It’s Friday, November 7th: We’re teasing some new content 🤫 this week as a preview for what’s coming from the Collective. Read on to learn more about Mercor’s $350M Raise + Harvard’s Free ML Eng Resources PLUS a tools roundup.
Head over to our Events Portal to get the latest on upcoming AI Collective events near you. Search by city, date, or event format, and join thousands of builders at events across 100+ chapters on every continent (except Antarctica, for now).
Ready to dive in? Click below to explore upcoming events.👇
🌁 Based in SF? Check out SF IRL, MLOps SF, GenerativeAISF, or Cerebral Valley’s spreadsheet for more!
📌 Voices from Our Community
Mercor Raises $350M Series C at $10B Valuation
Mercor raised $350M Series C at a $10B valuation from Felicis, General Catalyst, and Benchmark. Just 2 years after starting, Mercor is paying $1.5 million per day to experts in our marketplace.
They’re creating a new category of work in the AI economy, where software engineers, bankers, lawyers, and other professionals earn based on their experience while advancing the frontier of AI.
FREE ML Engineer Resources from Harvard
This ONE GitHub repo covers all 5 key topics every ML Engineer needs to master.
It’s built by a Harvard professor:
Machine Learning Systems by Prof. Vijay Janapa Reddi teaches what actually matters when taking ML from notebook to real-world system.
Based on Harvard’s CS249r course - 100% open-source on GitHub.
Every week, we’ll be featuring some of the best tools our community members have been using. Be sure to add these to your stack if you haven’t already!
🥇Chroma Awards: Don’t Miss the “Olympics” of AI Creativity
The Chroma Awards are almost over - an AI Film, Music Video, and Games competition presented by ElevenLabs, Google Cloud, fal, Freepik, Dreamina, and CapCut, with partners including AI Collective, a16z, LTX Studio, OpenArt, and more. This global stage is designed to spotlight the next wave of AI creativity with $1M+ in free trials and $175K+ in cash prizes.
Exclusively for our community, ElevenLabs is adding $1,500 to any AI Collective winners as an extra prize.
Our Premier Partner: Roam
Roam is redefining remote work with a virtual workspace that mirrors the feel of a real office with co-working zones, private spaces, and meeting rooms with built-in chat, video, audio, whiteboards, and AI tools like meeting summaries and noise cancellation. Roam is supporting the AI Collective’s mission to connect builders, researchers, and leaders shaping the future of AI, reflecting their shared focus on thoughtful, human-centered collaboration.
Explore Roam and transform the way your team works together!
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About the Authors
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI. His work and body of research focus on aligning governance strategies to anticipate transformative change before it happens.
About AJ Green
AJ Green is a founder, writer, VC scout, chairman, and respected community leader in the AI and startup space. A former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is on a mission to make AI the great equalizer scaling startups, connecting ecosystems, and turning disruption into opportunity.