Markets
-
The 38-point framework two VCs use to spot the next unicorn founder
Paige and Leura Craig aren’t looking for product-market fit, a Stanford degree, or a Zuck-evoking hoodie. They’re looking for entrepreneurs with preternatural forward momentum. “Basically, we’re looking for these monsters that can make decisions in chaos, constantly getting things off the plate, constantly making decisions and just moving forward,” Paige, founder and managing partner at…
-
Defense tech could be entering its awkward teenage years. Is the boom a bubble?
Drones, missiles, and warships were, for a long time, deemed uninvestable in Silicon Valley—or, at minimum, contentious. Consider 2018: Googlers were storming out over their company’s involvement in the AI military initiative Project Maven, and Anduril was the anomaly, a multi-million defense-focused startup soon to be headlined as “the most controversial startup” in tech. VCs…
-
The VCs betting founders need a village, not a blank check
Raj and Sunny Singh Sandhu trace their origins to a 50-person Punjabi village. “We come from this multigenerational family of Indian Army and Air Force,” said Raj. “Everyone served, on one side. And then, everyone’s been farmers, in agriculture. So, when we go back it’s acres and acres of ancestral land our family’s held for…
-
Lux Capital cofounder Josh Wolfe’s limited-odds, high-stakes 2027 predictions
We’re a little over halfway through 2026, and frankly, so far it’s been a weird year. I was thinking about that in the context of this week’s Term Sheet Podcast with Josh Wolfe, Lux Capital cofounder and backer of companies like Anduril, Applied Intuition, Hugging Face, Impulse Space, Osmo, and Physical Intelligence. Wolfe invests with…
-
As mega-funds grab 72% of all capital raised, the gap between VC’s haves and have-nots keeps widening
Venture capital’s gotten lopsided. While you probably knew some version of this—I know I certainly talk about it enough—the data is nevertheless striking. PitchBook this week released its U.S. VC midyear outlook, and the fundraising numbers are skewed to say the least: Funds over $1 billion raked in almost 72% of all capital raised in…
-
Whatnot is worth $11.5 billion—and its sellers just hit one billion orders
The first orders on Whatnot, in 2020, were Funko Pops, sold live by cofounder Grant LaFontaine. For the uninitiated: “A Funko Pop is a vinyl bobblehead-like doll, generally built around various IP,” LaFontaine explained in a recent interview we did for a forthcoming Term Sheet podcast. “You can get a Star Wars Funko Pop, or…
-
OpenAI’s balance sheet remains the most mysterious—and consequential—in business
OpenAI’s balance sheet leaked, and it’s hard to know what to think. A combination of blogger Ed Zitron and the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s 2025 financials look, well, pretty rough. A few key (reported) numbers to turn over in your head: In 2025, OpenAI’s revenue came out to $13.07 billion, up from $3.7 billion…
-
The SpaceX IPO marks a lopsided win for venture
SpaceX’s IPO may be a real win for venture, but it’s a deeply skewed win. “It’s a huge win for VC firms,” Kyle Stanford, PitchBook director of U.S. venture capital research, told me on Friday. “It’s a concentrated win, but the sentiment is that everyone can say: ‘VC is still creating these returns.’ Now, you…
-
Anthropic’s confidential S-1 signals summer AI IPO race could heat up fast
Anthropic was open about its confidential S-1 filing on Monday. The $965 billion AI juggernaut announced the filing—which we cannot yet see—on its blog. It’s a contradiction, but then Anthropic is its own kind of contradiction, a still-young private company we know quite a lot about. The nearly trillion-dollar startup (if it can be called…
-
The key disclosures missing from SpaceX’s S-1
The particular joy of an S-1 is that it cracks open a business long held close. So, when SpaceX finally and officially filed to go public last week, it was momentous. At long last, there was visibility: We know the company’s 2025 revenue was $18.67 billion, that its losses are also up to nearly $5…