VCs: 75% of Last Year's Capital Went to Five AI Companies
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- Niko Bonatsos of Verdict Capital said three-quarters of all venture capital raised over the last year went into five companies — the most "groupthink" he's seen in 17 years in Silicon Valley.
- SpaceX is reportedly eyeing a $1.75 trillion valuation at IPO, with OpenAI and Anthropic potentially not far behind, in a wave the VCs said will generate wealth for the next generation of companies.
- Ben Blume of Atomico said his $500 million fund is now competing for the same opportunities as $10–15 billion funds, distorting round sizes because the "incremental value of a dollar" differs enormously between fund sizes.
- Bonatsos said two founders with today's AI tools can make more progress in two months with one funding round than they could a year ago with 10 people, two rounds, and a full year — potentially going straight from pre-seed to Series B.
- Andreas Stavropoulos of Threshold Ventures said there will be an AI correction that pushes capital back out, but warned against mistaking macro optimism for the belief that "every 19-year-old with an idea is the next big thing."
- Bonatsos recounted a portfolio company that reported ARR 365 times its actual daily revenue because a campaign hit, calling it evidence of a "grifting mentality" that emerges "whenever a lot of money is chasing specific themes."
- Blume identified AI interacting with the physical world — robotics in all its forms — as "one of the biggest wide-open spaces over the next 10 years," while Bonatsos argued consumer AI is "coming back" after most VCs abandoned the category.
Why it matters: Capital is concentrating sharply: 75% of last year's VC funding went to five companies, and Bonatsos said a 40-year-old Stanford tenured professor building outside AI "no one wants to meet." If SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPO at trillion-dollar-plus valuations, the resulting wealth effects could seed the next generation of companies — but most founders are shut out of today's boom by the same concentration.
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