VC

_Lucille_

See, I am pro-AI as a tech, but because I know AI, i also know right now.... 1) a lot of projects are still living on VC money ("here is a whole lot of tokens, try our stuff!", or simply free offerings like the web version of chatgpt: how many people would actually be willing to pay for it?) 2) understand it isn't all that their sales team have promised (but def not as useless as what some redditors want to believe) 3) there is definitely adaptation but not at the rate companies expected Businesses are now reviewing their spend, while the usual money burners (esp openAI) is trying heard to get more money to sustain its growth. Thus why I say MU is like a leveraged bet: if this can sustain i can see it getting another spike, but if it does pop, I think MU is going to be hurting more than nvidia.

swagadagg

ANIC or AGNMF. The only VC play for cellular agriculture anywhere. The Agronomics portolio makes everything; from meat to cotton to milk to cosmetics and more. 2026 is when the big portfolio plays go commercial: Liberation Bioindustries (milk) and Clean Food Group (palm oil) start selling their wares. Currently sitting at 6p+ with a fair price of 15pish the discount gets you in on the tecnological advance that is about to scale up and no one knows anything about. Its basically smug territory for buyers.

brian13579

It's pretty much Japan coin. You're at the mercy of whales with insider info. It's not the worst coin tho. This sub thinks anything they haven't heard of is a shitcoin tho, don't listen to them too much. That being said, I would recommend staying away from VC controlled coins. Survive the bear, these regards are going to clown you 4x harder if you sell the bottom.

redderist

Virtually every person who has seen success in their life in the past 50 years in America has done so using leverage of some form or another. If you’re smart, you can leverage your talent in the form of a business using VC funding or debt financing, or in the form of real estate using a mortgage or bank loan at much higher multiples (often 5-100x leverage). If you can’t do those things, you can at least use your brokerage’s margin offering to get 0.3x leverage. Don’t be an idiot.

RookieMistake101

The advisors you’ve spoken to are smart. I’m an idiot who thought it was a good idea to get into that side of the business. It’s a ton of work and does not yield particularly fast rewards. If you work with a JP, they have cap table access, but they’ll reserve it for their highest end PW clients (50m and up). Same is true of many companies, all the big guys have cap table access, you just aren’t offered it. How did we do it? Pretty much throwing ourselves at the feet of the people who could make intros until we finally got one. I won’t name drop but they’re pretty big in the VC world and were kind enough to introduce us to some board members of these companies. Just getting someone important to like me enough to vouch. That’s it. Not really glamorous or some brilliant act.

KingofKip

What will be the bigger bubble burst? And which is more likely? The ai bubble collapsing or the gold bubble when it’s clear that ai is profitable and worth the trouble? My concern is they’re gonna print however much money to fund these projects. I don’t know if these VC’s and other companies give a shit because they’re gonna be fine anyways regardless if they fail or not. I don’t know if I can rely on any CEO’s pride/competiveness/competence to not lose the ai race lol That being said I’m only 50% into minerals and the other half I’m still in the market. I guess I don’t have as much faith as others do.

callsonreddit

VC's love these charts

TGG-official

All those people ran companies that are VC backed or SPACs not private equity. Dumbass

phatelectribe

Those two “luxury shopping” are massive for Dallas. Those 8 restaurants were also either establishments and/or very popular, not start ups that failed. Theres loads more by the way but those are the big names. https://www.dallasnews.com/food/restaurant-news/2025/12/16/dallas-fort-worths-most-heartbreaking-restaurant-closures-in-2025/ And just FYI, two of the names on your list are VC funded brands which are burning money at huge losses. They won’t be around in 3 years.

MediumLanguageModel

Man, Groq had that demo back in the GPT4 days and I wanted to invest but they weren't public. Let me get at these VC rounds! I've got literal hundreds of dollars and know a disruptor when I get spoon fed one. Instantaneous inference goes brrrrrrrrrrr!

Gom_KBull

I remember when I used to play Rainbow Six Siege tons. A friend i had in-game died in a round and said this in VC *"Guys, be careful. He's somewhere in that room... and he's got a gun!"*

Candid-One813

I agree that TPUs will win out at the end when the AI heat subsides and edge research(ie changes to neural architectures) diminish. But neural architectures are definitely not staying stagnant for the next few years (source: in adjacent area), and there is still enough VC money to burn. Im just pointing out throwing phrases like "for a future that doesnt exist" is just empty AI slop "analysis" with no value.

BallsDeepInRegret

PhD research analyst for a crypto VC firm.

whomakesthetendies

Told you regards. This behaviour is NOT NORMAL. https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/s/A9HKukn7VC

Vegan-Velociraptor

Comparison to Skydio Both companies focus on similar segments: small UAS (primarily Group 1, with some Group 2 elements for Red Cat via acquisitions like Teal Drones and FlightWave’s Edge 130). Skydio stands out more in the report because it fits the profile of venture-backed, post-2010 founded companies with significant private investment activity—aligning with PitchBook’s strengths in tracking VC deals. Red Cat (publicly traded, with growth via acquisitions and government contracts like the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program) may have less emphasis on traditional VC rounds captured in the dataset. Additionally, the USRD data was last updated in January 2025 and excludes newer platforms/companies post-dating that cutoff, though both firms were established earlier. In summary, Red Cat isn’t “missing” entirely—it’s acknowledged in the M&A context—but the report’s methodology prioritizes venture investment trends, where Skydio is a stronger example. This explains the disparity in coverage despite their overlapping market positions in small, NDAA-compliant U.S. drones.

IcyIndependence7115

I do agree in the idea of “post capitalism” and that assets are going to become increasingly privately owned/consolidated to the wealth, but I view that more so as “poor/middle class people cannot build real wealth and get stuck in a rent based economy” thing than a “those with money to invest cannot build real wealth” thing. Sure VC and PE will scoop up these hyper growth tech companies, but imo hyper growth companies kind of depend on VC/PE to operate how they do. I feel that plenty of opportunities will remain for good individual investment decisions. (To be clear I don’t root for the destruction of the middle class, I just view this as the progression of our system.)

Wide_Combination_80

Your picks are good for known names. For undiscovered impact look at [Seedscope.ai](http://Seedscope.ai) or explore early stage VC and university spin-offs.

AbundanceLiberal

I don’t get what the complaint is. Go look at a ten year chart of FANG. Massive gains an available to retail in hindsight. At the time I remember many people saying tech was over valued then and the money had already been made. Also you’re missing all the VC failures. For each OpenAI or SpaceX there are ten companies you never will hear of that incinerated billions in private investment dollars.

Expert_Context5398

Bill Ackman has a huge financial incentive to keep pumping Uber because he's an early VC, lmao. You're lost on this. I'd say come back to me in five years but you'll probably be stuck making bad investing decisions so I'll let you do you. Spent more than enough time 'debating' this with you and there's nothing you've said that is worthwhile.

funkanimus

There’s a big difference between AI application companies and AI infrastructure companies. During the internet bubble, every bad idea with a website got millions in VC investment, overvalued, then bankrupted. Internet infrastructure companies did fine. Now we’re seeing tens of thousands of companies jumping on AI application bandwagon. They don’t even have clear use cases. They just want to say they have AI. Many of those will fail. AI infrastructure companies will do fine

therpgrad

Rivian took VC funding across several rounds to build out their company. No VC firm would let them spend an inordinate amount of time and money on research and development to come out with the cheapest and most polished product before making sale. They'd rather Rivian release a reasonably good product, even if it's manufactured at a loss, if it means that there is a path to profitability in the future. This allows Rivian to show revenue, start gaining market share, and more. Without any sales, Rivian would just be an endless money pit. The chances of future VC firms coming in and supporting future funding rounds would be miniscule. That would endanger the capital of all of the firms that supported Rivian in earlier rounds. With sales, though, it is much easier to have someone else take on some of the risk and keep the venture going. An example of a company with your mentality is Mythic. They have raised $125M+ across their Series A through C funding rounds and still don't have a product on the market. I'm sure their backers were screaming at them and then scrambling afterwards to save their investment. Mythic were lucky that Softbank et al. came in with another $125M, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt and likely would have just been a small-scale acquisition target for a medium-sized firm. Even with that additional funding, though, they probably won't even release anything meaningful.

USDeerWhisperer

WARNING: This is same fate as Neugebauer’s last SCAM, GloriFi in 2022. GloriFi declared bankruptcy. It was positioned as a niche financial institution with an unconventional brand — marketing to politically conservative and firearm-friendly audiences (credit cards with bullet casing imagery, gun owner discounts, etc.) — but ultimately failed. Numerous VC firms are still suing/litigating against Neugebauer claiming outright fraud. This is yet another “cash grab”.

Monkey_1505

Interesting. I don't believe you've verified anything I've said as false. What is currently being traded on future promises? - well p/e for the mag7 seem a little elevated in general, historically speaking. There's certainly a speculative premium there, and it co-exists with everything from promises of near term cancer cures, to AGI removing the need for cash in society. I'd find it hard not to class this atmosphere as 'ideas and promises of future prospect', indeed I cannot think of a better example of that phrase. Elon Musk recently claimed that Iain M Banks novels were prophetic of our actual future. Sam Altman promises chatbobs will deliver new scientific breakthroughs. That's where we are. The key in a bubble, is not absence or presence of impact. It's timing of that impact in reality versus market expectations. All that's needed is that markets get ahead of skis. Such speculation probably not yet at breaking point. But perhaps on it's way and certainly does have some rather far fetched promises associated. Basically every historical tech optimism period with society changing technology has had a bubble due to short term expectations overreaching reality, so not assuming it's different this time seems like a rational view. Indeed, people in the industrial era also thought it would amount to endless leisure time and the end of work. If we have patterns in history it seems prudent not to ignore them entirely. One big issue is that revenues are so very low compared to spend - the two are so far apart (at least 10:1 for model makers themselves - who pay for the infra use ultimately) and adoption quite low (search still outnumbers AI chat queries by a lot in terms of end consumers). None of the graphs of such things look like the numbers will meet for a long time. I'm sure you are aware of all this. Hard to imagine a detached person without any vested interests looking at that with no concern at all, I think. Ofc the spend is also historically very large (as in it's never been this large). Some infra scaling companies are within reasonable cash flow expenditure due to other profitable areas, some like meta and amazon, stretching things a bit aggressively with their spend compared to their own revenues. Meanwhile their customers for using AI infra, the model makers are profitless, and borrowing/burning VC capital. Everything there is a slide show pitch deck with a "we'll get there, trust me bro". I won't address IPOs or 'being only traded on being AI', because that's a straw man, it's nothing I've said. Perhaps that's how you arrived at the notion of having disproved things I've said, by just misrepresenting what I've said in your own head? Seems probable. In any case, I think we've kind of touched on most of this already to be honest. For me, and to my perception, it feels like your biggest dissatisfaction is simply that I don't agree with you, rather than you want to hear more about what I think. And if you do want to hear more of what I think, it's primarily so you can be more dissatisfied that I don't agree with you. That's how it looks.

digital_odysseus

Fiserv FISV looks like a classic special situation to me. The market is still anchoring to guidance and communication from the previous management, while the new management team hasn’t fully proven itself yet, so there’s understandable skepticism. That said, the new leadership actually looks quite strong on paper. The CFO is ex-Global Payments with VC experience, and the co-president is the former Stripe CFO. That’s a meaningful upgrade in fintech and payments expertise. Strategically, their plan to integrate services makes sense, especially in the current AI environment where rewriting legacy systems, reducing tech debt, and optimizing operations are finally becoming feasible. They’re also looking at AI primarily as an optimization lever (not hype), and they’re investing in a stablecoin strategy that could meet global merchant needs and improve cost efficiency over time. While management still needs to prove execution, I found the Q3 earnings call refreshing. The tone was one of candor, not promotional optimism, which I actually view as a positive signal at this stage of a turnaround. From a fundamentals standpoint, the company generates strong and consistent free cash flow. Even with leverage on the balance sheet, the FCF quality is solid. With ongoing optimization, product integration, and platforms like Clover, I think there’s a reasonable path to mid-term earnings growth. This is still a competitive and capital-intensive industry, so it’s not without risk. However, payments and financial infrastructure continue to grow globally, and Fiserv has meaningful exposure to international markets. At the current valuation, the stock looks closer to a bargain than a value trap, in my view, and I see it as an attractive 3–5 year investment if management executes.

chopsui101

if gold rush you mean gold rush for early VC and insiders.....sure.....if gold rush you mean for long term investors I would seriously doubt it.

zxc123zxc123

I meant it with a nihilist world view but sarcastically sounding tone to imply that the founders got what they deserved, rich VC got richer, and the SPAC grifters got theirs while retail got fucked from behind with their bags.

alanism

SV venture capitalists used to require startups to incorporate in Delaware if they wanted funding from their firm. Not no more. So that pipeline of both new tech startups and new VC funds is not likely going through Delaware.

ihopethisworksfornow

Hey man secure a few million in VC funding, hire some engineers, and you too can be the CEO of a startup company that sells useless software to businesses.

BoS_Vlad

Yes Google is undervalued and I predict it will have a huge resurgence in 2026 for all the reasons you mentioned and especially after shareholders receive participation in the expected 2026 SpaceX IPO. Google funded 10% of SpaceX’s 2016 VC round of funding and 10 years later Google shareholders should receive a nice piece of the space pie.

Aggressive_Chuck

> semiconductor and pharmaceutical manufacturing, in-orbit data/AI, etc So VC grift?

Direct_Background_90

She could have bought and held Apple or Tesla and done as well. Her husband is a VC. Did Peter Theil cheat in some way when he invested in Facebook and PLTR for pennies on the dollar?

Ajfennewald

If you look at studies of median returns of VC and private equity they don't look particularly impressive (summarized in the book Expected returns). It seems pretty likely the stuff that would be open to the public is below median. So yeah my instinct would be to stay far away.

ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx

That’s why I’m pointing out examples of mature companies that are profitable. Well aware of the startups that just burn VC money and/or invest all income back into growth.

eska089

I also thought about how I can financially profit from this development and I realized the smartest play is to buy the Casino, not the chips. If retail capital is flooding in to be the exit liquidity, the ones making the guaranteed money are the General Partners managing the funds. So instead of buying their semi-liquid products, I'm considering buying the stock of the firms themselves, like Blackstone (BX), KKR, or Apollo. At first I worried that if the AI/tech bubble bursts, these stocks would crash too. But then I looked at the data on "Fee-Related Earnings." Unlike a VC fund that needs a profitable exit to get paid, these firms charge management fees on committed capital. So even if the underlying assets drop 40% and they have to "gate" the retail fund to stop withdrawals, they still collect that 1-2% fee on the locked-in money for years. The casino gets paid even when the players are losing. Plus, their own exposure is totally different from what they sell. While they sell retail investors debt or equity in risky startups, the firms themselves are buying "picks and shovels", like physical data centers and energy infrastructure. That stuff retains value (at least parts of it) even if the AI software market implodes. It’s not risk-free, but it’s the difference between owning the car in the crash versus owning the insurance company. As long as this "democratization" trend continues, you basically become the owner of the house rather than the gambler at the table. But in the end, I still think I’ll sit this one out. It’s still a derivative bet on a bubble, and I’m not chasing profits within a bubble. My strategy is simple: sell into this liquidity, increase my cash position and wait for better valuations or new opportunities. Sometimes the best trade is doing nothing and wait. 😉

greenappletree

Even in the best-case scenario, the way VC works is not how buying public asset work. They swing for home runs. That is, they're willing to take 99 losses but get >100X on a very low, small percentage. In other words, they have very deep pockets and large cash flow that the individuals do not.

flyinillini14

I work in VC and want no part of dealing with retail investors. The LPs we have today are enough of a pain in the ass.

SomewhereOpposite883

1. They have a natural monopoly...with the FC9 that costs 10 times as much as Starship will 2. The actual secret is that it's not SpaceX that will make them money but Starlink, pretty much their entire operating costs is shooting stuff into space so you just have to do some napkin math to model what's possible once they start flying Starship The actual value proposition is that Starlink will outcompete every single ISP on a GLOBAL scale Imagine if tomorrow there is a fastfood chain that doesn't need to open any restaurants, just the click of a button and everyone in a country can now order their burger with instant delivery no matter where they live, not only that but their moat is that literally no one else is even close to achieving that technology while the competition is operating in a separate industry SpaceX is so far ahead all the Starlink competitors are...using their rockets to launch their satellites How is McDonalds supposed to compete? You think AT&T are going to start building rockets? 800 billion for SpaceX makes sense even if you assume they somehow don't sell a single spot on the rockets just based on Starlink alone, the entire global ISP market is worth 2.84 trillion according to AI, that number is probably wrong but it's close enough to a rough ballpark figure The real question is whether Elon can pull it off, considering i didn't believe in their plan for re-usable rockets when it was all based on a dream and now they are straight up already testing Starship i don't see why not My biggest concern is that Musk might try to merge his companies, folding SpaceX into the dumpsterfire that is Tesla, an idea that he has been talking about more and more recently Oh and of course this is a VC-style analysis looking at the (realistic but unlikely) potential, if you're not the person to believe in the Amazons, Googles and Stripes of the world just disregard everything i just said and stick to buying ETFs

Ascorbinium_Romanum

We'll, I'm not sure about that, there is still VC money to throw into it. The mag7 is still not going into any serious debt. This is most likely not the top, but we're getting there.

OddBottle8064

I do think small and mid-caps will continue to underperform because the successful high-growth companies now stay private longer and don't IPO until they are large caps. The days of buying a high-flying startup are over because VC holds onto the good ones. The companies that do IPO as small caps or mid caps are companies that VC doesn't have enough confidence in to hold.

cryptohorn

[don't get involved with cartels ](https://youtube.com/shorts/JYChSN6VfMs?si=7_rjhU5VC4dUDve-)

cuteman

You think random guys 18-40 are investing their college tuition in Tesla? Might want to check out the institutional ownership ledger and see the biggest names in finance, VC, banks, brokerages and pension funds.

prestodigitarium

Not really. AFAICT the main sellers aren’t VC funds. And I wouldn’t call EZ/Forge “sketchy”, they’ve got a good track record now. If the person qualifies, I think you’re doing them a disservice by turning them off of it all.

prestodigitarium

Eh? You missed the main ones - if you’re an accredited investor, buy into a fund that bought interests in cap table VC funds. Or go to EquityZen/Forge and indicate your interest. They email you the next time they have some, and you buy it. The former is a bit Wild West, but the latter’s been good in my experience.

Ok-Parfait-9856

I think it’ll be something like this. I don’t think it’ll be a straightforward ai crash like everyone is predicting (granted that could be part of it). It’s the debt that’s hidden all over the place just like 08. Between ai debt, and the recent approval by the govt that allows PE firms to bundle and sell their strategy in a stock like security. Historically only VC and other large sources of capital could invest in PE, since only 1/20 companies make it at best and now it’s even worse. So for 20 years PE firms have been dumping money into anything and everything, seeing what sticks. Obviously they’ve racked up enormous amounts of debt and the chickens always come home to roost. So now for the first time in history, Joe jerkoff can buy these non-transparent PE strategies, which are most likely junk. There’s not enough regulation around PE to really know what they are. Hence why it was always barred from the public. If 401k brokers start packaging these shitstains into 401k funds, when shit hits the fan, Americans 401k accounts will be paying off all that PE debt. Obviously I don’t know what will really happen, no one does. But the fed is printing money, we’re seeing QE like activity (fed just bought $40B of short term treasury), trumps put us $3T more in debt in 11 months, companies have lots of debt and not much to show besides high stock prices with high PE ratios, and all the other wild shit going on. My personal guess is a hard crash in 2-3 years. Shit moves slow. No one really knows but I just don’t see this as sustainable regardless of ai performance. The veneer is starting to crack but money is flowing. I think the end of trumps term will cause a moderate crash, since no other person would pump the US economy like a shit coin. I’m pretty sure trump got dazzled by crypto and said “let’s do this, but to the economy”, as musk and thiel swallow and wipe their lips.

silicon_replacement

If some one in avgo knows how to beat nvda , and they can pursuade VC, Jensen said what he thought it would work but did not work for SEGA, At this stage, what you think would work does not matter, you need to proof with a product, And it cost .5 billion to tape out Tsmc will help Jensen, to block others The tap out process is an fucking voodoo art, everything works on emulator until you pay that .5$b It is not the problem of design software, Hold nvda untily my daughters lost their virginity

FalseFortune

The V in VC stands for Venture as in startup not Large Cap.

WeissMISFIT

Clearly not a bot, they have no idea what VC firms actually do. They’re just regarded

Empty-King7717

What happens when you take VC money out of the equation?

Empty-King7717

Yeah same What happens when VC stops giving money to AI companies? It will directly decrease these semi conductor companies valuation.

drummer820

Yeah that assessment seems pretty accurate. The demand right now is huge, but it’s coming from unprofitable LLM labs. If they can figure out a way to dramatically reduce burn rate it might all work out, but so far they are dependent on VC capital and debt and seem like they’re in a precarious position financially. If one or more of the model companies goes under, a lot of the demand for compute vaporizes overnight

drummer820

Agreed, OpenAI is clearly one of the weak points in a very interconnected ecosystem. A lot of the RPOs getting everyone jazzed at earnings are basically just IOUs from openAI, and bigger companies are making huge CapEx investments assuming those will be honored through the 2030s. VC capital is indeed drying up, and the small and medium sized labs and neoclouds are turning to private credit debt, while even the hyper scalers are issuing bonds. It’s a house of cards that requires flawless execution or it all collapses

GarfieldLeZanya-

Tldr and missing a lot of nuance:  Historically, the only companies you could invest in are publicly traded companies who have to be SEC-vetted and thoroughly and publicly underwritten by third parties. It has its gaps, but the guardrails exist.  For non-public companies, typically the only people who could were accredited private equity and venture capital firms who raised rounds of capital during raise rounds, which are the things you hear about called Seed Rounds, Series A, B, C, etc. These private investments are **not** regulated by the SEC at all, nor do these companies have to publicly disclose as much to any information to the public. It is a low-transparency, low-liquidity market which, unlike the public market, has a **significant** chance of stocks going to $0 and companies outright failing. Thr usual VC rule of thumb is maybe 1 in 20 of their investments generate any profit.  And this has only gotten worse. The private equity industry has become extremely illiquid and valuations are down across the boar, and these firms are stuck holding the bags   Now, that's changed. Now these firms can freely sell these private positions to you and me, and, worse, they can sell it to you in your 401k. Without any public regulation or vetting. Every dumbshit startup spiraling the drain will be pumped into peoples retirement funds and drive peoples 401k's to $0 while rich VCs get to unload their bags. 

RoyalCities

The “compare launch MSRP vs launch rental rate” lens is useful, but it’s only part of the story. I'm looking at today’s economics. I.e. what people actually paid for H100/A100 hardware vs what they can rent it out for now . See my other comments where I did the math using today's rates. If older GPUs naturally drift cheaper as H200/Blackwell arrive that’s fine ONLY if the owner has largely paid down the original capex. The problem is a lot of this gear was bought in the last 1-3 years at peak pricing during the VC spending spree via these providers. When rental rates get pushed down toward or below full cycle breakeven while the loans are still outstanding, the age doesn’t save you. it just means you’re servicing yesterday’s gear / capex with today’s compressed cash. In that sense falling H100/A100 rental prices are a red flag. They show current supply/demand and ROI pressure on recent purchases, not just a normal generational price. And it’s not like most of this gear was bought for cash. Look at the public disclosures from the AI infra players we CAN see. CoreWeave has raised well over $10B in secured debt facilities for GPUs and data centers, and Oracle AI build‑out is explicitly tied to a debt load north of $100B. That’s before even getting into Nvidia‑linked financing and co‑signed deals. This isn’t a clean, pay as you go upgrade cycle. It's a lot of leverage that only works if rental economics hold up...which right now they don't seem to be at all. It looks more like scalp demand padding Nvidia’s books than durable, self funding infrastructure...and that can only run so long before the financing and ROI math collide and investors get wise to all of this.

moorhound

I don't think a lot of people understand how similar the current Silicon Valley/VC sphere is to pre-collapse Rome/Greece It's a bunch of wealthborn yuppies taking drugs and regurgitating contemporary philosophy at each other at orgy parties and then barking orders down to their employee peons during the business week

Some-Palpitation-314

If anything, we're about to see who's been swimming naked when the energy bill comes due. Data centers don't run on vibes and VC money forever.

Beautiful-Parsley-24

I was a founding engineer at a tech startup that went public. One of the VC firms that invested in our startup's Series A gave us the opportunity to invest with them. A bunch of my former colleagues and I took them up on it. I do think this is one of those cases where the standard r/investing advice against active investing fails - I believe we can vet "AI" startups better than the market. We can advise the GP "Well that's bullshit" or "we should write these folks a check".

jaajaajaa6

The one main difference is that the current companies have far more revenue and deeper pockets. In addition, they all act like VC funds and that allows them to constantly evolve and grow. That said, there will always be opportunities outside of the Mag 7.

Happy_Discussion_536

>bankers and VC firms who all took out billions upon billions of cheap debt leveraged against their own wealth capitol. Do you have a source on #s and how it compares to VC leverage today? >We saw the beginning of the liquidity issues just before Thanksgiving. The only evidence I've seen is some use of the standing repo facility and modest use of the discount window. Very small jumps in SOFR. What I mean by crash is something that would take us into a bonafide recession (due to credit seizing up) without intervention soon had Fed not injected with RPM. Is that what you mean?

orangeyougladiator

Well I didn’t mean you and I getting loans. I meant the bankers and VC firms who all took out billions upon billions of cheap debt leveraged against their own wealth capitol. We saw the beginning of the liquidity issues just before Thanksgiving. If you define that as a crash then yes, it would crash.

Chuckles77459

Insider Transactions (Last 6 Months) Data as of December 2025 This is the most telling signal. While the CEO is buying, the Directors are selling. The Only Notable Buyer: The Captain • Jonah Peretti (CEO): • Action: BOUGHT shares in May 2025. • Amount: ~$147,000 purchase on the open market. • Signal: This is a classic "skin in the game" move. He bought right after securing the new debt deal, likely to signal to the market that he believes bankruptcy is off the table. The Sellers: Everyone Else (Directors & VCs) In the last 3-4 months (specifically Q3 2025), there was a cluster of exits by Board Directors. These do not look like standard "sell to cover taxes" transactions (which are usually small and mechanical); these look like "getting out" sales. • Adam Rothstein (Director): • Action: SOLD ~$300,000 worth of stock in September 2025.  • Note: He dumped a significant portion of his holdings at ~$2.00/share. • Janet Rolle (Director): • Action: SOLD ~$107,000 worth of stock in September 2025. • Angela Acharia (Director): • Action: SOLD multiple times in September 2025, totaling over $200,000. • NEA (Major Shareholder/VC): • Action: Continued to sell blocks of stock in March 2025 and mid-2025. This is typical for a VC firm that needs to eventually close out a fund, but it creates constant selling pressure on the stock price.

moorhound

I mean, markets are still up AH. Big money seems to be leaving retail holding the AI bag and cycling to financials and literally everything else in preparation for the upcoming liquidity flood. As much as I'd love to see the yuppie Y-combinator VC crowd eat shit, this is dirty.

TheoryInttro

We're not. They're just saying that to get the VC's to keep throwing money at them.

RoyalCities

The GPU cloud rental space has been imploding. Their is too much oversupply in the system that H100s can be rented for 1.50 an hour at many places. This is below the breakeven rates not even factoring in the power requirements and points to a lack of demand / oversupply and thim to negative margins. Alot of these companies have exposure here (CoreWeave) so I'd wait until we get some real retracment for the larger AI players than buying any of these. It's sort of a race to the bottom with the business model (especially on a depreciating asset) I honestly think most of these guys will fold or atleast be consolidated because everyone and their mother took VC capital to try to be the next runpod but clearly it's just lead to an overspend.

moorhound

GPUS WIN: Your power bill goes up 40% and your house's water pressure drops like it got a kidney stone so that Silicon Valley VC pricks can make bank and steal your jobs TPUS WIN: Cheap, efficient AI for everybody, America and the whole world wins, GOOGL + POET + LWLG have a baby and everybody's rich NVDA GANG ARE THE VILLAINS. BUY GOOGL

R12Labs

I believe Musk did a lot of coding and was technical. Thiel seems less so. As the video someone posted shows, but behaved more like a VC from the start.

shawman123

Anything is possible in this market. But its going to do 17-18m in revenue this year and most of it is Starlink which has very low margins. Are they even Gross Margin positive overall considering humongous capex required. its easy to get big money through VC/retirement funds etc than going to public where valuation could become a concern. Tesla is valued based on perceived potential of Robotaxi and more important Optimus Robot. What is the thing that will make 1.5 Trillion sensible for SpaceX. May be Space datacenters for all cloud providers. I could see Elon selling that or something crazy like space mining gold or other rare earths. You never know. Either way I watch from sidelines with interest in how it goes.

shawman123

I doubt Spacex will go public. I dont think their financials are screaming for it for sure. Main revenue is from Starlink than launches. Starlink margins are very low. its easier to get big money from VC and keep running the company at very high valuations. I expect SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, DataBricks, Stripe etc to remain private for a while. I would also agree with buying GOOG as indirect exposure rather than going with a Mutual fund for sure. Plus they are not owning 30% of SpaceX for sure. Their total asset value is just 9.5B and SpaceX is just 5.78% of it. [https://markets.ft.com/data/funds/tearsheet/summary?s=BPTRX](https://markets.ft.com/data/funds/tearsheet/summary?s=BPTRX)

ImprovementMain7109

At $1.5T you’re basically paying today for “dominant global infra + Mars story” decades out. On rumored revenue numbers that’s VC-style multiples on a public ticker, with key-man and political risk all concentrated in one guy. If it actually lists anywhere near that, I’d size it like a moonshot, not a core holding.

Haunting-Worker-2301

I’m not really sure why AcreTrader would present an ethical issue unless you are clearly against investors buying farmland. JD Vance was a partner in a VC firm that invested in the company. Just because JD is VP now doesn’t mean he is doing anything with AcreTrader or using it to control anything. AcreTrader very simply buys farms that are for sale, rents them to farmers, and collects the proceeds on rent and sale. You can literally look on their website to see their deals and ask them how they sourced a particular deal. AcreTrader doesn’t own a lot of land in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to other farmland investors. Even if JD Vance wanted to use them for nefarious purposes, I’m not really sure how he would do so taking down 2-5M dollar farms one at a time. If you are against anyone investing in farmland besides farmland operators themselves, I guess that makes sense but then you also shouldn’t invest in the S&P, blackstone, etc since those are all investors that buy things like homes, apartment buildings, etc.

iLikeE

The job market is not fine. Having more job postings does NOT mean that more jobs are available. It would be nice to look at any undoctored and clean jobs reports for the last 2 months. Would be nice to look at true data. On the tech side there are less entry level jobs and stable to less managerial jobs and even less executive positions. Tech salaries are usually highly subsidized by the influx of VC money and option for stock buybacks. This is untenable currently as the huge push over the last 2 years was the resurgence and reawakening of AI which is now being understood even by the most ignorant of VCs that these companies are making sophisticated chat bots and the only way to turn a profit in the next couple of years is to have for for service and/or dilute these chatbots with advertisements. Just my take as someone with close ties to the epicenter of this tech stock market bull rally and the actual reality of the tech job market.

miaminaples

What we have to understand is that today’s asset valuations are paper deep. They aren’t grounded in wages, productivity or real economic output. Rather it’s being inflated by liquidity, elaborate lies told by slick PE and VC types, and accounting conventions that fall apart the moment they’re pressure tested. People confuse market cap with real value, but in actuality a company’s valuation can rise by trillions because a tiny fraction of its shares traded at a higher price. That’s price illusion created at the margin. Those Mag 7 valuations depend on fantasies about perpetual dominance, margin expansion, global growth, and non-disruption. The entire edifice assumes that companies can compound into the tens of trillions without the underlying economy scaling alongside them. If wages don’t rise in tandem with asset prices, then they’re just stacking assumptions on top of liquidity distortion. It isn’t real growth. Real value is what people can earn and spend into the real economy. Paper value is the number you get when you multiply the last trade price by total shares outstanding. Modern markets have grown addicted to the latter, even as the former stagnates. That gap is what’s fueling all the wealth inequality and political distortions we’re seeing. The system keeps compounding on paper while the real economy flatlines. Valuations will keep rising right up until the moment the illusion has to reconcile with real incomes. Then we’ll see what’s actually there and what was just liquidity, narrative, and multiple expansion will be exposed as the illusion that it has always been.

3boobsarenice

we are "just burning VC money" gives me fresh wood every morning

IslandExact429

Still cant believe NVDA doesnt even make the chips Forget being a bull/bear NVDA is the next Intel and Intel is probably the dollar store but reliable chips for the future Theres no point of fancy TPU’s and Nana Banana Pro 2 for consumers unless they’re willing to fork over $100 a month Grok is very expensive and for a reason. Unless consumers pay, which Google is the best example where search is free, we are just burning VC money Also, OpenAI ChatGPT search is still a mess for the foreseeable future

lookamazed

CFPB used to be the place for this… you could still try but all the VC fintech companies are bootlickers.. soo

KeralaBullionaire

I am willing to lend you an ear, because there would be reason for your opinion as such. Would you be willing to share more as to why you feel this way? And true, all new SPACs and new VC led companies entering the indexes are just not making sense, in terms of numbers. Just hyperinflated values of the company without basic and unit economics.

PoopyisSmelly

In typical Chinese fashion, they cant build anything on their own. Company was basically funded with government subsidies and loans and backed by their state owned VC firm in Beijing, even their employees were poached from US companies like NVDA and AMD. I bet their chips are cheap copies of other companies chips. Junk

Boat_of_Charon

This is the answer. I work with private market funds and hedge funds and have really seen small and mid cap begin to underperform. The VC landscape over the last 2 decades and the advent of growth investing really gives fast growing businesses a much longer runway before ipo. I think small and mid cap will now be more of a value hunting ground than rotational outperformer.

prestodigitarium

In a game like investing with power law distributions, that's probably not the winning move. In angel investing/VC, especially, almost all of the returns in aggregate come from a very small fraction of the investments returning >10x.

donedrone707

don't. my last company was owned mainly by the VC firms that funded it to grow and IPO the VC vulture kept diluting, then eventually chapter 11'd, shed all their debt and useless assets and reconsolidated into a smaller, more nimble company that VC douchebag owns 100% of I get nervous when VC firms own too much. insiders owning is good, means they believe in the company

DogNamedFloppy

Vulcan Elements - company backed by Don Jr’s VC firm - secures a $620 million government contract. Draining the swamp so hard. Go murica. 🦅

fkrkz

It might be. As others said, it is really VC money that sustains AI, not revenue. Capex for datacenters Infrastructure costs is sky high and there is no real ROI yet

tragedy_strikes

I hope that S1 scares any delusional retail investors from providing the VC's their exit liquidity. These companies are money burning machines

Domingues_tech

When the VC music stops, Uncle Sam will be the only one left at the table. Why? Because AGI is the new nuke, and we don't let startups own nukes.

tragedy_strikes

VC demand their exit liquidity. Hopefully, retail won't reward them.

SecretAcademic1654

VC wants out so bad. 300 bil for a chatbot is insane.

JoJo_Embiid

yeah but he made that back later and his vision fund is up a lot right now. he's not a buffet style investor but in general he's pretty good. his vision fund raised 100B dollars, his ARM deal alone made 120B profit. wework is a huge rubbish bet but he made those back in other deals that's how VC style investing works

_hiddenscout

Totally lol. Yeah, i mean if you like it, go for it, it's your money. In the short term, there is a lot of trading happening around quantum. I just think when we talk about the AI Bubble, I think of stuff like nuclear and quantum being part of the actual bubble. Same with the all the VC backed dumb apps. I do like Honeywell more than that spin off though. I'm stoked to pick up some of the Aerospace line of business, that's what really interests me.

Ok-Pianist-5562

Thanks for this, its helpful to have your honest views on this and certainly food for thought. It's actually REALLY interesting. So I'm actually from Jersey 🇯🇪 You mentioned it is BVI company HQ in Jersey. Weshop was purchased by a HNW in Jersey from the UK hence mind and management here. It's a BVI company, but many private wealth vehicles (which this was) were historically setup in BVI which is quite common, so not as fishy as it might seem. So not a SPAC, but yes a Special Purpose Vehicle. The financials definitely don't make for good reading and blow ratios like P/E out of the water, but have to be read in the context that this basically a capital hungry VC start up over the past few years whilst trying to IPO. Heavy on marketing (athletes / influencers etc) in the early years for brand awareness and acceptance. I've been watching it for a few years (as I said above I've been USING the app). So I think its unfair to call it an insiders dumping scheme, but I can see why you might say that. The 12 month share maturity time-frame is to stop users making purchases, getting shares, then returning goods / receiving refunds. Which might better explain that aspect. Thanks for looking into it. One thing I dont understand, is who's buying into it? At that price... Surely its the anticipated growth that is priced in there? They are looking to launch in the US, so perhaps that's the thinking?

ChainOfThot

Elon isn't a VC, he doesn't invest in companies he doesn't build

coffeesippingbastard

thing is that nvidia knows the VC and tech community. Elon still walks on water. Tech treats Elon the way that republicans treat Trump. They idolize him and he in turn drives the hype train.

Bostradomous

The same way VC drug companies grew revenues while losing patients: charge more money but collect from less people. On paper the revenues are up, but the business itself is shrinking. It’s essentially an accounting trick that will eventually catch up to them.

RoyalCities

Yeah GPUs don't hold their value long term. I mean they do NOW because VC funded startups have choked the supply but that's more of a scarcity reason than say technical leaps. It also depends on the card. Consumer / GTX cards would depreciate faster than the datacenter ones. The datacenter cards are tested and rated for 24/7 operation. I remember after the 2017 crypto boom a bunch of cards hit the market that were used for mining and the life you get out of them just isn't the same as if they were used for light gaming. Alot more fan death, artifacts - general hardware failure.

RoyalCities

Too much competition and too much supply. There was ALOT of VC capital flooding startups hoping to be the best runpod. These are the companies who created the shortage plus the mag 7 of course. But I mean seeing how low the pricing has gotten and the projections that the cloud rental space will go lower Im inclined to think there was simply too many players piling in at one time. I did cloud training (before I got my own rig) so watched the prices tank basically in real time over the past year and a half. This article is interesting on the subject.

Aggravating-Salad441

I think you're underestimating the impact to the ecosystem. Why wouldn't Google, Amazon, and Microsoft take a hit if OpenAI failed? While everyone says these companies have earnings, it's also true that a lot of their earnings growth is coming from cloud segments. Those cloud segments are growing rapidly by hoovering up VC money from all (mostly unprofitable) AI companies. What happens when the VC money stops pouring into OpenAI and Mistral and ___? That will crush the most important customer segment for cloud earnings growth. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft won't go out of business. Obviously. They'll still be profitable. Obviously. But they very well could see earnings decline for a year or two as the excesses are squeezed out. Multiples investors are willing to pay would decline. There's no way the infrastructure companies skate free when OpenAI stumbles. Don't confuse survival with thriving.

lolkkthxbye

OpenAIs spending is partially responsible for NVDAs earnings. All fueled by debt and VC. I think you’d see a decline in earnings among the AI supply chain (data centers, memory, etc). Good news is all that VC money can be redirected to better investments.

Panda_Pam

Financial advisors, if they are from big firms like JPM, ML, etc., can give you access to alternative investments. I don't mean bitcoin or gold, I mean private equity, exchange funds, VC funds, etc. that you wouldn't be able to get in open market. Imagine if you were a VC invested Anthropic a couple of years ago, you would be banking right now! Alternative investments would be good for diversification, especially if you think AI bubble and recession will lead to a big correction in the market. One caveat is that private equity and exchange funds come with higher fees (I've seen up to 5%, they usually have performance fee on top of admin fees if the investment is doing well) , minimum size requirements (the smallest minimum investment that I've come accross is $50k), and for the most part less liquid. But if you're young, have excess money that you don't need for the next 7 to 10 years, it is not a big issue. With regard to fees, you can negotiate fee reduction as your portfolio grows. I've been able to get my fees reduced from 1% to 0.9%, to 0.7% over 10 years period, and should be able to get it down to 0.6% in the next year based on growth projections. Also, if you're interested in private equity or exchange funds, have your financial advisor waived the placement fee.

blbd

In the abstract, no. If you build a network and start to meet people, yes. But it has to be a subject you are passionate about and interested in so you know what to look for. I have experience doing startup companies, so once I hit accredited status, I put a small amount of money into a VC, where I know everybody that works there.  If you do it randomly just because you can without planning it, that will underperform a Boglehead three fund portfolio. 

SelenaMeyers2024

Yeah this is not the way.... Asst is a play.... So is dfli... So is inhd.... Everyone gets a piece. Play VC where you expect each position to fail and one to 5x or more

kadam_ss

This is a desperate attempt by private investors and VCs to dump openAI bags ok retail. If this AI bubble “pops”, public companies like mag7 would get hurt bad, but smaller private companies will get wiped out. That will wipe out tens/hundreds of billions of private capital, VC money. Last ditch effort to move risk to retail

WelpSigh

The hit would be that they wasted a shitload of money on something that will never make them money, which would be Bad. The business is large enough to withstand it. The issue with "monster demand" is that right now, the AI companies lose money on every query. Inference costs exceed revenue per prompt. That is without factoring in the capex and R&D spend. That isn't likely to change in the near future. Businesses and consumers are not paying the true price of AI by any means, it's subsidized with VC money.