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Google’s first-quarter earnings report reflected its position as an artificial-intelligence winner — and as a savvy investor.
The tech giant reported net income of $62.6 billion for the March quarter, up about 81% from a year ago. More than half of that — $36.9 billion — came from unrealized gains on equity positions. And of those, SpaceX and Anthropic were likely the overwhelming contributors. READ MORE
AI is rapidly transforming how we apply for jobs. Now that applicants can use the technology to tailor their résumés, mass-apply to hundreds of roles, and bluff their way through an interview, it can feel harder than ever to stand out.
Kristina Simmons, who was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, then a chief of staff at Vinod Khosla's VC firm Khosla Ventures, and who now runs her own firm, Overwater Ventures, cautioned against relying too much on AI when job hunting. READ MORE
In 2002, American Major League Baseball team the Oakland Athletics were competing against opponents who could outspend them three to one. They had no way of competing for talent with the top teams. So, their general manager, Billy Beane, stopped trying.
Instead, as chronicled in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), Beane asked a more fundamental question: what factors predict winning in baseball? The answer turned out to be different from what baseball scouts believed.
Baseball scouts were evaluating players using visible, intuitive signals like athletic build and physical appearance, pitching speed and the look of their swing. The problem is that these signals felt meaningful but were often poor predictors of actual performance. Scouts were essentially fooled by aesthetics. READ MORE
Emil Michael was exuberant.
In just six months as the Pentagon’s new technology chief, he had met with more than 100 start-ups, he told podcaster Molly O’Shea in December, scouring the tech world for companies that could build cheaper, smarter and smaller weaponry to power the future of war. “My job,” he added, is to incubate a fleet of new companies that could rival the likes of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other “older primes,” remaking “the whole architecture” of the military. READ MORE
For decades, private equity (PE) has been lauded as a superior form of capitalism, a bastion of entrepreneurial vigor amid sclerotic public corporations. The value proposition − generate high returns by transforming companies through operational improvements, strategic growth and financial optimization, rather than relying on market trends − was, and remains, intuitively powerful. After all, the vast majority of economic activity occurs within privately held companies. READ MORE
Two major challenges in agrifoodtech dominate discussions right now: the flatlining of venture capital in the space and the recognition that many agrifood technologies need longer timelines than is common in the VC world. This is especially true for projects taking place in developing markets, where currency volatility, underdeveloped infrastructure, and limited farmer access to markets abound.
“Blended finance” — loosely defined as the combination of public and private funds — is frequently thrown into this discussion as a solution to both problems. READ MORE
“Cash is king”—even sometimes in compensation. In a survey last December conducted by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, CFOs at PE-backed companies in the US reported average total cash compensation of $604,000, up 5% from 2024. While the average cash bonus declined 2%, the average base salary rose 7%. READ MORE
Private equity has evolved from a niche postwar strategy into one of the largest and most sophisticated asset classes globally. Mega funds dominate global deal value and continue to scale. But the next decade of differentiated returns is unlikely to be generated at the top of the market. Instead, it will likely be built in the lower middle market. READ MORE
I’ve been covering the crypto VC space for many years now, and the last couple of years have felt different. Earlier, there was a steady flow of early-stage funding announcements. That slowed down a lot, and even though things have picked up a bit this year, it still doesn’t feel the same.
Most investors I spoke to said the era of easy fundraising in crypto is over and unlikely to come back. But several also said this is a healthy reset, and the space is just more strict now. READ MORE
For years, venture capital enjoyed an attractive public image. From the outside, it looked like a club of ex-Ivy Leaguers with a smattering of start-up experience making million-dollar bets from plush offices with long time horizons. Management fees were generous, failure was abstract, and the uniform was universal… chinos and a sleeveless puffer vest. Venture was not just an asset class, it was a lifestyle brand. READ MORE
These days, many founders feel pressure to raise tremendous amounts of venture capital. But it wasn’t always like this. Most people are surprised to learn that four of the most valuable companies in the world barely raised any VC funding at all by today’s standards.
Apple is believed to have raised less than $1 million before its IPO. Amazon raised about $8 million. Microsoft raised about $1 million. Google raised $25 million. Add it all up, and it’s less than $35 million in total VC funding. Granted, that’s about $74 million in today’s dollars, but it’s still a relatively small investment that led to four companies that are worth around $14 trillion today. READ MORE
The founder of one of the world's largest software investors has come out swinging amid a sell-off that has wiped trillions of dollars off the value of technology stocks. Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner at Thoma Bravo, said the $183 billion firm has not changed its investment thesis as a result of the so-called SaaS-pocalypse, but can now make similar investments at a much steeper discount.
"This is the time to do it," he told an audience Wednesday at Semafor's World Economy conference in Washington, DC, that included senior funds columnist Jessica Hamlin. "Would you rather buy a great software company when it's trading at 15 times revenue?" READ MORE
Private equity is giving 2008 vibes (1). Private credit is in crisis. Some are calling the end of the crypto honeymoon, with its trading volume drop (2) the lowest since 2023. All the while, Trump wants all of these assets to be added into 401(k).
In response to the self-proclaimed crypto president's August 2025 executive order, the Labor Department has proposed a rule that would make way for alternative assets into 401(k)s — a retirement plan that's nearly half a century old. READ MORE
The volume of global private equity exits fell 6.25% year over year in the first quarter to 720 from 768.
Trade sale transactions fell to 566 from 603, while secondary buyouts — sales to another general partner — declined to 141 from 153. The number of IPO exits rose to 13 from 12, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. READ MORE
Craig Shapiro has a track record of predicting what consumers want. Since launching his venture capital firm, Collaborative Fund, in 2010, Shapiro and his team of investors at the New York City-based firm have backed Kickstarter, Lyft, Olipop, Magic Spoon, Smash Kitchen, and Whoop. Now, he is turning his focus from fast-growing consumer businesses to companies that are more focused on building for the long run. To do that, he’s launching a new private equity fund: Collab Holdings. READ MORE
Private equity firms may have been returning less profit to investors in recent years, but finance chiefs working at businesses owned by such companies are seeing their own compensation packages grow.
That’s the upshot of a new report issued Wednesday by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. On average, CFOs working at PE-backed firms in the U.S. took home cash pay of $604,000 in 2025, up 5% year over year. READ MORE
The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) released its annual yearbook looking at the past year and the future of the venture capital industry.
According to its NVCA 2026 Yearbook, this year’s report focuses on strong investment activity as well as mounting structural pressures around liquidity. U.S. venture capital firms closed 15,352 deals worth $320 billion, a 51 percent increase in deal value and the second-highest total on record. READ MORE
In the second half of 2025, I noticed a pattern in our Fund IV fundraising conversations at Eleven VC. One after another, institutional LPs – mainly from Europe – told us some version of the same narrative: they had made a strategic decision to move away from seed funds and concentrate their venture allocation entirely on growth VCs.
It was frustrating at times but I acknowledged their pursuit to maximize returns by capturing ‘the bigger opportunity’ growth capital presented – especially after years of scarcity in Europe. However, something about this narrative was off. I was not convinced. READ MORE
Private equity fund managers are focused on value creation amid economic uncertainty.
The 2026 S&P Global Market Intelligence Private Equity and Venture Capital Outlook report reflects managers' lack of confidence that they can ride economic growth to a strong exit. READ MORE
Traditional approaches to Army prototyping efforts have been known to move at a lackluster speed, letting ideas gather dust, while near-peer adversaries field “good enough” solutions to operational units. FUZE is the U.S. Army’s flagship innovation program, which adopts a venture capitalist (VC) model to expedite military technology development. Launched in September 2025 with a projected $750 million annual investment, it unifies existing initiatives like xTech, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), Technology Maturation Initiative (TMI) and Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) to fund emerging commercial and “dual-use” firms. The program aims to get technology from concept to operational prototype within 70 days or less. This model represents a significant shift from the traditional, slow-moving acquisition cycle, embracing a high tolerance for failure in pursuit of rapid technological superiority in the hands of operational Army forces. READ MORE
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