Thanks to the investor Bullishness about artificial intelligence, US start-ups collect more money than since 2021, but the risk capital market has caused a strong time to finance a handful of large private technology companies.
According to PitchBook data, more than $ 30 billion has already been invested in young groups this quarter. Another 50 billion US dollars for donations are also on the train, such as Risk capital provider Work on a number of big deals with Openai, Safe Superintelligence and Defense Tech Start-up Unduril.
The passion for AI has caused investors to issue the highlight of the market the fastest in 2021, in which 358 billion USD were flooded in tech groups and fed up many with unrealistic reviews.
But VC groups believe that this investment cycle will be different. “AI is a transformative force that makes these companies better,” said Hemant Tanja, Managing Director of General Catalyst, one of Silicon Valley, largest risks.
“The way to think about it is” Can these business from where to adequately grow 10x? “The answer with all of these is, so they are valued appropriately,” he added.
After a two-year slump, the US fundraising campaign jumped to around $ 80 billion in the last quarter of 2024, according to the PitchBook data. That was the best fourth quarter since 2021. But only six large offers – with Openai, Xai, Databricks and others – made up for 40 percent of this sum, said Kyle Stanford, research director at PitchBook
“It is a very elite group of companies that master the VC investment,” he added.
On the basis of the shops that have already been closed and expected in the coming weeks, the first quarter of this year will have a similar investment level – which it would do for the best first quarter of donations since 2022.
In the past two weeks alone, Fintech Companies Stripe and Ramp have announced financing rounds for ratings of $ 91.5 billion or $ 13 billion and AI Start-ups Anthropic and Shield Ai have divided offers for $ 61.5 billion or $ 5.3 billion.
VCS are also working on a number of massive investments. Openai is in discussions with Softbank to collect $ 40 billion in the evaluation of USD 260 billion, which represents the greatest funding round of all time and at the end of last year the investment of USD $ 10 billion in databases.
Anduril, which was founded by Palmer Luckey, discusses to collect at least $ 2 billion in an evaluation of more than 30 billion USD, and the evaluation that she reached last summer last summer more than doubled, two people with knowledge of the matter. Anduril refused to comment.
These more established companies have annual income in hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and grow quickly. According to General Catalyst, who supported Anduril, Anthropic, Ramp and stripes, she does relatively safe bets.
“It is so ambiguous where money is earned in the AI
However, the excitement via AI has also increased younger companies without income and in some cases without a product.
Safe Superintelligence, which was launched last year by Ilya Sutskever, co -founder and former chief scientist at Openai, collected 1 billion USD in 2024 with $ 5 billion and is in discussions to increase new capital with an assessment of $ 30 or more. It doesn’t have yet terminated a product. SSI rejected a statement.
The enormous rounds of financing that are carried out are a significant departure from traditional risk capitalism that aims to aim at the “power law”, which specifies the best start-up in a portfolio that will pay off the losses from the rest that fails.
“We have always thought that the 50 -fold return of a venture find will always come from a seed with the IPO,” said Stanford from PitchBook.
In a largely uncomfortable experiment, this logic is now applied to companies that are larger order of magnitude and are referred to by a new generation of Stanford as “pseudo-VCs”.
These include Josh Kushner Thrive Capital, General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners, all of whom have invested in more than one of the big rounds in the past few weeks. All three companies are Registered investment advisorsAnd allow you to invest and keep companies in a broader spectrum of assets after you have gone public.
Each of the three groups has also collected 5 billion USD funds and “scales enough to invest in start-ups with an evaluation of USD 1 billion and to keep up to their value of USD 50 billion for 15 years and to invest in several ways, said Stanford.
According to Sebastian Mallaby, author of The power lawThe conviction that even the volunteer start-ups can still scale ten times is what “Fund managers with great enthusiasm for marquee names and Say ‘interested in what I pay? I am a genius in which I enter this name. ‘”
While the opportunities of an established company are slimmer, Mallaby also warned the probability that his assessment will increase ten or hundred times. “The habits that have invested in the early stage must be adjusted if they move into much larger rounds.”
The big financing rounds in today’s discussion were “a completely different difference than ever,” said Stanford.
VCS Peak in 2021 was characterized by an increasing flood of round sizes and ratings: According to the PitchBook, there were about 854 deals of USD $ 100 or larger this year. This year, the overall investments are almost 2021 levels, but the market has become increasingly one -sided.
“If you position Openaai or Anduril-a strong growth, namely brand-sind very well. The money is there for you. . . If you are on the other hand, as most companies are, the money is not there, ”said Stanford.
“Maybe USD 80 billion (this quarter), but $ 40 billion of them are only one round. . . Even the outliers in 2021 were tiny in comparison. “
Additional reporting from Cristina Criddle in San Francisco
