app_store_button

google_play_button

DK - Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

Harry Stebbings

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman. 

If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Special Guest: Nikesh Arora, CEO @ Palo Alto Networks. 
 
AGENDA:
 
04:50 Airtable Sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285B 
 17:00 Leo Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up as Citadel Buys His $16BN Book
 22:30 Anthropic's AI Models Breach Three Companies as Cyber Threat Accelerates
 33:35 Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B as Chinese Models Crush AI Prices
 38:05 Valar Atomics Triples to $6B as Sequoia Bets on Nuclear Power for AI
 42:50 OpenAI and Anthropic Could Trigger a Massive Public-Market Dislocation
 52:55 Big Tech and Palantir Earnings Ignite the Next Phase of the AI Gold Rush
 1:04:30 Procore Buys DroneDeploy for $900M in a High-Stakes 12x Revenue Bet
 1:10:55 Scale AI Hits $1.5B ARR After the Meta Deal Left It for Dead

20VC: Airtable Sold for $1.285BN | Leo Achenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up | Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B | Anthropic Model Breaches Three Companies' Security | Big Tech Earnings: Why Palantir Beat The Rest

Anastasios Angelopoulos is the co-founder and CEO of Arena, the real-world evaluation platform that has become a leading referee of the global AI model race. Arena has raised $250 million, with the latest round valuing the company at $1.7BN. Arena recently surpassed $100M ARR just eight months after launching its enterprise offering, powered by more than 30 million monthly users.
 
AGENDA:
 
00:00 – Intro: "Kimi beat every American model": What Nobody Wants to Admit…
 
05:20 – Is this the true commoditization of models? Are they just a utility layer now?
 
07:30 – Do Chinese open source models cannibalize the closed frontier labs?
 
10:30 – Why has America's open source community lagged so badly behind China?
 
17:20 – Will Chinese models be banned in the US — and does hosting locally really kill the backdoor risk?
 
23:20 – Are enterprises really terrified of working with the frontier labs?
 
27:20 – Why hasn't inference got cheaper — and what happens when Anthropic's "disgustingly high" margins go public?
 
30:20 – Who should decide if a model is safe to release: the government, a neutral body, or nobody?
 
33:10 – Are we about to see cyberattacks like we've never seen before? (The fake candidate who passed every interview)
 
37:00 – 75 Neo labs: what separates the winners from the two-thirds worth nothing?
 
40:45 – Is data actually a commodity — and can data providers be $100BN companies?
 
48:00 – Can you be the referee when the players are paying you? (And Arena's real revenue)
 
50:45 – Will the model providers eat the application layer? Are Harvey, Lagora and Figma in trouble?
 
54:10 – Quickfire: Why hasn't NVIDIA bounced on the rise of open source, who hits $10 trillion first, and does the compute debt cycle end in insolvency?

20VC: 70% of Neolabs Will Die | There Will be a $100BN US Open-Source Model | Data is a Trillion $ Market | Governments Cannot Regulate Models: It is Too Late | The Cyber Attacks to Come Will be Insane with Anastasios Angelopoulos @ Arena

Joon Sung Park is the Founder and CEO of Simile, the AI simulation company building foundation models of human behaviour; allowing companies to test how real people may think, decide and act before making a decision in the real world. Simile has now raised $300 million in total, including a $200 million Series B announced last week at a $2 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Index Ventures.
 
AGENDA:
 
00:00 We Will Pay $100M for a Single Query on Some Models
 
10:00 Why Stock Markets May Not Exist in 5 Years Time
 
15:00 The Best Companies All Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies
 
19:00 The Best AI Companies Have Clear and Fast Reward Functions
 
24:00 How We Sign Fortune 500 Companies for $10M Contracts in Weeks
 
32:00 Does Similie Kill Kalshi and Polymarket? Prediction vs Changing the Future
 
42:00 Inside Similie's $300M Raise; What Every Founder Needs to Know

20VC: The Best AI Companies Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies | Will Simile Kill Kalshi, Polymarkets and NASDAQ | How to Sign Fortune 500 Companies As Customers in Weeks with Joon Sung Park, Simile

AGENDA:
 
05:00 Jensen's Open-Weights Letter Puts Anthropic on an Island
 10:00 OpenAI's Model Targets Hugging Face in a Cyber-Security Scare
 18:00 America's Open-Model Push Accelerates as China Looms Large
 30:00 Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia
 34:00 Google Cloud Grows 82%—So Why Did the Market Panic?
 41:00 Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7B for Atoms and Physical AI
 51:00 Francisco Partners Raises $21B: Can Private Equity Still Save SaaS?
 1:00:00 Mark Pincus Says Quit When It's Too Hard—Jason Lemkin Erupts
 1:07:00 Stripe vs Revolut: Which $100B+ Fintech Would You Own?

20VC: Jensen's Open-Weights Letter | Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7B for Atoms | Google Cloud Grows 82% But The Market Tanks | Francisco Partners Raises $21BN | Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia

Matt Murphy is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, who just raised $3 billion in fresh capital, its largest pool ever. Matt's portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora, OpenRouter, Chai Discovery, Axiom, OpenEvidence and more.
 
AGENDA: 
 
00:00 Why Menlo Broke All Its Investing Rules to Back Anthropic
 09:00 Why Ownership Matters Less in an Outlier-Driven Venture Market
 13:00 Do We Have an SPV Problem in Venture Today?
 20:00 Do Margins Still Matter in AI?
 23:00 Why Open Source Won't Derail Anthropic's Growth
 26:00 Does Every Model Provider Need to Build Its Own Chips?
 29:00 Why Anthropic Is Not a Threat to Legora
 32:00 Why Series A Is the Hardest Place to Invest Today
 36:00 Why Signalling Is B.S. and Every Fund Is Going Full Stack
 42:00 Why Building a Company in Europe Is Hard Mode
 47:00 Why Triple-Triple-Double-Double Is No Longer Venture-Scale Growth

20VC: Leading Anthropic's First Ever Round | Will Open Source Threaten Anthropic's Business | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | Why Triple, Triple, Double, Double is Not Good Enough Today | Why Series A is Hard Today with Matt Murphy @ Menlo

Osvald Nitski is the Chief Product Officer at Mercor, the AI-training and expert-data marketplace powering frontier-model development. Mercor last raised a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, and is reportedly in discussions for a new round at a $20 billion valuation. Mercor crossed $2BN in ARR in June; doubling from $1 billion in only four months.
 
AGENDA: 
 
00:04:00 Will open-source models kill the data-provider business?
 
00:07:00 Are enterprises still terrified of working with frontier model companies?
 
00:09:00 Does every company end up with its own specialised AI model?
 
00:10:00 Do enterprises actually have an AI ROI problem?
 
00:11:00 How should founders balance AI performance against exploding token bills?
 
00:14:00 Does AI mean product teams build 10x more—or ruthlessly simplify?
 
00:15:00 What does it now take to be a great product manager in an AI-native world?
 
00:20:00 Is the boom in AI services and forward-deployed engineers here to stay?
 
00:37:00 Can Mercor escape its dependence on a handful of frontier-model customers?
 
00:47:00 Are AI-generated code and agents creating a cybersecurity arms race?
 
00:56:00 When will robotics have its real "ChatGPT moment"?

20VC: Mercor CPO on Revenue Concentration from Frontier Labs | Why Large Enterprise is Scared to Partner with Frontier Labs | Why Small Specialised Models is the Future with Osvald Nitski

AGENDA:
 
00:04 China's Kimi and Qwen Put Frontier AI on Notice
00:08 Washington Debates Whether Chinese AI Models Should Be Banned
 00:17 Can America Build a Profitable Open-Weight AI Champion?
 00:21 OpenRouter's Moment: Is This the Perfect Time to Sell?
 00:31 Fireworks' $1.5B Raise Signals the Real AI Money Is in Infrastructure
 00:39 Why Every Great AI App May Need to Build Its Own Model
 00:50 Stripe's Bold Play to Buy PayPal
 01:01 The AI Funding Frenzy: Why Late-Stage Venture Is Winning
 01:12 Nuclear Startups Go Wild While Databricks and Stripe Stay Private
 01:15 The AI Supply Chain War: TSMC, ASML, DRAM—and Nvidia's Next Move

20VC: OpenAI and Anthropic Threatened by Kimi? | Should the US Ban Chinese Open-Source Models | Should Openrouter Sell & Value in the Routing Layer? | Stripe Buying Paypal: What You Need to Know

Lin Qiao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, the leading specialized intelligence and AI inference platform that last week raised $1.5BN at a whopping $17BN valuation. With just 200 people, the company has hit $1BN in ARR and expects to hit $2BN before the end of the year. Prior to Fireworks, Lin spent several years at Meta including on the founding team of PyTorch. 
 
AGENDA:
 
00:07 — Why Did Fireworks Bet on Inference When Everyone Else Was Chasing Training?
 
00:13 — Can Open-Source Models Turn AI Infrastructure into a Commodity?
 
00:19 — Should Enterprises Trust Chinese Open Models With Their Most Sensitive Data?
 
00:25 — Will Model Progress Keep Moving This Fast—or Are We Nearing a Plateau?
 
00:28 — Will the Multi-Model World Create a $100BN Routing Layer?
 
00:37 — How Much Will AI Token Usage Explode Over the Next Two Years?
 
00:43 — Will Token Costs Fall 10x—and Unleash 100x More Demand?
 
00:49 — Does Fireworks Eventually Have to Build Its Own Data Centres?
 
01:02 — What Is the Real Bottleneck Holding Back the AI Economy?

20VC: Are OpenAI and Anthropic Overvalued? The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10x And Usage Will Explode 100x | The Future Is Not One AGI; It's Millions of Specialised Models with Lin Qiao, Founder and CEO @ Fireworks

Fred Turner is the Founder and CEO @ Curative, one of the wildest stories in tech. Fred scaled a COVID testing business from $0 to $5BN in revenue and took the team from 7 to 7,000 employees in just 9 months. They did over 206,000 COVID tests in a single day and signed contracts in the 100s of $Ms with several of the largest states. Today, Curative is a unicorn health insurance business taking on the incumbents for one of the largest markets in healthcare. 
 
AGENDA:
 
00:00 How Did a Spare-Time COVID Test Become a $5BN Business?
 
07:00 How Do You Go From Testing Cows to STDs, Sepsis and COVID?
 
21:00 When Did Fred Realise COVID Was Massive—and How Did Curative Scale to $5BN?
 
36:00 Why Pivot Into Health Insurance—and What Is Broken About US Healthcare?
 
40:00 How Is AI Rebuilding Curative—and Which Departments Go to Zero?
 
45:00 Is SaaS Dead? Why Is Curative Cutting 80% of Its Software Spend?
 
48:00 Are Legacy Insurers Screwed? What Will Anthropic Be Worth in Three Years?
 
59:00 Will AI Make Companies Smaller? Which Jobs Will Survive?
 
1:10:00 Why Nuclear—and Could Subcritical Become Bigger Than Curative?
 
1:17:00 What Have Marriage and Fatherhood Taught Fred? What Has He Changed His Mind On?

20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner

AGENDA:
 
 • 00:00 – Apple SUES OpenAI: Did They Steal Apple's Biggest Secrets?
 • 05:10 – Is OpenAI's $6BN Hardware Bet Already Dead?
 • 12:50 – Zuckerberg Is Back: Meta Finally Takes On OpenAI
 • 18:05 – The AI Spending Bubble Nobody Is Talking About
 • 23:45 – Claude Is Coming for Designers, Product Managers & Figma
 • 27:15 – Anthropic's $50BN Explosion: Have We Already Hit AI's TAM?
 • 36:00 – The $26BN AI IPO Powering the Entire Industry
 • 40:00 – Seed Investing Is Dead? Jason Calacanis Changes Strategy
 • 57:00 – SaaS Is in Trouble: AI Is Accelerating Terminal Decay
 • 01:15:00 – Why Greylock Said No to Billions of Extra Dollars

20VC: Apple Sues OpenAI | Zuckerberg Back on X and Challenging Codex and Claude Code | SK Hynix's $26BN IPO | Is Seed Investing Dead: Jason Calacanis Departs Seed for Growth | Greylock Raises New $1.5BN Fund

AGENDA:
 
05:00 Washington Just Put Frontier AI on a Leash
 06:30 Sam Altman's Wild 5% Government Stake Idea
 19:00 The AI Funding Bubble: Why Founders No Longer Fear Dilution
 28:00 Alex Karp's Brutal Warning: Enterprises Don't Trust Frontier AI
 33:00 Meta's Shock Pivot: Has Zuck Accidentally Built the Next CoreWeave?
 41:00 Nvidia's Dangerous New Game: "Compute Now, Pay Later"
 45:00 Anthropic & DeepSeek Go After Nvidia's Crown
 48:00 Kling vs Sora: Did China Just Win AI Video?
 52:00 Is China Secretly Winning the Open Source AI War?
 01:02:00 Microsoft & Amazon's $6B Bet: AI Still Needs Humans
 01:11:00 Ashton Kutcher Walks Away From Sound Ventures
 01:16:00 The New Startup Talent War: No Liquidity, No Chance
 01:20:00 Final Thoughts: Who Wins the AI Endgame?

The Twenty Minute VC

20VC: Sam Altman Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI: Fool or Genius? | Alex Karp Sounds the Alarm: Enterprises Fear Frontier Models & Questionable ROI of AI | The Rise of Chinese Open Source: Deepseek Building Own Chips

20VC: Sam Altman Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI: Fool or Genius? | Alex Karp Sounds the Alarm: Enterprises Fear Frontier Models & Questionable ROI of AI | The Rise of Chinese Open Source: Deepseek Building Own Chips

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

Other podcasts you might like ...