Pedro Alves, the founder of Ople, said one of his investors visited him in September,
the week after the San Mateo, California, AI company raised an $8 million A round.

The investor’s advice was to start to worry about running out of money now, despite the
recent round, Alves said. A second recommendation was to assume valuations for
articial-intelligence companies may not be as high when the company seeks to raise a
B round, perhaps due to a downturn.

The advice was both “useful and scary,” Alves said. “We’re commanding a pretty high
price in the eld of AI, so, yes, useful, but good scary.”