Investors · new episode 24 Oct 2026
Hosted by Harry Stebbings
Investors and founders, several times a week: how funds decide, and what they are paying for now.
Investors named as guests in the most episode titles on The Twenty Minute VC.
AGENDA: 05:00 Will we run out of energy? 19:00 Will specialised chips threaten NVIDIA's dominance? 26:00 Can we trust AI agents more than humans? 31:00 Will data companies become commodities? 36:00 What comes after transformers? 41:00 Are software investors f****** in a world of infra and compute? 52:00 How…
AGENDA: 04:20 Billion-Dollar Bets or Nothing: Why VCs Are Rejecting Fast-Growing Startups 13:20 CoreWeave Sell-Off Sparks Fears of Cracks in AI Boom 18:50 Anthropic's IPO Valuation Could Fall From $2 TRN to $1.5 TRN 32:10 Modal Raises $750M at a $15.75B Valuation as Inference Booms 35:50 Town at $1B, Anduril at…
Sameer Dholakia is a Partner @ Bessemer, the first that has just raised $5.75BN across a $1.75BN seed fund and $4BN growth fund. Sameer has led investments into the likes of Anthropic, Fireworks and Legora to name a few. Prior to venture, Sameer was the CEO of SendGrid, taking it from $30M in ARR to over $200M.…
Harrison Chase is the co-founder and CEO of LangChain, which helps developers build, test and deploy AI agents. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and IVP, LangChain has announced approximately $160 million in funding with the last round at a $1.25BN valuation. The company works with 35% of the Fortune 500, has…
AGENDA: 04:00 Valar Atomics Sues Seed Investor Day One Ventures Over Pro Rata 17:00 Meta Returns to the AI Frontier With Muse Wonder 20:00 NVIDIA Eyes $30B Reflection Deal as Amazon Circles Decart 26:00 Jev Raises $870M at a $7.5B Valuation, Weeks After Launch 31:00 42 New Decacorns: The AI Boom Overtakes 2021's…
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and CEO of Atlassian, the company behind Jira, Confluence, Trello and Loom. Atlassian generated $6.5BN in ARR in 2026, and serves more than 350,000 customers, including over 85% of the Fortune 500. Today, Mike is leading its expansion into enterprise AI through Rovo and the…
Max Freeman is SVP of Sales at Ramp. He joined the company as its first sales hire. By 2025, he was leading more than 300 salespeople, helping build Ramp's sales organisation from the ground up. Ramp's latest reported revenue exceeds $1.7BN, with a valuation of over $40BN. AGENDA: 00:00 Inside Ramp's Sales…
Joinin the trio today we have Dev Ittycheria, CEO @ MongoDB. AGENDA: 04:00 OpenAI Nears $70B Run Rate, Anthropic's Lead Under Threat 12:00 Factory vs Cognition: Silicon Valley's Talent War Turns Ugly 23:00 Vinod Khosla Blasts His Own Portfolio Company 25:00 Reflection Launches Beam: America Strikes Back in…
Venky Ganesan is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, whose portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora and Higgsfield, alongside earlier hits Uber and Roku. Venky's own investment track record includes Palo Alto Networks, Upwork, Poshmark and Rover. He is a three-time Forbes Midas List investor and former Chair of the…
Chase Lochmiller is the Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. Crusoe builds and powers the data centres that companies use to train and run AI. It has raised approximately $6.4 billion in equity, including its latest $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation. Its backers include NVIDIA, Founders Fund, Gavin Baker's…
AGENDA: 00:00 Highlights: Jack Altman Joins The Trio 05:00 Anthropic's S-1 Leaks: $8B Operating Loss and $518B in Compute Commitments 10:00 Instinct Raises $1B at a $10B Valuation to Take On Meta 25:00 AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B 39:00 Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO as Shares Plunge 20% 43:00 AI…
Alex Mashrabov is the Founder and CEO of Higgsfield, the third fastest scaling company to $1BN in ARR behind OpenAI and Anthropic. Reports suggest their latest funding round could place an $8BN valuation on the company. Prior to Higgsfield, Alex sold his prior company to Snap Inc for $166M. Alex was a competitive…
Parag Agrawal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Parallel, building web search infrastructure for AI agents. Parallel has announced $230M in funding from Sequoia, Khosla, and First Round Capital. Previously, he was CEO of Twitter, succeeding Jack Dorsey after serving as CTO and becoming the company's first Distinguished…
AGENDA: 04:35 Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Delayed. Cracks in the AI Boom? 10:30 OpenAI Faces $278 Billion Cash Burn. Out of Money by 2028? 12:55 Meta's Muse Hits No. 1. ChatGPT Finally Has a Rival? 17:05 Amazon Blocks AI Shopping Agents. Shopify Welcomes Them. 24:10 ChatGPT Inventor Launches Jev. Vercel's Fastest…
Daniel Dines is one of the greatest European founders of the last decade. As the Co-Founder of UiPath, he has scaled the business to a market cap high of $ 44BN in 2021, with the company now generating $1.72BN in revenue, growing 15% year-on-year. The company raised $2BN before its IPO, backed by Sequoia, Accel,…
Thomas Sohmers is the co-founder and chairman of Positron AI, building chips to make running AI dramatically cheaper and more energy-efficient. The company recently announced an $875 million Series C at a $5 billion valuation, backed by investors including Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, NEA, Valor Equity Partners…
AGENDA: 03:40 Dario Calls to "Pace the Frontier" 11:30 Why the Fed Will Raid Anthropic if Needed 21:50 Meta Launches Muse to Take On Instinct 28:30 Instinct Raising $1BN at $10BN, Would You Invest? 39:55 Miro Sells for $1.35BN After a $17.5BN Valuation 47:45 Could Sam Bankman-Fried Win His Freedom? 51:25…
David Morehead is one of the most respected CIOs in the endowment fund world as Chief Investment Officer at Baylor University, overseeing its $2.6BN endowment. Before joining Baylor in 2011, he was a senior portfolio manager at several Chicago hedge funds, investing across corporate securities, distressed debt and…
AGENDA: 04:30 How Do You Hire Exceptional People in the AI Era? 08:00 What Actually Works in Growth, and Why Can't You Trust Meta's Numbers? 17:00 How to Run Hundreds of Millions in Marketing with Zero Employees 19:30 "Our Engineers Stopped Coding": What Stack Does Eight Sleep Use? 24:00 Is China Leaving the…
AGENDA: 00:00 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived 04:05 Instinct and GrokBot Ignite the AI Assistant War 13:32 OpenAI's GPT Astra Redefines What AGI Means 26:00 GPT Astra and Fable 5.1 Accelerate the Model Race 30:38 OpenAI's Chief Scientist Calls for Enforced AI Safety Limits 40:50 Tesla Launches Cybercabs as…
Jean-Denis "JD" Grèze is the Co-Founder and CEO of Town, the AI work assistant reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $1BN valuation. Before founding Town, JD spent seven years as CTO of Plaid. Before Plaid, he was Director of Engineering at Dropbox. He is also a prolific angel investor backing companies including…
Cliff Weitzman is the co-founder and CEO of Speechify, the world's leading AI voice and text-to-speech platform, used by more than 60 million people globally. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, Cliff first built Speechify at Brown University to help him consume written material through audio. AGENDA: 00:00 Cliff…
AGENDA: 00:00 Nvidia crushes $96.2B quarter and nears $12.9B Hugging Face deal 13:52 OpenAI cuts off Cursor as the Altman–Musk feud escalates 17:40 OpenAI's 1,000-agent cyberattack triggers an industry wake-up call 22:58 Instinct hits $2.5B valuation as AI assistants gain spending power 36:39 Cognition targets $1.6B…
Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, the real-time analytics database powering companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla and Microsoft. ClickHouse just surpassed $350M in ARR and raised over $1B from investors including Dragoneer, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, 20VC and Benchmark. Previously, Aaron was CRO…
Eno Reyes is the co-founder and CTO of Factory, the agent-native software development platform building autonomous "Droids" for enterprise engineering teams. Factory has raised $220 million, most recently a $150 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, from investors including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital,…
AGENDA: 00:00 NVIDIA Launches a Three-Deal Blitz Across the AI Stack 04:31 NVIDIA's $12BN Poolside Deal Exposes Frontier AI's Capital Wall 15:39 NVIDIA Moves to Back Mercor at $20BN and Perplexity at $30BN 26:55 OpenAI Confirms 2027 IPO as Anthropic Seizes the Lead 40:42 Hugging Face Draws $13BN Takeover Interest…
Julien Bek is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world. At Sequoia, he has partnered with companies including Rillet, Tacto, and Auctor. Before joining Sequoia, Julien spent five years at Accel, where he worked with companies including Miro, Melio, and BeReal. He is also an…
Jerry Murdock is the Co-Founder of Insight Partners, which manages over $90 billion in assets. Jerry personally backed companies including Twitter, Nest and Docker, while Insight's portfolio includes giants such as Shopify, Wiz and monday.com. Across three decades, Insight has helped produce 55+ IPOs and become one of…
AGENDA: 04:20 Elon's Deal of the Decade: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60BN 06:10 Why Cursor Was Surprisingly Cheap at $60BN 07:00 Why Zuckerberg Failed to Buy the AI Prize Elon Secured 12:00 Elon vs Zuck: Who Would You Rather Work For? 14:00 Will Microsoft or Amazon Now Race to Buy Cognition? 17:05 Stripe's $7BN…
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this…
Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.