"If you want a pulse check on where the venture capital industry is at, consider the software supply chain security startup Chainguard, which has raised $500 million across two rounds in less than a year. "We've never had a fundraising deck," Ryan Carlson, president of Chainguard, said yesterday on the Future of Venture Capital insight exchange at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah. He added later: "We're not going to create a deck next time either.""
""Some companies, no matter what you're doing, you're not getting any term sheets," says Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures. "And the ones that are getting interest are getting, like, 12, 15-I mean, they're double digits. And I've been in this business for 20 years, and I'm trying to remember the last time when there were double-digit term sheets for the hot companies.""
"For some companies, deals can't get done fast enough. OpenAI is reportedly worth some $500 billion these days and raised $40 billion in funding earlier this year. Autonomous weapons startup Anduril notched a $30.5 billion valuation earlier this year, less than a year after its last multi-billion funding round. If you are looking at companies in the cybersecurity, generative AI, and defense tech space, deals are hot. But it's not everyone."
Chainguard raised $500 million across two rounds in less than a year while operating without a fundraising deck. Certain sectors—cybersecurity, generative AI, and defense tech—are attracting rapid, large-scale investments and soaring valuations such as OpenAI and Anduril. Some hot companies receive double-digit term sheets, while many other startups receive none. AI companies are reaching $100 million in ARR faster and with fewer employees, but they face high operating costs, particularly for compute. Investors disagree about whether current AI investment dynamics constitute a bubble or resemble past tech booms.
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