Nicolas Sauvage is betting on the boring parts of AI

Nicolas Sauvage believes it takes four years for the best bets to look obvious — thinking that he shared on stage last week at StrictlyVC’s San Francisco event, which TDK Ventures co-hosted. It’s a theory he’s been working to prove since 2019, when he founded the corporate venture arm of the Japanese electronics giant, which is now managing $500 million across four funds. The AI chip startup Groq, valued at $6.9 billion during its most recent funding round last fall, is the highest-profile example of this thinking.