Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this end-of-year letter on the way back from Costa Rica, where we had a great family vacation to close out 2023. As we have in prior years, we are posting this letter instead of mailing holiday cards. Instead, we’ve made a large donation in your honor to AIPAC, which is more important than ever in its quest to achieve bipartisan support for Israel. Last year, we chose the ADL (and we donated generously to ADL again this year) because we felt like antisemitism was on the rise - unfortunately, how prescient that turned out to be. The biggest shock of 2023 is the world’s response to the horror of the 10/7 attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas that rules over Gaza with an iron fist. We’ll never forget 10/7, or the failure of so many to speak out against it. It was a year where a lot of what we thought we knew about initiatives like DEI have to be seriously rethought as we remake society into a truly more equitable and welcoming place for all. The way that my alma mater University of Pennsylvania (now ex) President Liz Magill, along with the Presidents of Harvard and MIT, couldn’t answer a simple question in front of Congress with moral clarity and courage will go down in history as the year that the oppressor-oppressed mind virus (i.e., “Common-Enemy Identity Politics” from Chapter 3 of “The Coddling of the American Mind”) was unmasked for the cancel-culture ideology it has morphed into versus the ideals of the content of our character so famously preached by MLK, Jr. We will always stand for the power of diversity in the United States - we believe it is one of our most enduring superpowers. At the same time, as an American Jewish family that is among the 16 million Jews worldwide in a global population of 8 billion, we’ve never felt more “woke” but it is of a different type that has been traditionally assumed. To learn more, the most shared and clarifying article I wrote all year was on 11/7 and 11/9 (a condensed version) about the global response to 10/7 is one you can read here.

Thankfully, 2023 was mostly a terrific year for our family and also for data.world. And it was a year of massive breakthroughs in AI that will shape society and accelerate our collective progress for decades to come. But the breakthroughs weren’t just in AI - they were in so many areas. If you commit to one new practice in 2024 as a result of reading this letter, I encourage you to adopt a balanced media diet. I recommend reading The White Pill, Future Crunch, and/or The Progress Network’s weekly newsletters about all of the amazing breakthroughs that will happen throughout 2024. This weekly practice will quite literally rewire your brain. Without balancing your media diet, you will get a non-stop barrage of negativity as gloom sells better than bloom due to the evolutionary wiring of our brains. As a primer, you should read Steven Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now” - it’s a masterpiece and the chapter on inequality alone is worth it. We are on the edge of creating vast abundance throughout the world, as bleak as you may feel at times (and, again, Hamas’ attack on Israel on 10/7 was and is quite bleak for us). To get you started, here is the recap of 2023 from Future Crunch. Rachel and I got to see the founder give a very innovative TED talk at Rachel’s first TED (an incredible daddy-daughter highlight of 2023, to finally go together after talking about doing so for 10 years).

For Rachel, 2023 was a really foundational year in her life where she graduated from Westlake High School with flying colors and started her college journey at her #1 pick of Tulane where she achieved a 4.0 GPA in her first semester. Rachel and I kicked off 2023 by going to the Cotton Bowl, where Tulane improbably beat USC - it brought me right back to that infamous championship game where our UT Longhorns did the same in the 2006 Rose Bowl (Hook ‘em Horns tonight at the Sugar Bowl!) Her business, Radiant Jewels, continues to be a love and as she returned from Tulane for this winter break she was immediately back at it with two back-to-back jewelry pop-ups for holiday sales. She also started writing for the Tulane newspaper, the Tulane Hullabaloo. And her podcast, Radiant Resilience, continues to delight and inform. I was on a lot of podcast episodes this year and I have to say that my absolute favorite was on Rachel’s lucky #7 episode. Her episode #6 with my friend and fellow entrepreneur Suzi Sosa was one of my favorite podcast episodes ever - they covered so many great lessons learned in life and business. To celebrate Rachel’s graduation from Westlake we went to… (where else?!) Disney World to celebrate! Our niece, Naomi, and Debra’s sister, Denise, joined us for it (Naomi’s first time also and very special.) I also worked out of Cabo for 10 days in the summer thanks to the generosity of a close friend while Rachel celebrated her graduation with my cousin, Tara, and her daughter, Kaleigh, who gave Rachel so many great college tips (Kaleigh had just graduated.) Two of Rachel’s closest friends also joined halfway through the trip and they all had a blast - Levi and I got to join them for many memorable dinners (Levi mainly programmed during the day as I worked - he loved it.) Rachel recruited a really sweet roommate in Maddy (who we all went out to dinner with for Rachel’s 19th birthday), and we hosted five of Rachel’s new Tulane friends as she brought them back with her from Tulane’s fall break for ACL Weekend, which they all loved.

For Levi, 2023 will go down as the year where he really embraced AI. He’s been programming since age 4 and is now hyper-accelerated when leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-4. I wrote about his journey (complete with some YouTube interviews of him) in this three-part series on the future of education in this new era of mass-market AI. A huge highlight of this year for Levi and our entire family was his Bar Mitzvah in June, which we celebrated in Israel. Family, friends, and our rabbi, his wife, and Levi’s Hebrew tutor joined us in Israel for a really memorable week together. Debra worked tirelessly in planning it and Levi studied well to read from the Torah. It is even more meaningful of an experience to reflect on now, after the horror of 10/7 - the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and unthinkable having just been there, surrounded by the incredible beauty, diversity, and prosperity of Israel. To be together at the Kotel, with the Bubbee and Zaydee (Debra’s parents, who are now in their 80s), and family and friends we care so deeply about is an experience that we’ll never forget as we marked our son’s transition into young adulthood.

For Debra, 2023 was a year of many travel highlights, including three weeks in Norway on two back-to-back hiking trips. She deserved it (and then some) after planning Levi’s Bar Mitzvah! We vacationed to Tenerife, Spain together for a conference and had some amazing hikes with Levi (Rachel was preparing for Tulane and enjoying her last few weeks in Austin before the big move.) And then Debra did something that astonished me - she decided on the spur of the moment to climb the highest peak in Spain, El Teide in Tenerife. She woke up at 12:30am in the morning, got to the base camp by 2am and hiked up almost 6,000 feet to see the sunrise. I was more than a little bit nervous but she made it and it was the hardest physical challenge she’s ever had to date. If there was ever any doubt, Debra is a very determined and fit person. Debra also went with one of her best friends to hike in Chile with Backroads (we highly recommend their hiking trips and Debra has been on 14 of their trips so far.)

For me, this was the year of AI at data.world. With 76 patents now and many of them being foundational for our data-powered AI future, we are well positioned for 2024. The most shared research we put out in 2023 was how much more accurate our Knowledge Graph architecture makes LLMs, which you can read here. 2023 will go down as the year where the productivity lift from generative AI is undeniable, and 2024 will be a massive accelerant for LLMs and knowledge graphs in the enterprise. We’ve experienced a 25% increase in our own productivity with our use of AI, which is a massive number and it’s stunning to think that it is only just the beginning of AI’s impact. I wrote some of the most important articles of my career on this topic in 2023, including:

1. “Meet ‘Archie’ who is helping all of us get smarter than any of us — at the speed of AI”

2. “The 4 Billion-Year History of AI’s Large Language Models” (co-authored with my good friend and fellow Austin entrepreneur and author, Byron Reese)

3. “Part II: How the ‘Fourth Surge’ of the ‘Double Helix of Data’ Became a Torrent of Innovation”

As expected, it was also a very challenging year as budgets were constantly tightened in the tech industry but we made it through as a much stronger company overall. I’m proud of our very determined team.

On the investments front at Hurt Family Investments, it was our most conservative year for startup investments as we wanted to see where the dust would settle in the tech valuation pullbacks. As expected, we had more startups in our portfolio going out of business than we’ve ever seen, while we also saw some really breakout. The resilience of entrepreneurs always inspires us, and AI is accelerating startup productivity in a profound way. I expect that AI will lead to a massive boom in the number of startups (the ceiling to creative output is being shattered), as I covered with Whurley on the Austin Next podcast (one of my favorite discussions and their most popular episode for the year). Going into 2024, we expect to ramp back up on investing as we think that tech has hit a floor and is on the climb back up. It is also kind of amazing that the “hard landing” almost everyone expected with our economy didn’t happen - the US navigated it incredibly well, as Heather Cox Richardson laid out in her Dec. 30th letter.

On the philanthropic front, we received heartwarming messages all year from people enjoying the Hurt Family Tennis Center (its opening was one of our highlights in last year’s New Year’s Eve letter). But the real stunner was a few months ago when Shalom Austin’s CEO proudly told us that membership is up at the JCC over 100% since before the pandemic! That was the whole point of our big investment in the community - to hopefully create a more thriving non-profit and Jewish community overall. Mission accomplished, and we couldn’t be more happy about it.

On the family doggie front, River, our miniature long-haired dapple dachshund, turned one and has really embedded herself into our family. The crazy Cosmo is three now and Mordy (Mordechai) and Esther are 13-years old (I call them the ODs - the original doggos.) Yes, we are a dog family through and through! Rachel gives them even bigger hugs now on her return trips from Tulane.

2024 is going to be a rollercoaster politically, so in all honesty we are bracing for that. We continue to feel happy with our choice of President Biden (who has especially supported Israel well since 10/7). Like most Americans, we wish we had more vibrant choices to represent our amazing country than a rematch of Biden vs. Trump. However, as Independents and never Trumpers, there is no doubt that we’ll vote for Biden again if that is indeed the match-up… with one caveat. We are hopeful that No Labels will come up with a very viable alternative and we remain committed there. We’ll see what happens and we don’t buy into any conspiracy theories that No Labels is an election spoiler for Biden (I personally know and trust the CEO, Nancy Jacobson.)

2024 will bring a lot of family happiness as Rachel continues to progress at Tulane and Levi begins his high school journey at Westlake in the fall. Rachel and I will be going to TED together again, which will be another daddy-daughter highlight. And our big family summer trip, which we just booked the flights for yesterday, will be Japan. This was Levi’s choice as he’s become quite fond of ramen especially and wants to go to its birthplace. Last time we went on a family vacation to Japan, all Levi would eat there were McDonald’s chicken nuggets - thankfully his palette has greatly expanded since then. Debra and I are also planning a special 28-year anniversary hike with Backroads.

With much love and hope for your prosperity and happiness in 2024,

Brett, Debra, Rachel, and Levi