Esben Kran: Superintelligence Companies and Humanity's Future | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026

Sat, May 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

Superintelligence is likely within a decade. Esben Kran's question is where to put the money to prepare for it. Esben, co-founder of Seldon Lab and founder of Apart Research, argues that we are at an inflection point where AI safety has moved from a research problem to a market opportunity. Seldon is his answer — a Y Combinator-style accelerator for AI safety startups, focused on companies that can scale to $100 billion while tying every dollar earned to a measurable unit of security created in the world. His thesis: if AI replaces labor and becomes the largest industry in the world, AI safety will become the second largest. He makes the case that the biggest leverage point is no longer compute but verification — a conclusion now backed by a new paper out of MIT arguing that verification technology is the moat in the age of AGI. The three options for anyone serious about AGI risk: join a lab, lobby for policy, or proactively engineer the secure infrastructure we'll need. Seldon is betting on the third. Speaker: Esben Kran (Apart Research / Seldon) Slides: https://ftcseldonlab.netlify.app This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io