Deploying Capital Into 2026

Some running notes I have on capital deployment into 2026:

• AI infra winners have already been crowned

  • Mostly consist of things the big ORMs and labs

  • A few startups (ie FAL)

• The next generation of winning companies will be much larger in size than the prior mobile cohort (2005-2012) and the cloud cohort (2012-2022) and will come less from PhD researchers, and more from the hacker archetype

• Access is all you need, price sensitivity into these rounds at seed is nearly irrelevant unless we start seeing regular ZIRP prices (100m+ pre money valuation pre traction seed rounds)

• A good size round is 4-8m at seed, if you’re lucky you’ll find something good priced in the 15-25 range raising ~2 (most YC companies are this)

• Some breakouts are going to skip series A, and the A market is going to be crazy competitive, you need seed access

• Talent is much more geo diverse post-covid - expect majority of the winners to come from SV still, but less concentrated there and more concentrated everywhere else

• The founders who win are the ones with the right mindsets to this environment

• The bubble could pop at any time, but until the music stops all gloves are off - no one knows what advances could pop us into another 6-12 months of mania

• We won’t get ASI, but by the early 2030s life with technology will look much different

Hope everyone is having a good labor day.