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Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, is launching a new AI startup, TechCrunch has learned.
The startup, called Stem AI, is currently in stealth. But public documents show it was incorporated in June 2023, and filed for a trademark in August 2023. Shear is listed as CEO on an incorporation document filed with the California Secretary of State earlier this year.
According to the trademark application, Stem AI is developing software to create AI that “understands, cooperates with, and aligns with human behavior, human preferences, human biology, human morality, and human ethics.” The startup landed Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as an investor in August, according to Pitchbook.
One of the co-founders of Stem AI is Adam Goldstein, best known for founding travel search and booking site Hipmunk. After selling Hipmunk to Concur in 2016, Goldstein became a visiting partner at Y Combinator, and founded an incubator, Astonishing Labs, to back bio research.
Goldstein also worked at Tufts University’s Levin Labs for a year as a visiting scientist, where he “[developed] new models for biological systems with a focus on cancer,” according to his LinkedIn page.
When contacted for comment, Shear wouldn’t reveal much about Stem AI’s plans. Goldstein did not immediately respond to an email inquiry. Also, 16z’s head of marketing, Margit Wennmachers, and marketing partner, Elizabeth Gunn, didn’t immediately respond to TechCrunch’s email.
But in the past few months, Shear has taken to social media to air his views on AI design, safety, and regulation.
“Almost all currently proposed [AI] regulation is a bad idea,” Shear wrote in one post on X. In another, he said, “Not being scared of [AI superintelligence] indicates either pessimism about [the] rate of future progress synthesizing digital intelligence, or severe lack of imagination about the power of intelligence.”
In a post earlier this month, Shear criticized most AI chatbots as being “highly dissociative agreeable neurotics.”
“[Chatbots are] manipulative for the same reason people with borderline personality disorder are,” he said. “They have no stable internal sense of self or goals, so they feed off of yours — and need you to be predictable.”
It could very well be that Stem AI is developing solutions to address this “AI alignment” problem.
Shear, who spent nearly his entire career at Twitch after helping to grow the platform from a fledgeling site called Justin.tv to the Amazon-owned behemoth it is today, has long expressed concerns that powerful AI will one day have the capacity to destroy humanity. In a tech podcast last June, Shear said he worried that AI will eventually gain the ability to self-improve beyond the reach of human control.
“I’m in favor of creating some kind of fire alarm, like maybe, ‘Not AIs bigger than ‘X,’” Shear said. “I think there’s good options for international collaboration and treaties about some sort of AI test ban treaty.”
In November 2023, Shear was briefly named interim CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI after several members of the company’s board ousted CEO Sam Altman. Shear, who was once in the same Y Combinator group as Altman, and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator during some of Altman’s time as president there, reportedly threatened to resign as CEO if the board couldn’t provide evidence to support Altman’s removal.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Shear, along with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, “helped clear a path” for Altman’s return; Shear publicly criticized the handling of Altman’s removal. Two days after Shear’s appointment, an agreement was reached to reinstate Altman, and Shear stepped down.
Filings show that Shear earned about $3,720 for his short OpenAI tenure.
Kyle Wiggers is a senior reporter at TechCrunch with a special interest in artificial intelligence. His writing has appeared in VentureBeat and Digital Trends, as well as a range of gadget blogs including Android Police, Android Authority, Droid-Life, and XDA-Developers. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, a piano educator, and dabbles in piano himself. occasionally — if mostly unsuccessfully.
