20VC: The Pro-Rata Battle: Valar Atomics Sues Day One Ventures | Meta Returns to the AI Frontier With Muse Wonder | NVIDIA Eyes $30B Reflection Deal & Jev Raises $870M at a $7.5B Valuation · podgraph
20VC: The Pro-Rata Battle: Valar Atomics Sues Day One Ventures | Meta Returns to the AI Frontier With Muse Wonder | NVIDIA Eyes $30B Reflection Deal & Jev Raises $870M at a $7.5B Valuation
Valar Atomics is suing seed investor Day One Ventures over pro rata rights, with the fight centred on a $1bn Series B at a $6bn valuation led by Sequoia.
Rory O'Driscoll argues the fight is pointless for Day One's roughly 5% stake, since the springback amount is small compared with the cost of litigating.
Jason Lemkin says Meta may have a monster AI product in Muse Wonder, though its internal-only access with no API keeps outsiders from testing it.
Day One Ventures Sues Valar Atomics Over Pro Rata Rights
Funding and deals
Valar Atomics. Nuclear startup's $1bn Series B at a $6bn valuation, led by Sequoia, triggered a pro rata lawsuit from seed investor Day One.
TypeSafe. Parent of the JEV classifier raised an $870m Series A at a $7.5bn valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz, weeks after launch.
Reflection. Reported NVIDIA deal to buy the US open-source model team, backed by Sequoia, for $30bn, after its $12bn Poolside purchase.
Thinking Machines. AI lab reportedly raising at a $44bn valuation, though Jason Lemkin doubts it can secure enough compute.
Isomorphic Labs. Reportedly in talks to raise $40 to $50bn.
Bumble. Ithaca Holdings is taking the dating app private for $1.3bn, against a market cap of about $500m before the deal.
Mecca. Data provider raised a $60m Series B from Sequoia and has well over $100m in ARR.
Decart. Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy the company.
TechWolf. Sold to SAP for hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions, according to Harry Stebbings.
News
Meta's Muse Wonder nears frontier but stays internal. It sits just shy of Opus 5.5 on an independent index, with no API. Rory O'Driscoll says Meta must charge for its models after $100bn of spend.
Chip makers back open models to keep spend. Rory O'Driscoll says chip makers want open models to win so more AI spend stays with them. Jason Lemkin predicts NVIDIA's combined moat could make rival open-weight models unattractive in 12 to 18 months.
Anthropic cuts Haiku prices by 90%. Rory O'Driscoll says the cut bets that demand is highly elastic, so total spend rises. Sonnet 5.5 is about 10% cheaper than its predecessor and twice as fast.
Record 42 new decacorns minted in 2026. Rory O'Driscoll says the production rate is higher than anything seen before, but he declines to call a bubble.
Bending Spoons lays off nearly all of Airtable. Jason Lemkin says he would not sell if it meant laying off 80% of his team. He notes Bending Spoons is growing about 80% through acquisitions.
SaaS without scale faces a worse SaaSpocalypse. Jason Lemkin says everyone without massive scale is suffering more than in March or April. Rory O'Driscoll calls SaaS a mature, consolidating industry where scaled leaders will acquire rivals.
Humanoid robots show 42 pilots, zero deployments. A GXO post reported 42 humanoid proofs of concept and no deployments. Rory O'Driscoll says that limits data spending until robots deploy.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
Flock Safety cuts 270 jobs amid security flaws. Jason Lemkin says Flock had cameras streaming unsecured across the internet, and security patches for many stopped in June 2018.
Jensen Huang pledges $2bn more for European AI. Jensen Huang announced the added investment in European AI companies.