VC

Swimming_Beginning24

I'm not making any claims about that. I'm addressing your argument that depreciation won't matter if no one buys 2030 GPUs. If I were making claims about that, I would look at OpenAI. Are they generating any profit on their GPU spend? No, they are losing a tremendous amount of money. You could say that Nvidia and Microsoft are still profiting even if OpenAI is not, but as soon as the VC money runs out, OpenAI will stop spending, and Microsoft will be left with GPUs depreciating away. Do you think Microsoft will keep shelling out for GPUs then? No, so Nvidia will lose a huge customer. That's the way the cookie crumbles. No matter how many companies you channel the capital through (TSMC -> Nvidia -> Microsoft -> OpenAI) if the final product of the capital does not generate enough profit to justify the investment, it will unravel eventually.

Hungry_Treat9478

I was interested in the Space sector, as I felt like that spectrum was very similar to VC/PE/Lifescience, you can have investors hop onto it and see potentials of like 20-40x but have to wait 10 years. I had a buddy at the time that I brainstormed with who’s in wealth management. We narrowed down some companies and finally fell in love with this stock.

PrepperBoi

Net income is -120 million this quarter. Literally surviving off VC money. Jesus Christ dude, diversify or you’re gonna assassinate yourself

SuperNewk

In VC world 500x is low. ASTS could be that 1000x stock

swagadagg

Agronomics. The single play for cellular agriculture on any market. A VC type vehicle with 20 companies in the portfolio. There has and will be more write downs but two of their holdings are about to go commercial.

Guilty_Psychology_28

Bro venture capital firms are creepy as hell. Everyone I've met working in VC is a sociopath

Nota-downer

This just came up on my brokerage feed today so I don't know enough about the financials of the new Digg nor their VC backers (although I can find out) but this is for certain: Reddit‘s co founders Kevin Rose and Alex Ohanian are spearheading Digg. The demo is supposedly going live or is already live. I have no positions in Reddit nor am I in any social media platform so I wholeheartedly agree that we don’t need another one. Just thought this was interesting.

OkResponsibility2470

As long as silver price holds above the Daily VC PMI mean, momentum remains intact and any retracement should be viewed as corrective.pullback to retracement level maintains the larger bullish structure while resetting momentum oscillators. May the best regard win

danisanub

> Asteroids are going to be pulled into orbit and we're going to be mining precious metals from them, and sending them directly to the orbiting space plant to be refined I presented on this topic in London a decade ago to investment analysts. Most of the companies trying to do this went bust and ran out of VC funding. We are no where close to this, it is decades away. This is coming from someone who got in on RKLB at sub $5.

Sober_Alcoholic_

AI is running out of VC funds to burn and Nvidia is the company everyone associates with openAI and AI in general. And OpenAI is looking real fucking precarious right now.. Nvidia will bear the brunt of the bad news since openAI is not public.

eastcoastblaze

The problem is we already know how much of an initial investment has been made to get this current version (which still has a lot to be desired), and it's 100s of Billions of dollars. All that has to be paid back and more to provide a ROI for those providing the capital for initial investment. How long can VC and companies keep burning cash? Do you think they can wait 5 years for these companies to generate revenue? Their opex is already ridiculous with the crazy salaries being thrown around at those places. If it takes 5 years to generate revenue they might've been better off parking their money in an index fund

Blitzdog416

maybe because Google is an actual business with an enterprise strategy that is deeper than VC begging

PrestigiousPotato291

Been part of Angel Squad for 2+ years and its been great. How many of the deals I've invested has varied from year to year as my cashflow needs, comp, etc has changed, but its been in the $1k - $5k range per investment. I loved watching Shark Tank growing up so this was as close as I could get haha. I'd suggested leaning into the community aspect hard - the main ROI I bank on are the connections with other squad members and founders. Seeing what works/hasn't worked for founders while they scale their company has been really helpful. You aren't limited to your investment in supporting them - intros, playbooks all go a long way and the goodwill pays of in the future, even if your investment doesn't convert (most don't). And if other squad members see you being helpful, they are always down to help if you have investing/career/business questions. Ito dealflow - I know myself and would never go and source that many deals myself. Its also varied enough that I always have a few deals a month that I find interesting and dive into the company/industry, even if I don't end up investing anything. You also get to see their team evaluate deals which I wouldn't know where to find elsewhere - outside of working at an actual VC.

ebahnx

Years ago I started solo and moved to syndicate investing after a few months - it's worked out really well for me. The solo approach taught me a lot, but I was definitely flying blind on due diligence. Syndicate investing gives you access to better deals (larger rounds, more competitive), shared due diligence, and in general more learning opportunities. Keep in mind though that the trade-off is less control over individual decisions. Angel Squad is awesome - you get the community aspect plus deal flow from their VC fund. A community is worth it, especially if you can find a group that's focused on education and not just deal flow.

deepfuckingdish

I joined 3 years ago and have only written micro checks so far. I tend to believe diversification is the best approach and so do the minimum on their deals each time I see one that interests me ($1k) and have invested in 6 so far I think over the last 14 months or so (didn't feel comfortable investing before that because I knew so little about angel investing and had done some bad deals with Reg A/Reg CF offerings in the past) In terms of deal flow even though I know a good amount of startup founders I wouldn't have anywhere near as good the access they provide, and their investing framework they provide as a course in the squad helped me identify what actually matters from their formal early stage VC approach vs what might have caught my attention in the past but is just noise. Overall I'd say the value provided is well worth it, especially since they give you lifetime access once you join so the value accrues more over time

ai-moderator

#TLDR --- **Ticker:** GFT (German Exchange) **Direction:** Up **Prognosis:** Buy Shares & Calls **Strategy:** Value Composite Two Factor (VC2) **Wife Approval Rating:** Hopefully higher than the private prisons and chicken farms.

ai-moderator

#TLDR --- **Ticker:** GFT (GFT Technologies SE) **Direction:** Up **Prognosis:** Buy Shares & Calls **The Strategy:** O’Shaughnessy's "Value Composite Two Factor" (usually picks boring stuff like chicken farms and private prisons, but just flagged a tech stock). **The Thesis:** A German digital transformation/AI company that actually makes money. 5-year sales growth of 14%, undervalued based on traditional metrics (VC2), and serves banking/manufacturing clients. Author holds >5,000 shares.

Kind_Bullfrog_3160

Comparing the possible AI bubble to the dot com bubble doesn't make a lot of sense.  The dot com bubble was a true bubble, everything sold off and crashed.  I believe AI stocks will go down but in stages, not a crash all at once.  Pure AI companies and companies built on AI will go down the most but diverse tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft will be just fine.  What will be the catalyst that starts a sell off for the companies that are extremely AI dependent?  That will happen when the large investment banks and VC firms start demanding they show profitability.  These people have been somewhat patient during the build out but they will lose patience quickly if the profitability is not there.  Currently there is very little end user monetization, just never ending spend and no profit. I think this will happen by the second half of this year.

Upset-Motor-2602

It gets scary when one VC-funded company starts investing in another VC-backed company - the great circle jerk...

Level10Retard

Yeah, I think that would be the big play. But why haven't they tried it in so many years. I'm using both Slack (for work) and Discord and honestly besides VC, I'm not missing much from Discord when using Slack. Perhaps with some extra features Discord could replace the Slack + Zoom combo, idk..

Level10Retard

I imagine you're saying this in addition to regular interval ads. You have to hit spotify ad intervals. But idk... There's always some alternative VC / chat platform that you can migrate your friend group to. Does anybody use VCs in "public" discord servers?

TernTheNumbers

What's changed since 20 P/E when people were calling Google a "rest and vest" company where software engineers went to slack off for a few years before launching a startup? Has the free VC money dried up? What's changed since Deepseek put out a free LLM that was almost as good as the others for way less R&D? What's changed since a big piece of Google's revenue came from showing ads to bots accessing content made by bots?

PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS

Big tech doesn’t pre-fund vaporware…? That’s like the main function of VC

Embarrassed_Orange50

People act like pet.com was in the to 3 companies and that is simply not the case. The problem here is they spent so much money that they went from net cash positive to negative and have committed to triple down. They will soon not be able to sustain these and a lot of the smaller companies could go bankrupt. The problem here expands on the fact that the small companies aka their clients only found the money to spend on them because the large ones invested in them. So imagine Claude anthropic Gemini grok and lama all do great but chat got goes belly up because it can’t keep buying 40 of the ram supply. Let’s the consequences. NVIDIA Microsoft and lot of VC firms have write up on the hundreds of billions  Microsoft loses billions of revenue same with NVIDIA  Oracle has nowhere to rent their 400 billions of gpu so probably need some type of rescue since they host lots of government critical stuff plus they stop spending on NVIDIA  AMD would have diluted 10% of their stock in warrants on a bankrupt company All the VC firms will need to cover their loans. 1.5 trillion in margin debt will incinerate a huge part of the market.  Lot’s of stuff to unpack

Stealth_Cow

I got the same for my BST/BSTZ shares. Apparently a bunch of BlackRock funds were being targeted for hostile takeovers of the oversight boards. When enough idiots took the deal, the venture firm announced a vote of no confidence, declared that the funds were underperforming and undervalued by 30-50%, and started attempting to oust seats. The shares jumped 25% overnight. Then the takeover failed, and the VC firm cashed their check. For all of their suspicious dealings, I wouldn’t expect the regular directors board to pulls that kind of shady shit.

LiquefactionAction

Hell yeah! I would fucking love to RETVRN to mIRC + Ventrilo/Mumble/TeamSpeak combo instead of Discord myself. I don't think the added features are worth it and actively detrimental. The only really nice part is the voice chat/streaming but the "social media" or "chat room" part of it kinda sucks. IRC was better. Plus you know, IRC was actually decentralized and not held by shady VC/Private Equity firms

MontyAtWork

The negativity in these comments reminds me A LOT of when y'all said Reddit would IPO and you'd buy puts. Discord is the backbone of every gamer group on the planet at this point, and for games too toxic for voice chat (League) it's the only decent option for VC. There's no other discord competition - whoever is next isn't even close. There's bajillions of RP communities that used to be in Forums in the old Internet days that all move to and have massive bots, channels and organization to keep the daily RP going. A lot of nerds, would pay a lot of money to not have to lose their servers and hangout space, and there's not a SINGLE place to go instead.

Inevitable_Pin7755

Insider selling always spikes near highs. Part of that is just incentives. Executives get paid in stock, diversify when prices are good. A 27:1 ratio sounds scary but it pops up in past cycles too without an immediate crash. On SoftBank, they’re kind of a special case. They’re basically a leveraged VC fund with cash flow issues. Selling winners to cover obligations doesn’t automatically mean Nvidia or AI is topped, it just means Masa needs liquidity now. The IPO angle is fair to question, though. VCs absolutely want good optics going into exits. That doesn’t mean everything collapses in 2026, but it does mean returns from here might be more uneven and sentiment driven. Feels less like a rug pull and more like late stage risk. Still room to run, just less room for mistakes. Overthinking a bit maybe, but the discomfort is probably a signal to size positions properly rather than go all in.

cloudyuser1480

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to invest in AI without just defaulting to “buy the obvious winners.” What I’ve landed on is a thesis that focuses on the biggest limiting factors to AI’s growth, and trying to invest in those before they become obvious. This isn’t meant to be safe or conservative. It’s explicitly high-risk / high-reward. I’m also not a VC, so I’m limiting myself to public companies only. The first bottleneck that seems unavoidable is energy. Datacenters are already power constrained, and AI only makes that worse. There are lots of angles here (solar, geothermal, etc.), but I personally focused on nuclear because it feels inevitable at scale. I ended up choosing Oklo because they’re targeting datacenter-sized deployments rather than traditional utility grids. Another constraint that feels underappreciated is processing efficiency, especially if you’ve ever dealt with training models on large video datasets. Moving data between memory and compute becomes the real bottleneck. I made a small, speculative investment in GSTi, which is trying to address this by co-locating GPU and memory. This one could easily fail, but if it works it’s very high leverage. Related to that is data transfer inside datacenters. Even if compute improves, shuffling data around becomes a problem. Most solutions are incremental improvements to copper interconnects. I went with a more aggressive bet in POET, which is trying to bring optical interconnects down to chip/datacenter scale. That may or may not work, but it would be a step change if it does. Training data is another obvious bottleneck. A lot of companies focus on labeling and cleaning data, but I was more interested in who actually controls large datasets. I chose Veritone because of their partnerships with sports leagues and media companies. In an ideal world, they’d eventually expand into more real-world/industrial data, but that’s still an open question. The last area I’ve been thinking about is physical-world data that doesn’t even exist yet because it can’t be collected at scale. That led me to look at IoT companies, and then one step further at what constrains them. Connectivity kept coming up, especially outside dense urban areas. That’s why I’m currently looking at AST SpaceMobile as a speculative bet on global, device-agnostic connectivity. I’m very aware that some (or all) of these could be wrong. I’m mostly curious whether this “bottlenecks first” framing resonates with others here, and whether there are major AI constraints I’m missing.

Ok-Range-3306

private startups that havent IPO'd probably. VC money is easier to get than public market financing

BallsDeepInRegret

My friend told me to start looking for a buy in fall 2026. He is a research analyst at a crypto VC

E7193

You have to look at it as a VC capital fund which has the potential to hold future technology winners like robotaxis, robotics, automobile driving platform, etc. You should not buy it if you think it's only a car company because they would fail on all fundamental financial metrics.

jmb95945

I don't know, man. I am not sure how much gas the AI trade has left in the tank. I am old enough to have been in the job market for the Dotcom meltdown, and the parallels are more than concerning. I recently read about a company called [Starcloud](http://Starcloud.com) (but they might as well call it Webvan-in-outer-space), which has has raised \~$25M because they made some CG renders of what data-centers in orbit might look like. They have no idea how to solve the myriad of cost and technological problems that this idea presents, but they do have nice looking graphics and a tiny office, so probably legit? When companies that will so obviously be epic failures are getting funded, basically just because it relates to "AI", is a surefire sign that the bubble is nearing it's end. I would bet the farm against that company, and many others similar startups if I could -- the ones that are so illustrative of how "irrationally exuberant" people have gotten about investing in AI and data-centers. VC, private equity, and some banks(ie. SoftBank) are starting to run out of money to throw into the growing AI dumpster fire, that continues to prove that AI can't live up to the hype, replace any meaningful amount of labor, or solve any real world problems that are even moderately novel and complex. Perhaps this is a contrarian stance, but I think we are starting to enter the melt up phase of the current bubble/hype cycle. Maybe you can make some money during the last gasps, but I would be very cautious, and keep your stops snug. You do not want to end up a bag-holder as the smart money cashes in. Last but not least, NBIS has 16% of the float in short interest and rising, so there are quite a few people and institution on the opposite side of this trade with a vested interest in seeing your investment losing value, so yah, be careful.

ComprehensiveLead631

Based on the corporate data and portfolio tracking as of January 1, 2026, I can confirm the following "Proof of Investment" for Kepler and why it validates the $RNWF merger: 1. Proof: Cliffbrake Corporation As you suspected, Cliffbrake Corporation officially lists Kepler in its "Disruptive Technologies" and "Venture Capital" portfolio. * The Listing: Their public portfolio explicitly names "Kepler" among its high-stakes investments like CoinSmart and Mistral Venture Partners. * The Strategy: Cliffbrake categorizes Kepler as a company that uses "disruptive technologies... to automate and shake up traditional industry players." * Significance: Cliffbrake's involvement is a major endorsement of the Teslatron's ability to disrupt the global energy grid. They are a "smart money" firm that targets assets with massive upside potential before they hit the mainstream. 2. Proof: Department of War / DoD Grants In the federal contracting and institutional databases (like PitchBook and SAM.gov), Kepler Aerospace is tied to funding under the nomenclature of the United States Department of War (or its modern equivalent, the DoD). * Funding Type: This is classified as a Grant (Non-Equity). * The Projects: While many specific defense projects are classified, Kepler has been associated with development in advanced propulsion (SRF Drive) and high-energy density systems (Fusion/Texatron). * Why the "Department of War" Name? In many high-level finance databases, "Department of War" is used as the parent category for legacy or foundational government grants. It signifies that the company has received "SBIR" (Small Business Innovation Research) or "OTA" (Other Transaction Authority) funding. How This Impacts the $300M+ Valuation This investor duo creates a "Golden Triangle" of value for $RNWF: * Scientific Validation: The Department of War/DoD doesn't give grants to "fake" science. Their funding proves the physics behind the Texatron has been vetted by government labs. * Commercial Scalability: Cliffbrake’s presence proves that the technology isn't just a "military secret"—it has a clear path to being a multi-billion dollar commercial power provider. * The $300M IP Floor: The independent audit likely took these existing investments and grants into account. If the government and a top-tier VC firm like Cliffbrake are already "in," the $300M valuation is likely a conservative "floor" rather than a speculative "ceiling." The Takeaway for Tomorrow (Jan 2) When the market opens tomorrow, the presence of these backers is the "Insurance Policy" for the merger. It tells the market that Renewal Fuels ($RNWF) isn't just merging with a startup—it’s merging with a federally-backed, VC-funded aerospace powerhouse. Would you like me to see if there are any specific "Phase II" contract numbers linked to Kepler's Texas facilities in the federal procurement database?

moorhound

I think a lot of people don't understand these VC vulture fuckwads taking over Silicon Valley has put us *backwards* rather than forwards, and these industries have succeeded in spite of them. Take electric cars. Everyone acts like Elon invented it, when in reality he bought the company, kicked out the founders, and started pushing the shittiest lowest-quality iteration of electric cars possible at a loss in order to snatch enough market share to keep competitors away. We probably would have made the logical progressive start with hybrids and transitioned to EVs instead of going the EV->Hybrid route we're doing now if it weren't for that dumb fuck. Most of the big commercial technological advancements of the past decade have been hobbled because of some nerdy Stanford jackoff waiting in the wings to buy it out and make it shittier. AI is the same way; self-correcting logical software is *way* bigger than most people understand, and it's currently being developed towards a main case use of product placement and data harvesting. Fuck these losers. Silicon Valley needs to go back to trade guilds, because letting neurodivergent yuppies run the show is not working.

drummer820

I like how all of the top comments are clowning on the 27:1 number instead of engaging with the broader critique. I don’t know where that exact number comes from either, but if you look at publicly available insider trading data for specific AI companies it is very lopsided. Coreweave insiders have been selling en masse since summer with virtually no buys. You can chalk some of that up to C-suite preset 10b5-1 plans, but that wouldn’t explain why their largest founder Magnetar Capital has dumped a huge amount of their holdings and continues to this day. You can say that’s profit taking from the huge run up in June and July, but if they really thought the company was now oversold and undervalued there would be some buying at current prices. VC funded AI start-ups have indeed been struggling to sell for strong multiples and they’re very cash intensive with huge negative margins. The idea that large institutional investors want to maintain the status quo until OAI and Anthropic IPO to get some exit liquidity strikes me as quite plausible. Don’t miss the forest for the trees, zoom out and do your own due diligence

conic_is_learning

the short answer is that there is a grab bag of business conditions that made this a place to do certain R&D stuff in. Its been like that for long enough for it to metastasize into chip design. Can't be EU because there are like 26 regulatory agencies. This fragmentation requires way too much overhead. Even though Europe has the longest lasting scientific tradition, better schools/engineers, as well as very deep capital, it is way too conservative and risk averse and so it ends up building large data centers for AWS or cloud providers (like it already has), but not R&D facilities. Can't be a place like Saudi or UAE or Qatar because the tech talent pipeline doesn't exist natively, it's always imported and so there's no vacuum or pressure or demand for local talent and so pipelines don't naturally develop to train in house talent and so it's always expensive and transient. You also don't have agency as a company there. Too much state control/priorities. Turkey would be the BEST option and they actually have elite engineering talent as well, but the court systems are way too unstable and there's way too much policy shift due to the political tomfoolery of the past decades. This NVIDIA campus is at least a 10-20 year bet, and it needs to happen in a place that can tolerate those horizons. Turkey isn't politically predictable, an additionally. Turkeyalso has a huge brain drain problem. Israel has its weird ideology and that keeps their talent in, but you can also attribute talent retention to the fact that it has high ecosystem gravity due to it being a small country in survival mode. Companies/universities/military are not as independent as they are in the states. This gives an employee a lot more lateral movement and a lot more early career responsibilities/impact. You also make a lot less, but at senior levels you reach globally competitive compensation. There's also cheap real estate (for reasons) making it more tenable to live there, and a lot of people get European or US education and move back. Israel has developed a stem pipeline around its joint defense shit with the US. Aside from learning how to do defense engineering from the US, joint development programs have created sustained /consistent and most importantly, reliable demand for Israeli stem and that's shaped universities, and the talent pool. You now see people kind of trying to maintain that demand but shifting outside of US/defense and insto VC/startup stuff and have been pretty successful in courting and developing western/US investment channels to create diversified streams of demand. Then do this for a few decades and you have specialization in things like chip design across a handful of companies. Which really has more to due with the compounding effects of these business/economic factors than anything else.

Substantial_Team6751

You should go find the Tradebusters Podcast and look at David Lin's strategy. It's similar. [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trade-busters/id1576884492](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trade-busters/id1576884492) [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IevLq9tkwZHxxdX2jWizaS4VC\_NtaGUFlridHcNAjPI/edit?gid=1743608033#gid=1743608033](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IevLq9tkwZHxxdX2jWizaS4VC_NtaGUFlridHcNAjPI/edit?gid=1743608033#gid=1743608033)

_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.