The Tech Funding Rout Hasn't Stopped The Miami Party

Miami Tech Week is a mix of talks, networking events and explosive parties. These events have drawn thousands of investors and tech workers to the soft space, which has cemented an unusual place in the startup ecosystem despite recent pressures against local venture capital funding.

In response to the crisis, many tech workers in Miami shifted their focus. This year's Tech Week events focused less on crypto and nesling tokens than on artificial intelligence. Other topics featured include defense, equipment, and manufacturing-related technology.

“Last year there were meetings every night at the NFT art gallery and everyone would stand and stare at the monkey holograms. It was terrible," said Jai Malik, senior partner at Countdown Capital, which backs startups focused on the physical world. "Cryptocurrencies aren't even mentioned this year. These are all hard technologies.

Organized by venture capital firm Craft Ventures, the themes were as serious as the casual wear, with the crowd showing off bikinis and loungewear. KI's founders spoke to venture capitalists on stage on the first floor of the annex, which once served as the Solana Embassy, ​​an FTX-funded shop and educational space that now sells eco-friendly clothing. Participants discussed artificial intelligence in the context of war, competition with China, and the possibility of dystopian artificial intelligence scenarios.

Equally important topics dominated the event organized by the Peter Thiel Founders Foundation at the Faena Forum. The managers of Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation are there. and Janet Petra, director of defense startup Anduril and NASA's Kennedy Space Center. One of the topics was collaboration between the private technology sector and government. Matt Steckman, Anduril's chief revenue officer, described the collaboration as "3D chess."

Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois spent nearly an hour on stage with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Northeastern University President Joseph Aun, talking about the city's culture and the growth that is happening with the opening of the University of Miami's new campus this fall.

Later, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Rabois shrugged off statistics about the city's dirty neighborhood to fund the startup. "I don't look at quarterly numbers. “Miami companies will raise a lot of money this year. There are phenomenal companies here."

In recent years, encryption has become almost inevitable in the city. Suarez has publicly focused on the digital asset industry, attracting many entrepreneurs and helping to embed bitcoin into the community economy through nightclubs and mortgages. FTX has placed its logo on the Miami Beach basketball arena, home to the Miami Heat, and the city has done everything from hosting bitcoin conferences to installing a statue of Rob the Bull. But when cryptocurrency crashed and FTX went bankrupt, Miami's ambitions to become the cryptocurrency capital of the world soared.

Many in the city were already swinging. This week, a millennial techie with a beard and a Hawaiian shirt said he left because he was more interested in a crypto project he was working on to create something new in the field of artificial intelligence. "The traffic is here. Of course I'll focus on that," he said, pulling out his phone to demonstrate an AI chatbot he built for a dating site earlier this month. "Why not focus on the most interesting thing in engineering right now? "

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