AI Venture Funding and Bubble Risks

Oct 27, 2026

Shanghao Jin Market Overview — October 27, 2026

• Shanghao Jin Low positioning and depressed valuations leave room for a sharp reversal on even a small positive catalyst. He says the long-short ratio is down to 1.5, near levels seen during the tariff shock, and semiconductor forward P/Es are below where they …

Oct 23, 2026

Empire Cybersecurity Panic, Nationalizing AI, The Model Squeeze & Can't Own Anything

• Empire The rumored $2.5 billion Fireblocks sale would reset valuation without necessarily erasing common equity. Against an $8 billion last-round valuation and roughly $1 billion raised, the panel’s simplified waterfall leaves proceeds for earlier …

Oct 22, 2026

20VC 20VC: Trillion or Bust, CoreWeave’s Sell-Off and the $90B Anduril Test

• 20VC Anthropic’s reported slowdown leaves room for a huge valuation, but its revenue deserves less predictability than conventional SaaS. Harry cites $16.8B of Q3 revenue, 45% sequential growth, an 85% gross margin and adjusted profitability, alongside a rumored IPO valuation …
• Town at $1B and Anduril at $90B force a distinction between exceptional companies and attractive entry prices. Jason calls Town an early venture bet with limited data, dressed in a billion-dollar valuation; Anduril’s roughly 40x revenue demands …

Oct 19, 2026

20VC 20VC: Bessemer's Sameer Dholakia on $1BN seed funds and AI

• Sameer Dholakia Dholakia underwrites AI as a larger opportunity than the internet and cloud combined. “Oil powers all the machines. Intelligence powers all the humans.” Bessemer’s Anthropic investment at $15 billion pre-money followed a …
• Entry price matters, but Dholakia tests high current ARR multiples against what a business could become over the next 12 months. He considers 10–15x on an NTM basis reasonable for extraordinary businesses; Legora’s move from $20 million to $200 million illustrates his …
• Longer private-company lives do not eliminate the need for liquidity or the possibility of an IPO reopening. Dholakia supports partial secondary sales and predicts an IPO unlock “later next year, and in 2028,” driven by demand for pure-play AI …

Oct 16, 2026

Altimeter Capital CNBC Halftime Report with Brad Gerstner - October 15th, 2026

• Brad Gerstner Brad Gerstner is tactically cautious after AI stocks’ April–May surge, yet more bullish on 2027–28. He cut exposure to “medium-small,” expecting consolidation amid higher rates, inflation and political risk, but may begin buying over the …
• Gerstner left Anthropic’s investor day more bullish on the company, its prospective IPO and the road ahead. His “vibe check” among major investors was “a nine or a 10 out of 10,” despite a negative public-market reaction to reported Q3 revenue just …

Oct 15, 2026

20VC 20VC: Valar’s Pro-Rata Fight, Meta’s Muse and NVIDIA’s Bet

• 20VC Jev’s $870 million Series A at a $7.5 billion valuation is defensible only if a focused team turns a cheap binary classifier into infrastructure used everywhere. Jason estimates it currently resolves perhaps 70%–80% of carefully prompted matches and serves about 10% of AI use cases; hyper-accuracy …
• Private AI valuations are pricing an unprecedented production rate of giant outcomes. The hosts counted 42 new decacorns in 2026 so far versus 34 in 2021, against roughly 20, plus or minus, created per decade historically and …

Oct 8, 2026

20VC Cognition vs Factory | Anthropic Under Threat | ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuation to $22B

• 20VC Aura’s pulled IPO is a warning that even rapid growth may not overcome pricing, secondary-sale optics and banker overpromising. Dev’s speculative but simple explanation is that demand did not support the promised valuation; Rory argues the board should perhaps have …

Oct 5, 2026

20VC 20VC: Menlo's Venky Ganesan on Whether Seed Investing Is Dead

• Venky Ganesan AI revenue must be underwritten as a business reality, not accepted as a fundraising artifact. Harry flags contracted “annual” revenue that is neither live nor annual and run rates extrapolated from the best day of sales; Venky’s rule …

Oct 2, 2026

Moonshots Why AI Leaders Have Changed Their Minds About AI Safety, Elon on UHI, Anthropic’s IPO

• Emad Mostaque Anthropic’s proposed IPO pairs extraordinary growth with an equally extraordinary infrastructure wager. The episode cited $4.59 billion of 2025 revenue, up 12×, an $8 billion operating loss, $20 billion of cash, roughly $500 billion of largely …

Sourcery Annie Lamont: $14B Managed, 70+ Exits, 15 IPOs, 7x Midas Investor

• Jonathan Siddharth Only about 10% of today’s AI valuation inflation is justified in O'Shea’s view. A handful of companies can address enormous markets spanning software and services, but many niche businesses valued at $10 billion or $20 …

Oct 1, 2026

20VC Instinct Raising $1B at $10B & Meta Launches Muse | Miro Sells for $1.36B After a $17.5B Valuation

• Jack Altman Instinct’s $1 billion round at a $10 billion valuation is a bet that focus and cross-platform neutrality can overcome Meta’s balance sheet. The bull case rests on a highly regarded team, explosive consumer demand, Meta’s history of abandoning non-core products, and strategic …
• The investment only works if $25 billion-plus outcomes become routine or Instinct creates defensible economics before its compute bill overwhelms it. Harry raised whether a portfolio could tolerate three highly volatile bets among 30; Jack said a $500 million investment could be rational …
• Mistral and Adobe represent opposite responses to AI disruption: strategic sovereignty versus managed stagnation. Mistral’s €3 billion round and stated €1 billion year-end revenue ambition were framed not as proof it matches OpenAI or Anthropic, but as …

高能量 Vol.236 Macro Talk 111 | China-U.S. Summit Talks, AI's Limits, and the Global “Reservoir” Logic of Capital

• 高能量 The fact that large-model companies are attractive investments in the short term does not mean they will deliver ideal returns over a 5-year horizon. 李丰 says that, in the short run and ignoring other constraints, the obvious answer is to invest; after missing the first listed names, …

Sep 30, 2026

The a16z Show AI, Infrastructure, and the Next Investment Cycle

• The a16z Show Value is bifurcating across software, consumer discovery, and private markets rather than disappearing uniformly. Only 30% of public software companies grow at least 20%, while fewer than five exceed 30%; cybersecurity, observability, and vertical AI are …

The Knowledge Project Bill Ackman: People are Going to Lose a Lot of Money

• Bill Ackman Ackman sees AI as a genuinely transformational technology wrapped in unmistakable bubble behavior. He cites the same startup raising $50 million at a $400 million valuation and, two weeks later, another $50 million at $1 billion; another …

All-In Jake Paul & The Chainsmokers: Turning Fame into Funds, Jake Enters Politics? & Venture Bubble Signs

• All-In The venture discussion’s clearest bubble signal was a later tranche pricing a company at two or three times the earlier valuation without any change in operating performance. The participants distinguish TVPI from realized DPI, argue for concentrated follow-ons in genuine winners, and treat secondary demand as …

Sep 28, 2026

20VC Higgsfield's Mashrabov: $1B ARR in 18 months; AI moats are BS

• Alex Mashrabov The finance model projects “4.5” by the end of next year with “substantial deceleration” baked in; Mashrabov's own answer is “over $10 million,” while the transcript does not specify the unit of the 4.5 figure. He cites Hollywood sentiment shifting from negative toward neutral and a target of at least 30% month-over-month growth. He argues the …

硅谷101 Who Sets, Sells and Grades Large Models' Exams? AI Data's Wild Growth

• 硅谷101 AI data valuations are expanding far faster than the underlying fundamentals can be understood: AfterQuery, founded by 3 people in their 20s, was valued at $300M in its Series A this April, then $3.2B in a new round in September—up 10x in less than six months and the fastest a YC company has gone from launch to unicorn; Meta’s investment in Scale AI implied a valuation above $29B, while Mercor reached a $10B financing valuation last October. Later in the episode, Yiwen argues that data vendors typically have less valuation upside than traditional platforms that can monetize an …

Sep 26, 2026

All-In Anthropic IPO at Risk, Meta’s Muse Pop, Token Prices Fall, Open Source Gains Share, Alignment Fails

• David Sacks Anthropic's IPO is slipping and Sacks's diagnosis is “corporate schizophrenia”: “they need a psychiatrist, not a banker.” Current leadership claims a >10% extinction risk while the product is “unsolved in this area”; Dario called for pausing the frontier days …

Sep 24, 2026

20VC Meta's Muse tops charts; Menlo's AI bubble alarm; Factory at $5B

• 20VC The Anthropic $2 trillion IPO slipping from October to November is prospectus tactics, not a market crack, in Rory O'Driscoll's read. After finally becoming bigger than OpenAI in Q2 and enduring OpenAI's "furious" July counter-tweeting, the bankers want a clean quarter in …
• Menlo's Venky sounded the bubble alarm and Harry called it "a blowhard piece" from the firm that "paid the highest price on most rounds." Rory's defense of the substance: the market splits into house-money winners and terrified catch-up players, with FOMO checks in between, and …