20VC: Trillion or Bust: The New VC Game | Coreweave Sell-Off Creates Panic | Town at $1B, Anduril at $90B: Revenue Multiples Out of Control | General Atlantic Eyes IPO & Modal Raises $750M at $15.75B · podgraph
20VC: Trillion or Bust: The New VC Game | Coreweave Sell-Off Creates Panic | Town at $1B, Anduril at $90B: Revenue Multiples Out of Control | General Atlantic Eyes IPO & Modal Raises $750M at $15.75B
Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8bn, up 45% on the prior quarter, and said it turned profitable on an adjusted basis.
Jason Lemkin says large funds need billion-dollar positions, so seed entry prices of $50 to $100m make early checks and ownership harder to win.
Jason Lemkin says Modal is better than CoreWeave because it adds value rather than renting GPUs, and he regrets passing on its $15.75bn round.
Big Funds Chase Billion-Dollar Bets and Leave Profitable Startups Behind
Funding and deals
Anthropic. AI lab turned adjusted profitable with $16.8bn third-quarter revenue, up 45 percent, and its rumored IPO valuation falls from $2tn to $1.5tn.
Modal. Inference platform raised a $750m Series D led by Excel at a $15.75bn valuation, with run rate above $1bn.
Town. Raised a $108m Series B at a $1bn valuation, which Jason Lemkin will pass on as a classic bet.
Bending Spoons. Berkshire Hathaway bought $330m of new shares in this buyer of mature software, which Jason Lemkin likens to Berkshire.
General Atlantic. The asset manager may go public, and Rory O'Driscoll says a listed manager needs about $800m of fee income to matter.
Braze. Being acquired for about $5.8bn, per Jason Lemkin, after shares fell 40 percent from the IPO price.
News
Venture money concentrates in a few billion-dollar bets. Harry Stebbings cites a profitable company with $20m in recurring revenue that cannot find investors. Jason Lemkin says funds raising $5bn or more need billion-dollar positions.
CoreWeave falls up to 20 percent as bonds rise. Rory O'Driscoll says neo-clouds are riskiest because they borrow heavily for capital spending. Jason Lemkin calls CoreWeave and Oracle B-tier assets next to NVIDIA.
Anduril's $90bn valuation splits the hosts. Jason Lemkin calls it generational but questions a valuation near 40 times revenue. Rory O'Driscoll says fast growth could justify the number.
Replit makes OpenAI its default model. Jason Lemkin says TechCrunch wrongly reported that Replit stopped working with OpenAI. He says OpenAI models are 30 to 40 percent better on price for similar quality, at a company near $1bn in revenue.
Inference providers remain small beside OpenAI and Anthropic. Rory O'Driscoll estimates the key providers at $5bn to $6bn in run rate revenue, against more than $100bn at the two labs combined. Harry Stebbings says Fireworks' margins are in the mid thirties.
Hosts say AI coding is where LLM value sits. Harry Stebbings calls code review the most important software category. Rory O'Driscoll calls coding the mother lode of LLM value but warns that startups near the foundation models risk being overtaken.
37signals has made $370m profit since 2020. Jason Lemkin estimates $60m to $70m a year and argues skipping venture rounds may beat raising one in the AI era, citing Zapier at $300m in revenue.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
Musk to put SpaceX shares in children's accounts. Rory O'Driscoll puts the giveaway at about $10bn in aggregate. Jason Lemkin calls it brilliant and predicts Tesla will merge with SpaceX within six months.
Harvard endowment returns 27.1 percent to $68bn. Venture helped drive the gain. Jason Lemkin says returns need to reach last boom levels, when Cambridge made 62 percent from venture and private equity in 2021.