes out.

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Follow us on LinkedIn to stay on top of what's happening in 2025 in startup fundings, M&A and IPOs, VC fundraising plus new executive hires & investor moves.

Early Stage:

• Until Labs closed a $58M Series A, building reversible cryopreservation technology to solve the organ procurement and matching problem.

• Telo Trucks closed a $20M Series A, makes intelligently designed, compact electric vehicle trucks for city living and weekend adventuring. TELO Trucks is shrinking the mobility footprint.

• Hyperbound closed a $15M Series A, analyzes thousands of your sales calls, uncovers why your top reps win, and builds AI roleplays to help you quickly evolve and reinforce your playbooks.

• Belfort closed a $6M Seed, accelerates encrypted compute to make it practical at scale, ensuring data can be processed without ever being decrypted.

• MaxHome closed a $5M Seed, an AI-native platform designed specifically for residential real estate brokerages, automating transaction management, compliance, and agent workflows.

Growth Stage:

• Kraken closed a $500M Series Unknown, one of the world’s longest-standing and most secure crypto platforms globally.

• Modular closed a $250M Series B, makes a unifying software layer that helps cloud businesses maximize output of GPUs and CPUs, and a new coding language, based on Python, that lets developers use a single language to build AI apps that run across multiple GPUs and CPUs.

• Distyl AI closed a $175M Series B, our proprietary platform, Distillery, curates context from across the enterprise and adapts to each customer's needs, prioritizing the outcomes customers need to show impact in months, not years

• Empower Semiconductor closed a $140M Series D, powers the AI revolution with its FinFast™ technology by reducing the energy footprint and total cost of ownership of data centers.

• WeTravel closed a $92M Series C, our all-in-one platform powers the complete traveler journey, trusted by thousands of travel businesses worldwide.

Omni Ventures | The Manufacturing Tech VC

Overview

Omni Ventures is an early-stage venture firm focused exclusively on manufacturing tech. Based in San Francisco, they back startups that are redefining how the industrial world builds, moves, and scales from robotics and automation to supply chain platforms and software for manufacturers.

What Sets Omni Apart

• Operator-Led Approach: Omni’s team has built products and scaled companies themselves, helping founders bridge the gap from prototype to applied business.

• Deep Industrial Network: They connect startups to early customers, strategic partners, and advisors to accelerate traction.

• Hands-On Partnership: Omni positions itself as a day-one partner, supporting engineering, go-to-market, and capital strategy.

Ideal Founders

They look for technical founders solving real-world manufacturing and hardware problems, typically raising $2M or less in early rounds. They seek teams with 3+ years of experience in their industry who are ready to iterate quickly and move from idea to impact.

Portfolio Highlights

• Mimiq – Industrial IoT for tracking logistics chains with higher reliability and energy efficiency.

• Uptool – Vertical OS for modern machine shops, unifying workflows and boosting productivity.

• Rembrain, Polymath, AI-NC – Advancing AI/ML, CAD automation, and production-line optimization.

Omni Ventures is shaping the future of manufacturing tech by helping startups scale faster and smarter. Learn more about their thesis and portfolio here: omnivl.com

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Logan Lemery
Head of Content // Team Ignite

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