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Ben Lamm (left) and John Carmack [Photos: Venture Dallas]<\/p>\n
Noted programmer and AI entrepreneur John Carmack, the founder of Keen Technologies, and biotech innovator Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, will take the stage together at the fifth annual Venture Dallas conference to discuss artificial general intelligence (AGI) and de-extinction\u2014two ambitious frontiers in technology.<\/strong><\/p>\n The conference will be held Oct. 30 at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and will assemble more than 500 entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders for a day of transformative ideas and connections, Venture Dallas said.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn Carmack and Ben Lamm are category creators at the frontier of AGI and biotech, bringing the boldest visions yet to Venture Dallas,\u201d Bryan Chambers, president of Capital Factory and co-founder of Venture Dallas, said in a statement. \u201cIf AGI is built here, Dallas will set the pace for the world\u2019s tech economy. John Carmack and Keen Technologies are Capital Factory\u2019s moonshot investment in AGI.\u201d<\/p>\n Venture Dallas noted that Carmack, co-founder of id Software and a pioneer behind Doom and Quake, helped create the modern video game industry before redefining virtual reality as chief technology officer of Oculus. In 2022, Carmack founded Keen Technologies in Dallas with backing from Sequoia Capital, Capital Factory, and others. According to Venture Dallas, Carmack, partnering with reinforcement-learning pioneer Dr. Richard S. Sutton, has built a team of leading AI researchers dedicated to developing AGI.<\/p>\n Dallas Innovates profiled Carmack and explored his quest for AGI in this 2023 story<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lamm is a serial entrepreneur who launched multiple high-growth ventures including Hypergiant and now leads Colossal Biosciences<\/a>, Texas\u2019 first decacorn, valued at more than $10 billion. Colossal was co-founded with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church and is advancing species revival projects for the woolly mammoth, thylacine, and dodo, with the broader mission of restoring ecosystems and supporting planetary preservation.<\/p>\n The company has raised more than $435 million and launched spinouts including Form Bio<\/a>, a computational life sciences platform.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s speaker lineup also includes venture capital leader Tim Draper<\/a>\u2014whose early bets include Hotmail, Tesla, Ring, DocuSign, Coinbase, and Twitch\u2014and Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of the National Venture Capital Association<\/a>, with more speaker announcements to come.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t miss what\u2019s next. Subscribe\u00a0to\u00a0Dallas\u00a0Innovates.<\/p>\n Track Dallas-Fort Worth\u2019s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \tR E A D\u00a0\u00a0 N E X T\t<\/p>\n North Texas has plenty to see, hear, and watch.\u00a0Here are our editors’ picks. Plus, you’ll find more selections to “save the date.”<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Palo Alto, California-based Fiddler AI said its $18.6 million Series B extension brings the round’s total funding to $50 million. The company said the funds will help it “continue to build momentum in AI observability and AI safety.”<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Data scientist Anmolika Singh put Dallas on the global AI Tinkerers map. At the first meetup, more than 30 pros\u2014founders to Fortune 500 technologists\u2014showed up to trade ideas, projects, and solutions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n The\u00a0BMW Dallas Marathon is gearing up for its 2025 race weekend, to be held in a long, winding course around White Rock Lake December 12\u201314. One way it’s doing that is by unveiling “a bold new logo” featuring a modern take on the Pegasus\u2014Dallas’ celebrated icon\u2014stretching its neck out toward victory. Along with a refreshed merchandise collection, the updated visual identity “reflects the organization\u2019s evolution as a premier running event and its deep connection to the Dallas community,” organizers said.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n UT Dallas researcher Dr. Walter Voit transformed Minecraft\u2019s 170-million-player universe into an advanced virtual training ground\u2014for students and for AI agents tested by DARPA. His team\u2019s Polycraft World uses gameplay to turn classroom theory into real-world expertise, covering topics from synthetic organic chemistry to nuclear plants to semiconductor facilities. Their new startup company, Pedegree Studios, has licensed the core technologies from the university to create a scalable digital pipeline for education and workforce development.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Lamm (left) and John Carmack [Photos: Venture Dallas] Noted programmer and AI entrepreneur John Carmack, the founder…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,24609,17217,101293,101294,17219,1596,34130,1868,101295,101296,101297,38761,358,101298,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,39747,101299],"class_list":{"0":"post-179065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-artificial-general-intelligence","10":"tag-ben-lamm","11":"tag-bryan-chambers","12":"tag-capital-factory","13":"tag-colossal-biosciences","14":"tag-dallas","15":"tag-de-extinction","16":"tag-dod","17":"tag-george-w-bush-presidential-center","18":"tag-id-software","19":"tag-john-carmack","20":"tag-sequoia-capital","21":"tag-texas","22":"tag-thylocine","23":"tag-tx","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa","30":"tag-venture-dallas","31":"tag-venture-dallas-conference"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115099388335694827","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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