Grinberg: AI labor displacement warnings are disingenuous hype designed for mega-fundraising
Matan Grinberg · OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 13, 2026 · at 1:21:31
Matan Grinberg, founder and CEO of Factory, criticizes leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for claiming AI will displace human labor, calling it a selfish fundraising strategy.
0:00 / 0:40exact quote · 40.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think that has been not only like disingenuine and wrong, but it's like really hurt the psychology of a lot of people, developers, like just people in the world. Does AI a disservice? Does the world a disservice? Because this is again, talking about the use cases that are gonna, the problems that will be solved for society. This feeds fuel of like, we should slow down AI, we should stop doing it. And honestly, it's for selfish reasons that they did that. Because if you're trying to raise unprecedented amounts of money, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars, whatever, the best way to convince people to do that is to say, all of capitalism is gone. The only company that's left will be me. So you better give us your dollars.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Matan Grinberg
Grinberg: Lacking frontier open-source AI models in the US is embarrassing
“I think it's pretty embarrassing that we don't have frontier open models in the United States.”
Grinberg: Believing a good product sells itself is delusional
“There's a very common Silicon Valley fallacy, which is there's like research is like the pinnacle. And then there's engineers who implement the research, you know, they're not quite there, but you know, they're still great. And then there's sales and marketing…”
Grinberg: Coding speed and syntax memorization no longer matter for engineers
“And the parts of engineering that become less important are funny enough, the things that the Silicon Valley has really bragged about a lot, which is like, Competition winning or like Olympiad type. Are you like as fast as possible at coding? Are you, do you m…”
Grinberg: Institutional Math Olympiad track records can be an anti-signal in hiring
“Especially there's some high schools that, like, really focus on, like, you must do the math olympic, like, you must do this, the Amy, to then go to the IMO, and, like, this is the path to success, where actually that's kind of anti-signal, because there it's,…”
Grinberg: Advocating to slow down AI development is harmful and selfish
“And by saying you want to slow down AI, that's saying like, These people who have relationships with loved ones who have dementia, you're like, no, no, no, sorry, you guys, you gotta maintain that relationship for a little bit longer. We're scared. We don't kn…”
Grinberg: Ivanka Trump provides better hands-on help than traditional VCs
“She is genuinely so kind, so intelligent, and like, people just in, throughout tech, throughout the world, really love her, and for good reason, and she has an incredible network. She's so generous with her time. Like, there is, like, kind of dirty work invest…”