Adrian Ionel
Los Altos, California, United States
10K followers
500+ connections
About
CEO, co-founder and chairman at Mirantis. Joined Mirantis in 2009 and helped build the…
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10K followers
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted thisA few months ago, I asked Linkedin: “Who’s building AI for audit?" I was tired of dealing with audit firms, and wanted to support disruption in the space Two companies popped up: - One was selling tools to auditors. - The other wanted to replace auditors. Fast forward a few months… - The “replace them” startup pivoted. - Now they’re selling to audit firms too. I get it. It is the safe, logical, revenue-friendly path. But, If your grand vision is to reinvent audit… and your GTM is “sell software to Big 4”… You’re not disrupting anything. You’re becoming the incumbent's feature roadmap. Real platform shifts don’t politely assist incumbents; they compete with them. ✅ Cloud didn’t optimize data centers -- it obsoleted them ✅ Uber didn't sell tools to taxi companies -- it took away their markets ✅ Fintech didn’t just help banks — it became the bank Yes, audit firms own the customers today. Yes, selling tools is easier. But AI changes the cost structure so dramatically that we should at least ask: 👉 Why does AI-native audit even need to look like? What if: - Agentic AI finds all the controls - tests them 24/7 - Evidence is collected automatically - Opinions are generated in real time, At that point… what exactly is the “audit firm”? Let's be more audacious, can we have licensed, automated, outcome-based AI audit services? With no human, or few humans involved? Founders: - Don't sell AI tools to the stack - Be the stack #AI #Startups #Audit #AgenticAI #FutureOfWork #Innovation David B. Cross, Sidra Ahmed Lefort, Daniyal Chawro, Candice (Yi) Luo, Pat Opet, Adrian Ionel, Anand Thangaraju, Grace Cassy, Catherine Hsiao, Catherine Zhou, Hilary Packer, Menny Barzilay,
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted thisEveryone's throwing money at RAG and fine-tuning to fix LLM hallucinations. We went the opposite direction. Instead of adding infrastructure, we added constraints. The result: 22% → 1% hallucination rate with zero training data. Turns out "Explanation is All You Need". Here's what happened: I've spent the past year testing LLMs for enterprise classification tasks; the kind that previously required 6-month ML buildouts at PepsiCo. The flexibility is incredible: just describe what you want, no training pipeline needed. But 20%+ hallucination rates killed production deployment because they required constant supervision. The conventional approach: fine-tune the model, build RAG systems, throw compute at the problem. You end up reintroducing all the overhead you were trying to avoid. We tested whether inference-time constraints alone could match traditional ML reliability. Turns out they can. This new technique; Explanation-Constrained Classification (ECC) Three independent trials, N=891 tasks each: Hallucination rate: 22% → 1% Structural conformance: 100% (with automated validation) Infrastructure required: None Training data required: None Deployment timeline: Days, not months We're now running fully autonomous classification pipelines that previously required supervised ML systems. 6-month projects now complete in days. The insight: You don't need smarter models. You need well-defined problem spaces. This unlocks a category of AI deployments that weren't economically viable before: mission-critical classification where training data doesn't exist or requirements change faster than retraining cycles. Full paper coming soon. Abstract attached.
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted this1,000,000,000 Euro for German Startups - we are finally out of stealth! I am proud to share what I have been working on for the past year. As part of the new #Deutschlandfonds, we are launching Co-Investments in German Scale-ups. After being a fund investor since 2018, KfW Capital is now also supporting startups directly. Until 2030, we will deploy up to 1 billion EUR in German startups at the Growth stage, investing side by side with our portfolio funds and through SPVs. Our focus areas include BioTech, AI, DefenseTech, and DeepTech at Series B+, with ticket sizes of up to EUR 50 million per company. Our first investment is Quantum Systems, one of the fastest growing unicorns in Germany and a critical company for European Sovereignty. We are joining their latest round and are grateful to our partner HV Capital for facilitating this and working closely with us on this investment. Thank you to Dr. Christian Saller and team! More info here: https://lnkd.in/dRBuJqin
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted thisA 7M model just surpassed DeepSeek R1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and o3-mini on reasoning. It’s called Tiny Recursive Model (TRM) and costs under $500 to train on two H100s for two days. TRM solves ARC-AGI 1 and 2, Sudoku, and Maze tasks. It uses a recursive reasoning loop with five steps: • Drafts an initial answer • Builds a reasoning scratchpad • Compares logic and finds errors • Revises the answer • Repeats up to 16 times It achieves higher reasoning accuracy than models 10,000x larger. Each task costs less than $0.01 to run. Most companies still prompt general LLMs for specific problems. Smaller, task-trained models can now outperform them at lower cost. Architecture, not scale, is driving the next AI shift. 🔗 : https://lnkd.in/g4WqehBp ↓ Are you an AI developer? Check out https://AlphaSignal.ai to get a daily summary of breakthrough models, repos and papers in AI. Read by 200,000+ devs.
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted this“Jeff Bezos … is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus ….” So named because they’re celebrating stealing AI from the gods or the resulting eternity of torture as a foreshadowing of how the project will end?Jeff Bezos reportedly returns to the trenches as co-CEO of new AI startup, Project Prometheus | TechCrunchJeff Bezos reportedly returns to the trenches as co-CEO of new AI startup, Project Prometheus | TechCrunch
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Adrian Ionel shared thisSomething is draining 20% of your revenue. You just can't see it. I built Vampire Slayer: it extracts hidden truths from your meetings and finds what's killing momentum, and tells you exactly what to fix. Think McKinsey analysis in 60 seconds. I need 3 business builders to test my latest feature. Takes 2 minutes. Brutally honest feedback required. Here's me using it on myself (yes, I drink my own medicine): https://lnkd.in/gdxibP3c What users say: Satnam Johal (Enterprise SE): "I rarely give 10s. This is a 9.9. When it builds history and tracks progress, it'll be unstoppable." Josh Lowman (CEO): "Oh my god, we totally need this. I didn't even think of this." Doug Romanoff (Managing Partner/VC): "It's magical. You almost don't believe it. Tailored, no-holds-barred business forensics." Want in? Message me. Let's find your vampires. Adrian
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted thisFuck it, here’s my confidential business strategy. At Gold Front, we want to be the best agency in the world. Here’s my secret plan to get there. ↳ 1. Make Gold Front famous. Do this by building my “founder brand.” LinkedIn is the best way I know to drive awareness for Gold Front - and it’s all organic. We spend $0 on paid media and drive 600k impressions a month. ↳ 2. Sell the category. Gold Front is the first and only category design studio. Evangelize this new and better way for founders & CMOs reach their audacious goals. Teach the power of integrated business strategy, positioning and branding by giving away my best thinking and tools for free. And showcase our best work and customer outcomes. ↳ 3. Use increased demand to streamline sales and delivery. Use our marketing to pre-sell clients. A sales prospect who already knows my pitch converts to a paid customer faster and more often than the average prospect. ↳ 4. Go all-in on AI. Human-only expertise is dead. The only viable commercial path is for my shop to be in the business of selling hybrid intelligence - a fluid melding of AI and human expertise. So that’s what I’m building. ↳ 5. Reinvest the profits. The first four items increase our revenue and profitability. Use a grip of these profits to deliver more value to clients - by leveling up both our product and content. And do it all over again. Did I mention I have no idea if this will work? But so far so good. Win or lose, I’ll keep posting photos of me and my dog. Do you know what your company's strategy is? ……
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Adrian Ionel reposted thisAdrian Ionel reposted thisThere’s one deep insight that drives my LinkedIn growth. Backstory: In order to save my shop, Gold Front, last year I committed to posting every day on LinkedIn. In that time my posts racked up over 600k impressions, I added 4k+ followers, and our pipeline went from empty ($127k) to booming ($1.67m) Here’s the insight behind the success: At a certain point, I just said “fuck it.” I’m gonna be me. I’m going to stop acting like I know everything. Or even a lot. Stop acting like I’m not struggling. Stop acting like I’m not scared. But also stop the false modesty. Stop acting like I’m humble when I’m actually proud. Stop acting like my work doesn’t help launch billion-dollar companies when it does. But most of all, I’m going to stop acting like in order to succeed, I have to be someone else. And so, a bunch of people unfollowed me. It turns out I’m not their cup of tea. (No surprise.) But then a bunch more people followed me, because they like what I’m putting down. And a bunch of you DM’d and said how much my posts mean to you. And CEOs that I advise - that mostly won’t comment on and like these posts - they reached out to say “keep it up.” So something’s resonating. And that resonance saved my shop. So, yeah. “Fuck it.” That’s the insight. That’s the strategy. Weird how sometimes happiness can lead to success - and not the other way around. There’s certainly nothing special about me. You can say “fuck it” too. …….
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Adrian Ionel posted thisAre you chasing a big, scary goal — but your days feel more grind than fun? My buddy and I are inviting 2–3 people to join a tiny WhatsApp group called “Play in the Storm.” 🌊 Each day, we drop a quick 60-second note — the vampire that drained us, and how we handled it. Win, fail, or somewhere in between. We laugh about our face-plants, and get right back up. It’s fun and honest. You’ll fit if: You’re chasing a concrete goal that truly matters. You’ve got real skin in the game. You want to feel lighter, more energized, and alive every day. Message me here if you want in.
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Adrian Ionel liked thisExactly one year ago this month I walked into the Pulitzer Hall at Columbia University to commemorate my 20 year college reunion. Of all the rooms on Columbia’s campus, the organizers happened to select that room to host our undergraduate dinner, and in that moment, back there after many years, I couldn’t help but feel a hopeful twinge that maybe, just maybe, it was a sign from the universe that one day I’d find myself my way back to that room to win an award as a journalist. This week that dream came true: I was part of the Washington Post team that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for public service for our coverage of DOGE. Last year was pure blood sweat and tears for all of us that contributed to the package: my part was to get inside the plans from Musk’s inner circle — and the why behind it. It was an honor to do this work with such an incredible team of reporters and editors. Hats off to them and to my fellow J-school alum who won awards this year — and to this generation of truth seekers and storytellers. Don’t quit.Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism
Adrian Ionel liked this🏆 Congratulations to the Columbia Journalism School alumni honored across 8️⃣ categories for the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes! Their reporting and storytelling helped shape conversations around accountability, transparency and press freedom, with work spanning investigative reporting, breaking news, local journalism, public service and visual storytelling. Read more about this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists: https://lnkd.in/eDQskhP2 📷: The Pulitzer Prizes -
Adrian Ionel liked thisAdrian Ionel liked thisA few days ago, Mirantis was acquired by IREN. I’ve spent the past couple of days reflecting on what this moment really means. Not just strategically for the company, but personally for the journey we’ve been on as Team Lens. Some people here may not realize that we joined Mirantis back in 2020. At the time, Lens was still in the early stages of its growth story. What started as a small idea around making Kubernetes development more approachable has since grown into one of the most widely adopted Kubernetes tools in the world, used by millions globally. And the journey certainly did not stop there. Inside Mirantis, we’ve had the opportunity to keep building boldly: * evolving Lens into a global platform for cloud-native developers * building core Kubernetes foundations like k0s and k0smotron that now underpin the Mirantis k0rdent AI platform * and most recently launching Lens Agents, our vision for governed AI agents operating safely across enterprise systems The timing of all this feels remarkable. AI is fundamentally reshaping infrastructure, software development, and operations. At the same time, the demand for trusted, scalable cloud-native platforms and compute infrastructure is accelerating rapidly. Seeing those worlds converge together feels incredibly exciting. Huge appreciation to Alex Freedland and Adrian Ionel for trusting what we are building and giving teams like ours the freedom to think big, move fast, and pursue ambitious ideas. The future ahead feels bigger than ever. Excited for what comes next.
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Adrian Ionel liked thisAdrian Ionel liked thisAfter more than ten years at Two Sigma Ventures, I’m preparing to cofound a new VC firm. I’ve always loved building, both as a founder and as a partner to entrepreneurs creating something from scratch. Launching a firm is a natural continuation of that work. I’m grateful to the founders, colleagues, co-investors, and LPs I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years at Two Sigma Ventures. I’ve learned a tremendous amount, had the chance to support companies I deeply respect, and built relationships that I value enormously. As I get the new firm off the ground, I will also continue supporting a portion of the existing TSV portfolio in an advisory capacity as TSV transitions to Deviation Capital. I’m looking forward to connecting with many of you in the weeks ahead, and I’ll share more soon.
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Adrian Ionel liked thisAdrian Ionel liked thisSharing an interesting manifesto on creativity in a world where creativity will be the most to matter
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Adrian Ionel liked thisAdrian Ionel liked thisHerzlichen Glückwunsch, liebe Kathrin Moeslein, zur Aufnahme in die Academia Europaea – eine wirklich besondere und hochverdiente Anerkennung Deiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit und Deines langjährigen Engagements für Innovationsstrategien und -technologien. Als Mitglied der Fakultät der HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management bist Du uns eng verbunden. Umso mehr freut es mich – und macht es uns stolz –, dass Deine exzellente Forschung nun auch auf europäischer Ebene diese verdiente Würdigung erfährt. Alles Gute und weiterhin viel Erfolg – ich bin gespannt auf das, was noch kommt! #AcademiaEuropaea #AcademicExcellence #Innovation #Leadership #HHL #FAU Prof. Dr. Claudia Lehmann, Ralf Reichwald, Dr. Caroline Große, https://lnkd.in/duymiTeE
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Nick Mavrick
For me, this is definitely the pinnacle of the many exceptional podcasts that David Senra has done. Multiple master-classes in one (Ovitz, Clark, Musk & more) - and also a ton of fun to listen to Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz. This reminder will surely resonate with many: "mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it.”
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Ish Dugal
Replit just raised $400M at a $9B valuation — and IronArc Ventures doubled down with a sizable investment. We first backed Replit because we believed software creation should be accessible to everyone, not just engineers. That thesis is playing out faster than anyone expected. 50M+ users. 85% of the Fortune 500. On track for $1B in run-rate revenue by year-end. And today they launched Agent 4 — 10x faster than its predecessor. But the numbers aren't what excite me most. It's watching a CMO prototype partnership ideas on game day. My kids building their own video games. Employees spinning up internal tools in hours instead of weeks. Thanks to Amjad Masad Alexander Bibic Robert Kohse and the Replit team for pursuing the mission to bring a billion creators online. Every quarter, that vision looks less ambitious and more inevitable. Congrats to the entire Replit team. We're proud to be part of this journey. CC: IronArc Ventures #Replit #AI #VibeCoding #Venture
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John F. Heerdink, Jr.
JFrog’s Earnings Leap: Hopping Past Wall Street’s Cloud Rev Forecasts (and Competitors) – ( $FROG $SPY ) https://lnkd.in/gE_hMhKQ JFrog showcased impressive growth in Q3 2025, combining software innovation, cloud momentum, and AI advancements #JFrog #EarningsLeap #FROG #CloudGrowth #DevOps #DevSecOps #AI #SoftwareSecurity #RevenueSurge #MarketLeaders #TechnologyStocks #InvestorConfidence #FinancialResults #QuarterlyEarnings #GrowthStock #SoftwareSupplyChain #Innovation #WallStreet
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Brian Rosenzweig
For the past 15+ years we at Joule Ventures have been up and down and across the U.S. trying to educate institutional allocators, RIAs and Jewish philanthropic foundations that having exposure to Israel's tech ecosystem should be part of building a prudent investment program. For most investors, the idea of doing the hard work of identifying managers and opportunities in Israel is outweighed by the notion that they can just 'buy IBM', take home a nice salary, and coast along doing as they've always done. I'm not here to judge -- to each their own. But when it comes to portfolio construction, if you're optimizing for talent coming out of the most elite institutions and organizations around the world, and you're ignoring what #IDF grads are contributing to global innovation, you're blowing it and your constituents should ask why.
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Ronnie Jaegermann
“Within 10 years, there will be at least 10 more Israeli companies like Wiz” Cyberstarts founder Gili Raanan, the first investor in Wiz, says Google’s $32 billion acquisition will reshape Israel’s tech ambitions. “The sale of Wiz to Google is an event that goes far beyond investors, employees, or taxes. Just as the ICQ deal broke the first glass ceiling for Israeli exits, followed by Waze, which broke the billion-dollar barrier, Wiz is now shattering every possible ceiling. This will influence Israeli high-tech, the economy, and the country for generations,” says Gili Raanan, founder of the venture capital firm Cyberstarts and the first investor in the cybersecurity company. Sophie Shulman 16:44, 11.03.26 https://lnkd.in/dr7nGthr
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Danny Wall
Entangle - August 10, 2025 Weekly Quantum Computing News Digest (read the full newsletter at: https://lnkd.in/gjddrxcR) 🚀 BREAKTHROUGH: QuamCore Secures $26M for Revolutionary Million-Qubit Architecture Israeli deep-tech startup QuamCore closed a $26 million Series A funding round on August 4, bringing total funding to $35 million. The company has developed a fully designed and simulated architecture capable of scaling to 1 million qubits within a single cryostat—a 200x improvement over current systems that max out around 5,000 qubits per cryostat. 📊 Major Collaboration: Global Tech Leaders Publish Quantum Tensor Networks Roadmap Over 30 researchers from JPMorganChase, NVIDIA, Terra Quantum, Google, NASA, Quantinuum, and leading universities co-authored a comprehensive review on tensor networks published in Nature Reviews Physics on August 5. The paper, titled "Tensor networks for quantum computing," presents a strategic roadmap for unlocking practical quantum capabilities and fostering responsible innovation. 🔧 Infrastructure Expansion: SEEQC Establishes New Quantum Manufacturing Hub SEEQC moved into an expanded U.S. headquarters in Hawthorne, New York, securing a 13,635-square-foot lease at 15 Skyline Dr. on August 3. The new facility includes office and lab space intended to support the design, testing, and manufacturing of quantum-ready superconductors. 💻 Game-Changer: HyperQ Brings Virtual Machines to Quantum Computing Columbia Engineering researchers developed HyperQ, a novel system that enables multiple users to share a single quantum computer simultaneously through isolated quantum virtual machines (qVMs). The system reduces average user wait times by up to 40 times and increases program execution rates tenfold. 🔬 Technical Advances: IBM's Relay-BP Algorithm Breakthrough IBM researchers devised Relay-BP, a new algorithm for decoding quantum Low-Density Parity-Check (qLDPC) codes on August 5, providing roughly 10x improvement in accuracy compared to previous methods while maintaining or improving speed. This development represents a significant step toward implementing fault-tolerant quantum computers with real-time decoding on classical hardware like FPGAs. 🎯 Looking Ahead: Japan's Quantum Ambitions Fujitsu announced on August 1 that it has started research and development toward a superconducting quantum computer with capacity exceeding 10,000 qubits, with construction slated for completion in fiscal 2030. The new system will operate with 250 logical qubits and utilize Fujitsu's innovative "STAR architecture." Entangle is published by OA Quantum Labs. For more quantum computing insights and analysis, visit oaqlabs.com
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Ruben Osipyan
I think this is the most important high-tech news in Armenia for 2025. US approves export of NVIDIA AI chips to Armenia for Firebird AI project. This allows the launch of the first large-scale AI data center in our region. A 100 MW facility with an initial $500M investment, as part of a multi-billion-dollar initiative to establish high-capacity AI supercomputing infrastructure in the region. This project will be supported by Dell Technologies, providing Dell PowerEdge AI servers and NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. https://lnkd.in/eSzuzfHA
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