Agentic

George Bandarian, General Partner at Untapped Ventures, brings 10 portfolio founders on stage at the 2026 Annual General Meeting in LA — including leaders from Extropic, Liquid AI, Harper, Nexxa.ai, Sluicebox, BlueQubit, and 3Laws Robotics — to unpack how they’re making the autonomous economy real across compute, robotics, AI models, longevity, and enterprise agents.

George Bandarian, General Partner at Untapped Ventures, breaks down the Autonomous Economy thesis - a new economic framework where billions of AI agents and robots execute work end-to-end without human involvement - and why this shift  may dwarf every previous technological revolution, from internet to mobile.

Andrew Chen, General Partner at a16z speedrun, joins us on Agentic to discuss what actually gets founders accepted into speedrun and why AI might be bigger than mobile, internet, and cloud combined.

We're at the halfway point of 2025, and AI is evolving faster than ever.In this solo episode, I share Untapped Ventures’ first Request for Startups. It’s a detailed breakdown of the core areas where we’re actively looking to invest. If you're a founder building in AI or exploring ideas, this is the roadmap for what we want to fund next.I walk through the key themes that reflect our thesis across both Agentic AI and Convergence AI. These are the ideas we believe will drive the next generation of breakout companies.Inside the episode:• Why service-as-software will replace traditional SaaS• How full-stack agentic platforms are reshaping vertical industries• The rise of outcome-based pricing and what it unlocks• Where lean AI teams are gaining massive traction• Why we’re excited about AI converging with biotech, neurotech, energy, defense, and more• The profiles of founders we love to back At Untapped, we invest from stealth and pre-salt through seed, writing checks between $500K and $2 million. Whether you're actively raising or still in the idea maze, we want to meet you.Let’s connect!George Bandarian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarianExplore further: 1. If in Stealth, let’s chat: https://bit.ly/UntappedE18podS2. If raising, pitch us: https://bit.ly/UntappedE18pod

Is your AI startup built to survive the next wave?In this episode of Agentic, Will Manidis, the co-founder of ScienceIO, shares how he built for resilience from day one developing LLMs for healthcare and the frameworks that helped him scale before the world caught up.He shares how local model training on office gaming PCs laid the unlikely foundation for ScienceIO’s reach across millions in digital health.We also discuss:• why OpenAI’s API continues to dominate Gemini• the hidden fragility behind $500M fast scaling AI companies• Will’s belief that founders must prove value before overbuilding for scaleNot often do you get to learn from someone who built an LLM before ChatGPT. Tune in now.If you’re in the early innings of building something in AI, especially if you’re figuring things out from first principles—click here, we'd love to hear from you.Connect with us here:1. Will Manidis- https://www.linkedin.com/in/willmanidis/ 2. George Bandarian- https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/ 3. Untapped Ventures- https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/00:00 Trailer01:41 Introduction02:45 Thiel Fellow07:40 Pre-ChatGPT LLMs10:27 Biggest lessons12:37 Contrarian takes13:56 Difficult to sell15:59 First exit16:38 Getting world-class talents23:20 Risk mitigation strategy25:48 Defensibility and moats37:10 Basic MVP44:01 Q&A50:35 Outro