Rafiq Ahmet of Dipalo Ventures – 361Firm’s Newport Conference - July 2025 SUMMARY KEYWORDS Dipalo Ventures, early stage investor, hard tech, seed and a, AI panels, manufacturing, predictive analysis, innovation, job challenges, emerging market, Midwest, portfolio companies, data inference, 361Firm, Newport Conference. SPEAKERS Rafiq Ahmed I'm Rafiq Ahmed with Dipalo Ventures out of Chicago. We're an early stage hard tech investor in seed and a and this was an amazing place for the 361 gathering in Newport. Loved it and takeaways today. So a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago, I couldn't spell AI. Now I'm on all of Mark's AI panels speaking about manufacturing, the good and bad and the stuff that nobody wants to talk about. So yeah, that's us at Dipalo. And love this platform. I think that the depth of people is always interesting, because we have genuine allocators. We have people doing important projects, whether they're direct investments or funds. So just the tapestry, I think, always stands out. So this is my second one. I really think it's a great group. Well, AI impacts my portfolio because it is everywhere. It's really about data. It's about inference, it's about predictability. We have lots of portfolio companies. We don't start with AI, we start with hard tech. But where the use cases make sense, as well as in manufacturing, in the US, there's going to be so much that will start to move to more predictive analysis, etc. I think from a job standpoint, this could be a challenge. So as many you know, as many challenges there are. There's also a lot of innovation and speed because of it. Yeah, if you if you're interested in hard tech investing, if you like manufacturing, you like the arbitrage at the center of the country that really is the emerging market, then give me a call - rafiq@dipaloventures.com - or find us on all the socials