John Nay’s Post

Agentic AI use cases here and now!

A Cooley team led by David Young, Priya D. Patel and James Allen advised Align Ventures, a venture fund investing in technologies driving the future of retail, on its participation in Figure AI’s $675 million Series B financing round, bringing Figure to a $2.6 billion valuation. Congratulations, team. 👉 Read more at the link below. For more AI resources and to see the team's full capabilities in this evolving space, visit our #CooleyAI page here: https://bit.ly/CooleyAI #AI #artificialintelligence

The beginning of the big moves in the #GenerativeAI wave. #Visa commits for kicking off a new venture with investments up to $100Mn as a part of their their venture fund new initiative. https://lnkd.in/eFW5cUkM #digitalventures #Growth #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM's #Newdigitalbusinessbuild

Anecdotally, we've all noticed the trend of early-stage companies raising bigger rounds at higher valuations. Mistral AI's $113M seed round at a $260M valuation last year certainly comes to mind. Now that's been confirmed by the data. Although volume of deals slid for the ninth quarter in a row, total funding climed for a second straight quarter. What does this mean? Investors are being more selective of who they invest in, but are putting more money behind those select few. More data here: https://lnkd.in/e4gaWNfU

Discover the newcomers to the 2024 Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist, spotlighting AI focus, global CVC expansion, and seasoned investors. #CorporateVenturing #InnovationTrends #GlobalPowerlist

WSJ reporting Foundational Model company Mistral is raising $600mm at a $6 Billion Valution. For VCs goes to show Foundational Models are a big boys game with hundreds of millions if not Billion + needed to be raised to be competitive. But I wonder longer term if these are + ev bets or simply a way for the blue chip VC firms who have raised billions for their new AI funds to deploy massive amounts of capital in low-risk low-return bets. The more interesting companies are still worth $50 million or less but; 1. Finding them is hard 2. Check sizes are by definition smaller so for big VCs won't move the needle 3. The risks of failure are extremely high But that is where the highest expected value lies.

"When everyone feels like they’re winning, nearly everyone is going to lose. Or at least be in for a rude awakening." ...Just one of a number of take-aways from this retrospective of the last decade of Venture Capital that examines (1) the sources of sobriety, (2) what fanned the flames of unreasonable valuations, (3) the reduced liquidity options, (4) the role of AI in current venture landscape, (5) how financing became a goal rather than a tactic, (6) and the implications and new opportunities in the rubble... feels a bit cathartic to share some of these observations and ideas in the latest edition of Implications. https://lnkd.in/eZQXrVap

Index Ventures

AI, platform, and value-specific firms will transform VC, leveling the playing field for smaller firms and unconventional founders. A fun and insightful conversation with Rob Ryan on Entrepreneurial Thinkers with Rob Ryan.

Our VP of Sales, Chris Doherty, sparked an interesting conversation about the future of VC funding. EY's recent report explores these trends and the possibility of a new funding landscape. Head to Chris' post below to dive deeper! #venturecapital #startupfunding #NVCA #AI #EY #futureofwork