Wave by Vento

We told you not to swipe. You never listen. 👀 > https://lnkd.in/deR7yG9y

At 18, Eléonore Crespo arrived at ENS Paris-Saclay determined to keep all possibilities open. She was naturally curious but hadn't chosen her path. What captivated her wasn't just physics, it was the extraordinary opportunity to meet Nobel Prize winners and emblematic scientific figures at such a young age. There, she discovered that knowledge constantly evolves, a revelation that would later transform how she approached business data. She doubled down on learning, pursuing a Master's at École des Mines in 2010. ENS had given her theoretical rigor and a mindset focused on excellence, while Mines provided practical business acumen. The combination was intentional: she was building tools for an uncertain future, learning to identify and exploit relevant data for decision-making. Years later, after stints at Google and JCDecaux, her entrepreneurial instincts kicked in. She had always wanted to forge her own path. She reached out to Romain Niccoli, co-founder of Criteo, and they spent nearly a year brainstorming without constraints. She applied the scientific method from ENS to entrepreneurship, but found business moved faster than academic research—which suited her personality perfectly. In 2021, they founded Pigment, a name inspired by her love of art. Just as individual pigments come together to create a coherent painting, their platform brings together disparate business data to reveal clear insights. By April 2024, Pigment had raised €145 million and joined the exclusive circle of French unicorns, making her the third female CEO of a French unicorn. Her philosophy for future entrepreneurs is simple: embrace curiosity about unfamiliar fields, learn continuously, and take the leap. Eléonore will join us at Wave by Vento at OGR Torino from October 7 to 9. Get your pass (link in the comments) and get inspired.

The Italian tech ecosystem doesn't need more closed rooms. It needs more open doors and the people willing to keep them open. That's why we're excited to announce our partnership with Albert School, Europe's first Business, Data & AI School, founded by 50 entrepreneurs including Bernard Arnault and Xavier Niel. Together with POLIMI Graduate School of Management, Albert School has launched a new Master in AI & Entrepreneurship in Italy: a program designed to train a new generation of AI-native founders and operators for the Italian and European ecosystem. And we are part of it not as a headline sponsor, but as a long-term partner across three defining moments: Internship opportunity Students attending the Master’s Degree will come into contact with Vento and its network to find the best internship opportunities, working on concrete, high-impact projects. Startup Mentoring Semester In the second year, students develop their own entrepreneurial project for an entire semester. Each team will be supported by a mentor from the VC ecosystem, a founder, or an industry expert. Final Investor Day The program concludes with an Investor Day, during which teams present their projects to a selected audience of venture capitalists, angels and entrepreneurs, Vento being one of them. This is what we mean when we talk about ecosystem: creating spaces and relationships that don’t stop at the handshake, but grow into something that compounds. And keep your eyes open on the side events that will take place at the next edition of Wave in October, because Albert School will curate one of them! 🔗 Learn more about the Master > https://lnkd.in/e2FqXWYr

At 13, Joe Tsai left Taiwan and arrived in the United States alone, knowing almost no one. There, he decided sport was his way in — he picked up lacrosse at Lawrenceville School and never looked back. He went on to Yale, then Sullivan & Cromwell, then private equity with the Wallenberg family in Hong Kong. By 1999, he had a $700,000-a-year job and every reason to stay comfortable. Then he met Jack Ma. What convinced him wasn't the idea, Tsai later admitted he didn't find it earth-shattering. It was the group of people around Ma: English students and engineers, working hard, eyes full of energy. He quit his job, joined as co-founder for $600 a year, and built Alibaba Group's entire legal and financial structure from scratch, as the only Western-educated person on the founding team. In 2014, he orchestrated the largest IPO in history. Today he chairs Alibaba, owns the Brooklyn Nets, the 2024 WNBA champion New York Liberty, and the San Diego Seals and Las Vegas Desert Dogs in the National Lacrosse League. Outside of business, he and his wife Clara are active philanthropists, and Joe is a founding board member of The Asian American Foundation, dedicated to combating discrimination and advancing representation for Asian Americans. Joe will be at Wave by Vento at OGR Torino from October 7 to 9. If you want to hear what he learned across those decades, get your pass now (link in the comments)

Linda Rottenberg's favorite expression used to be "go big or go home." Then she realized she needed to do both. That tension, between ambition and roots, between global scale and personal commitment, is at the heart of everything she has built. As co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, she has spent decades identifying, mentoring, and investing in high-growth entrepreneurs across 50+ countries, proving that world-changing innovation doesn't only happen in Silicon Valley. Along the way, TIME named her "Innovator for the 21st Century", Tom Friedman called her "the World's Mentor Capitalist," and her 2014 book “Crazy Is a Compliment” became a New York Times bestseller. She has been the subject of six Harvard Business School and Stanford University Graduate School of Business case studies — not a bad track record for someone who once had to convince the world that entrepreneurs existed outside of America. Linda will be at Wave by Vento at OGR Torino from October 7 to 9. Get your pass (link in the comments) to hear what decades of backing the world's boldest founders actually taught her.

Not every AI company asks hard questions about its own technology. Anthropic does, and that's what makes them worth following. They recently released a report on AI's impact on the labor market, a more precise way to measure AI's impact on jobs: not what's theoretically possible, but what's actually happening. The difference is significant. It's been widely cited, debated, and shared across the industry. That's no surprise: few companies produce research this rigorous, or carry this much weight in the conversation about where AI is actually heading. That's exactly why we invited Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, to headline the next edition of Wave by Vento. He'll be on stage this October. Save the date, and be where the conversation happens. Oct. 7–9 OGR Torino

Daily dilemmas got you? Dario Amodei lives the one. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has built his career on an uncomfortable paradox: believing deeply in the transformative, and potentially catastrophic, power of AI and building it anyway. When asked whether AI will surpass human capabilities, his answer is unambiguous: "I believe it will reach the level where it will be smarter than most humans in most ways." He doesn't soften it. A prediction he ties directly to 2026-2027 timelines in recent interviews where he describes "superhuman geniuses in data centers" outpacing us across domains, in his explosive "Adolescence of Technology" essay (you've probably read it; link in comments if not). Amodei has been equally direct about the economic disruption ahead. White-collar roles are already within reach of today's models. His concern isn't just that jobs will change. It's that the pace will be unlike anything previous technological shifts have produced: broad disruption with little time to adapt. In the manifesto, he warns of 50% entry-level white-collar jobs gone in 1-5 years, as 'data center geniuses' take over routine cognitive work. Critics have called Anthropic's safety focus "branding." Amodei's answer is structural: his teams run stress tests on national-risk scenarios to probe model capabilities and where limits should be drawn. Just like rejecting the $200M Pentagon contract in February, blocking mass surveillance and autonomous weapons (headlines everywhere, and for a good reason). Or when Anthropic found Claude being used by North Korea for fake identities and cyberattacks, shut it down, and disclosed it. No legislation required them to do so. Anthropic did it anyway. The question he sits with daily is one of autonomy and control, the more capable these systems become the harder it is to be certain they're doing exactly what we want. His response is not to slow down, but to measure: rigorously, openly, and willing to be held accountable in public, including resumed Pentagon talks in March without dropping safeguards (classic Amodei: build fast, but never compromise safety). Amodei represents a rare figure in tech: someone operating at the absolute frontier of what is possible, who chooses to engage with the hardest questions rather than defer them. Not because it's comfortable, but because the cost of looking away is too high. We want our audience to sit with that tension alongside him. And to leave with a clearer sense of what is actually coming, and what thoughtful leadership through it might look like. At Wave by Vento, we believe the most important conversations are the ones that don't look away. We named it Wave for a reason: tech and its ecosystem are a swell building force, and riding the crest isn’t enough to grasp what’s coming. You need voices willing to confront it directly. Amodei is one of them. Join us there.

What a Birthday!

This year we’re thinking bigger. We are now Wave by Vento, and the rebrand comes with so much news. For example, this year you’ll be able to get group passes. You’re saying, “WHAAAT?” Yes, you read that right. If you’re planning to come to Wave with your colleagues or friends, here’s the news you’ve been waiting for: with group passes, you can get a discount of up to 20%. What are you waiting for? Get your passes now > https://lnkd.in/deR7yG9y

Meet the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire. Luana Lopes Lara, a former ballerina from Brazil, cofounded prediction market firm Kalshi and built it into an $11 billion startup in just six years. See where she lands on the 2026 #ForbesBillionaires list: https://lnkd.in/gKBYqUTp 📸: Alexander Karnyukhin for Forbes