After three years of tense reductions, the skies are clearing over Silicon Valley, and startup investors seem broadly optimistic about a resurgence in tech dealmaking.

We asked venture capitalists at 35 firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, IVP, and Sapphire Ventures, to tell us what's hot and what's not in tech next year, how potential regulatory changes could rouse a sleepy exit market, and where artificial intelligence goes from here.

In 2025, venture capitalists expect a loosening of antitrust regulations under the new presidential administration. This could reignite acquisition activity by strategic buyers, which would allow funds to distribute proceeds from those deals to their own investors, or limited partners, and raise new funds to invest in the next generation of startups, said Brian Garrett, managing director at Crosscut Ventures.

In recent years, startups weren't the only ones facing a cash crunch. Established funds raised the lion's share of funding dollars, while many newish and boutique funds struggled to raise. A torrent of dealmaking, combined with Trump's return to the White House and an end to the political uncertainty, could mobilize investors in these funds who had been sitting on the sidelines to whip out their checkbooks, said Ivan Nikkhoo, a managing partner at Navigate Ventures.

"Uncertainty breeds defense, optimism breeds offense," said Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Ventures and early Anthropic investor. "We're going into a cycle where acquirers are feeling they need to play offense and startups feel like it's time to invest in leadership. And the IPO market is open for best-in-class assets."

From IPOs to robotaxis, these are the tech trends to watch in 2025, according to venture capitalists.

Infrastructure cools off, apps soar

Jai Das, president and partner at Sapphire Ventures: "A larger number of 'application layer' companies will have a breakout year with several crossing $100 million in revenues. I predict 50 companies will cross $50 million ARR while still growing 60%+, and at least 10 will hit $100 million ARR. A lot of these companies will be prosumer companies, but there will be several business application companies as well."

Ben Lerer, managing partner at Lerer Hippeau: "When you get the cost of compute going down as quickly as it has, and the number of options in terms of foundational models growing as it has, you end up with a really interesting time for the application layer to thrive. If you're a startup, you can go with the flavor of the month — not just a ChatGPT wrapper, or a Claude wrapper, or a Gemini wrapper, or you name it — but some combination of all of them to optimize functionality, results, and the cost of those results."

Lower rates kick the IPO market into gear

Sofia Dolfe, partner at Index Ventures: "2025 is the year we will see the IPO market opening back up. There are already signs that this is on the horizon: we're seeing gradual recovery, rates have started to come down, and there are many later-stage companies with the financial profiles to go public."

Michael Yang, senior managing partner at Omers: "Two kinds of companies will go public as the IPO window opens back up next year. First, the truly great businesses that are really scaled and have forecastable growth and would've gone public earlier if the IPO market was more favorable, and second, companies that entered into structured financings with dirtier terms that need to go public for timing reasons."

Nima Wedlake, managing director at Thomvest Ventures: "The IPO market will remain closed for most tech companies, with a high bar for entry — $300 million-plus ARR, fast growth, and cash-flow breakeven or better."

As crypto prices surge, founders return to the drawing table

Nihal Mehta, general partner at Eniac: "Guidance on what the regulations could be for crypto and AI would encourage founders to build productively within those areas."

Jai Das, president and partner at Sapphire Ventures: "The new administration is crypto-friendly, bringing with it an expected acceleration of crypto-based business models (especially those using stablecoins). I predict we'll have another crypto mania in 2025."

Some venture funds go belly-up

Wesley Chan, cofounder and managing partner at FPV Ventures: "In 2025, I predict a lot of contraction for VCs, except for top funds. We're still in a downturn. Some firms shut down, a lot of firms are not doing new deals, and you will see a lot of junior-mid level employees leave."

The great funding bifurcation continues

Molly Alter, partner at Northzone: "The 'sexiest' deals will continue to raise at sky-high valuations, but for the rest of the pack, companies will need to show very specific metrics to command a strong valuation. There will be a great bifurcation into the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.'"

Don Butler, managing director at Thomvest Ventures: "Startup shutdowns will increase, particularly at the seed stage, as companies run out of cash. This will influence valuations, with investors likely focusing on startups that have shown resilience or achieved meaningful milestones."

Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures: "Valuations will rise as growth rates and market multiples recover, but many companies still might not grow back into their ZIRP valuations. People are over that and won't let it get in the way of pursuing opportunity. Valuations for GenAI companies will continue to be outliers based on any historical metrics."

Robotaxis cover new terrain

Brian Walsh, head of Wind Ventures: "2025 will be the year that we enter the age of 'robo taxis' with, first, Waymo now well along its adoption S-curve in San Francisco and expanding quickly, and, second, Tesla favorably positioned with quickly maturing best-in-class autonomy technology (no human in the loop) and an existing large fleet to scale it."

Kasper Sage, managing partner at BMW i Ventures: "Autonomous fleet deployments will gain traction in controlled, high-density environments such as for applications like campus environments and logistics for heavy industries."

Trump policy heralds return of megadeals

Aaron Jacobson, partner at NEA: "With the change of administration, I expect the return of mega M&A deals. We are going to see a 'WhatsApp' like $20 billion-plus M&A outcome for a leading AI company."

Michael Yang, senior managing partner at Omers: "Big Tech will be back at the M&A table with a new administration and regulatory regime in place. They've been quieter in recent times but should be chomping at the bit to capitalize on what is still a buyer's market."

Funding rounds become even more fluid

Sasha McKenzie and Van Jones, both deal leads at Wellington Access Ventures at Wellington Management: "The concept of letter rounds in VC is becoming more amorphous. We're seeing $30 million and $100 million seed rounds, raising questions about what seed even means anymore. The model is shifting towards evaluating how quickly founders can run and how disciplined they are with results, rather than hitting historically stated milestones (e.g., $1 million in revenue to raise a Series A). There will be more nuance in how VCs evaluate progress, focusing more on the operator and their ability to balance vision with execution, based on the capital they have."

Multi-agent systems take center stage

Aaron Jacobson, partner at NEA: "Chatbots are overhyped. Agents are under-hyped. Enterprises will move beyond the low-hanging fruit of 'GPT-wrappers' to deploy digital workers that can reason and take action to make a real business impact."

Praveen Akkiraju, managing director at Insight Partners: "If 2024 was the year of LLMs, we believe 2025 will be the year of agentic AI — where highly capable state-of-the-art reasoning LLMs are combined with orchestration frameworks like memory, tool calling, and user-in-the-loop processes to build AI agents that can address progressively complex business workflows."

Seema Amble, partner at Andreessen Horowitz: "In the short term, human workers will be the reviewer in the loop; in the future, as trust is established over time, I expect many data-derived actions will shift toward being entirely a set of narrowly defined task-driven agents."

S. Somasegar, managing director at Madrona: "The world where we each have a digital assistant that works with a collection of AI agents is probably five to ten years out. But having AI agents that can do specific tasks really, really well is happening sooner and I think we will see a ton of progress on this in 2025."

Tender offers grow for a selective group of companies

Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner at NewView Capital: "The venture secondaries market will continue to be an important source of liquidity — a trend we think is here to stay due to structural dynamics of the venture asset class."

Simon Wu, partner at Cathay Innovation: "The size of tender offers has grown from millions to billions as the desire to own top-performing names by mutual funds and VCs increases, thus allowing some of the best names to stay private longer. Tenders are likely to get bigger to a selective group of companies in tandem with a more active IPO market next year."

Industry-specific software takes over

Molly Alter, partner at Northzone: "Vertical SaaS will become more highly valued than ever, due to the increasing difficulty of differentiating a product in horizontal categories."

Cathy Gao, partner at Sapphire Ventures: "Vertical software will evolve rapidly as AI moves to the agentic phase, enabling end-to-end automation of complex, industry-specific workflows that were once beyond the reach of software. By pairing deep domain expertise with intelligent automation, vertical AI will unlock new use cases, deliver outsized ROI, and become table stakes for staying competitive."

Fintech roars back

Alexa von Tobel, managing partner at Inspired Capital: "Given the new political climate, we, of course, expect to see less regulation across the board. I think we'll see acceleration in a few core categories, including fintech."

Marlon Nichols, managing partner at MaC Venture Capital: "Fintech is an area I'm excited to invest in, particularly fintech startups leveraging AI to create transformative personal finance tools."

Sydney Thomas, general partner at Symphonic Capital: "We are watching the regulatory environment towards fintech ease which has enabled massive speculation on what asset class will win. … This also means, many startups will be required to regulate themselves, which isn't always an easy thing to do."

Robots join society

Claire Yun, investor at Piva Capital: "Generative AI will continue to accelerate and supercharge robotics; simultaneously, we will see a choke point in human labor as an aging domestic workforce and protectionist policies create a sharp supply and demand imbalance. The result will be a colorful Cambrian explosion of robots as they step in to fill this gap."

Bob Ma, partner at Wind Ventures: "Urban areas will have fleets of robots on sidewalks, while drones will manage suburban and rural deliveries. Enhanced speed, cost-efficiency, and sustainability will redefine retail and e-commerce, with regulations supporting wider adoption and innovation."

Yuri Lee, partner at IVP: "As AI advances enable robots to move from structured, repetitive tasks to more complex and dynamic real-world applications, we'll see rapid progress in robotic perception, manipulation, and decision-making capabilities."

Small language models rise in popularity

Tasneem Dohadwala, partner at Excelestar Ventures: "Small language domain-specific models are starting to show more value. Instead of using vast swaths of the internet to train large models, these smaller models can be trained on specific datasets, such as medical journals, newspapers, or email collections. As a result, they are highly tailored and more accurate in reflecting a user's particular constraints and voice.

Michael Yang, senior managing partner at Omers: "If 2024 was the year of the LLMs, 2025 will be the year of small language models (SLMs) and proprietary data sets spawning the next generation of enterprise SaaS applications. Companies have realized that data in their midst can be harnessed in new and better ways than the 'structured workflow apps' of old and by leveraging targeted SLMs, they can do work differently, more efficiently."

Founders flock to private equity

Brad Bernstein, managing partner at FTB Capital: "Despite the IPO market showing better performance in Q3'24 with proceeds already surpassing 2023 totals, structural issues like regulatory burdens and governance challenges still pose obstacles for small and mid-cap companies. Private equity markets are stepping in to fill the gap, with growth equity deals comprising a larger share of activity and providing opportunities for startups in high-growth sectors like insurtech and healthcare tech."

Jai Das, president and partner at Sapphire Partners: "With the new administration, I predict we will see an uptick in exits, and much more tech M&A activity. We'll also see PE firms buying up a lot of companies once boards and management teams realize these businesses won't be able to grow at 30% at scale and ultimately, IPO."

Open-source foundation models come for OpenAI and xAI's lunch

Aaron Jacobson, partner at NEA: "Open-source foundation models will close the gap with the leading proprietary models. On top of this we will see a significant shift away from pre-training models from scratch to fine tuning OSS models and distilling them to smaller models for faster performance."

Mo Jomaa, partner at CapitalG: "I predict that in 2025 we will continue to see open source technologies consume the infrastructure layer in software. We have seen this trend play out in several categories already, including data and analytics (which led to our investment in Databricks) and observability (which drove our investment in Grafana). Enterprises will continue to adopt open source because it helps them save money, avoid vendor lock-in, and shape the product roadmaps of the technologies that they procure."

Record deals and dollars flow to cyber and national security

Andrew Schoen, partner at NEA: "We will see a surge of investment into technologies critical to restarting the US industrial base and enhancing national security. A record number of deals and dollars will go into AI, automation, cybersecurity, and frontier technology serving manufacturing, supply chain, and defense markets."

Jake Seid, general partner at Ballistic Ventures: "Over the next 18 months, we're going to see a lot more cybersecurity exits. While this may include an uptick in M&A activity, I expect we'll see cybersecurity companies go public in 2025 and in the first half of 2026 given how large the market for cyber products has become."

Trump's tech advisors bend his ear

Samir Kumar, general partner at Touring Capital: "We should expect a lot less regulatory headwinds in 2025 for AI given David Sacks will be the AI and crypto czar for the new administration. This is likely to even result in the repeal of President Biden's executive order on AI."

Francesco Ricciuti, associate at Runa Capital: "In the US, Trump is bringing prominent people from the startup and VC world in the government, and I wouldn't be surprised if the regulatory landscape will evolve towards entrepreneurship and technology."

• VCs are increasingly looking for candidates with deep technical expertise, especially in AI.
• Increasingly, VCs square off with the hottest AI companies to secure top talent.
• VC firms can't compete with companies like OpenAI on compensation.

Matt Hoffman, head of talent at M13, an early-stage venture firm, is preparing to hire a new junior investor sometime next year. As recently as a year ago, he would have sought out someone from a top business school or consulting firm. Now, he wants someone with deep technical expertise.

"The technology is just getting really sophisticated," Hoffman said. "You need to have enough sophistication to be able to understand the tech you are assessing."

As venture firms struggle to raise new funds, they have been hiring fewer roles and even shedding staff. On rarer occasions when they are hiring, they are increasingly seeking out candidates with deep domain expertise, especially in artificial intelligence.

"We certainly noticed it in the past 3 to 6 months, and like a lot of VC, once it kind of takes momentum, it snowballs, and all the other VCs are doing it," Hoffman said. "The traditional MBA background will not be sufficient for the best investors going forward."

Evaluating previous generations of startups required less sophistication, according to Deedy Das, who this year was hired as a principal at Menlo Ventures, which backs OpenAI rival Anthropic. He previously worked for nearly a decade in senior engineering roles at Facebook, Google, and Glean, a buzzy AI-powered search startup valued at $4.6 billion.

"To understand Facebook, you don't need to be technical to get it," Das said. "You know people go online to use an app and connect with their friends. You can see how it can make money. For AI, if I tell you I have the best model in the world, how are you, as a non-technical person, going to call my BS on that?"

Ben Lerer, managing partner at Lerer Hippeau, says he wants to hire "younger people who are more natively growing up with AI and think about AI as less of a novelty and more of just a sort of inevitability."

Hiring for the investing theme du jour

Mark Suster, a partner at Upfront Ventures, says he used to recruit from blue-chip consulting firms like McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company, whereas recent hires have all brought specific expertise in areas the firm wants to focus on.

"I don't think generalist works anymore because venture capital is too competitive now," said Suster.

"We're going much deeper in our industries, and so when we went to invest in healthcare, we hired a healthcare expert. Now that we're doing more semiconductors, we're trying to get somebody with semiconductor experience. We're doing more with satellites, so we want someone from day one who understands the customer and the technology."

Upfront is currently hiring for an investment associate focused on machine learning and AI.

Last year, Khosla Ventures hired John Chu as a partner, who held senior engineering roles at Meta and Opendoor. This fall, Katie Jacobs Stanton, a longtime Twitter insider turned venture capitalist, hired a former engineering leader to her firm, Moxxie Ventures.

Ashwin Lalendran worked on drones at the Air Force Research Laboratory, shipped 3D vision software for Apple's mapping and self-driving-car projects, and led a team of engineers to scale the world's largest private-owned network of ocean sensors at Sofar Ocean.

He joins Moxxie's deep bench of operators to assist with sourcing, evaluating, and closing deals in deep tech, hardware, and national security, areas where Moxxie has deepened its focus over the past year.

Firms have long hired from certain networks based on the investment theme du jour, according to Yoni Rechtman, a principal at Slow Ventures, an early investor in Robinhood and PillPack.

During the fintech boom, Stripe was the hot ticket, and investors rushed to hire from the fintech giant.

Today, firms are chasing after ex-Palantir and OpenAI employees to fill out their ranks — some of them are restaffing after years of hiring slowdowns or job cuts, though such moves remain rare in the venture industry — and to add expertise and networks in their fields of interest.

Slow Ventures is looking to add as many as four associates over the next year based on the quality of talent on the market, Rechtman said. Being technical as an associate is a plus but not a requirement, though. "Being credible with founders because you worked at OpenAI is great," Rechtman said, "but doesn't necessarily mean much for your ability to pick stocks well."

VC firms can't compete with startups on compensation

Increasingly, venture firms find themselves squaring off with the hottest AI companies to secure top talent, according to Dan Miller, a recruiter and partner at True Search. "For a lot of VC firms, the stiffest competition for talent over the last year has been OpenAI," said Miller.

He's worked with several venture firms on partner and principal searches that lost candidates to the ChatGPT-maker. That is largely because OpenAI offers salaries above market rate and a chance to contribute to cutting-edge research and development. Those candidates, in turn, gain experience that opens doors to top-tier venture firms down the line, Miller added.

The average salary for a VC with 1-3 years of experience is $264,000, according to Glassdoor, an anonymous job review site. By contrast, OpenAI's median yearly total compensation is $534,197, according to Levels.fyi, which tracks compensation data at tech firms and startups.

"No VC will pay what a good AI engineer can make a company," said M13's Hoffman. "So our job is to find people who get excited about working in venture and helping to build a number of companies rather than just one."

Das said he did take a step down in pay when he joined Menlo Ventures after Glean, "but I wasn't concerned because if this worked, it would be a long-term bet where the comp would be fine," Das said.

He explained that he was excited to try venture because he was ready for a new challenge and also thought his technical chops would give him an edge over generalist investors evaluating AI infrastructure and machine learning deals.

"I thought a lot of venture capitalists were actually pretty terrible doing diligence on companies that were technical because they weren't technical."

Das was recently on a call with co-investors, and they needed his expertise. They were stumped and needed help understanding some of the jargon the founder of an AI startup was using.

"I chuckled because every second pitch I see is some version of fancy technical lingo, which actually doesn't mean much if you dig into it," Das said. "That's something a traditional investor has a really hard time seeing through."

• Women are gaining ground in venture capital, with more becoming partners in 2024.
• In 2023, women held 19% of investment partner roles in US funds, up from 16% in 2020.
• Firms like Andreessen Horowitz and IVP are promoting women to partner positions globally.

A new generation of women tech investors is kicking down the doors of venture capital's boys' club. In 2024, VC heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, and IVP, elevated women investors to partner positions.

On European soil, names like Cherry Ventures, AlbionVC, and Ascension championed this transformation across the continent.

Despite facing a tougher path to promotion in recent years, a number of women rose to the role of partner or general partner for the first time in 2024.

According to a 2023 report by PitchBook, women made up 19% of investment partners at US funds, up from 16% in 2020. Similarly, across the Atlantic, a report by European Women in VC revealed that women held 16% of general partner roles in Europe in 2023.

Business Insider is recognizing the women in VC who became partners or general partners in 2024, both in Europe and the US. While this list celebrates those within established organizations, it offers a testament to many other women forging their paths with micro funds and angel investing, setting a vibrant precedent for the future.

Cat McDonald took the mantle of partner at UK fund AlbionVC, where she will lead generalist investments.

Grace Ge joined Amplify as a partner from Menlo Ventures. She invests in AI-enabled software, developer tooling, data, and infrastructure.

Andreessen Horowitz promoted longtime investor Jennifer Li to general partner to help manage a $1.25 billion infrastructure fund.

Iulia Tudor was promoted to partner at UK-based firm Ascension, where she supports its fund focused on energy, fintech, and health.

Prerna Sharma, an early Uber employee, was promoted to general partner at Antler VC. She's based in Texas.

Nadine Torbey was elevated to partner at AlbionVC. She will help lead the fund's deep tech, AI, and enterprise software investments.

Asymmetric Capital Partners promoted Nancy Chou to partner to invest in software, fintech, and insurtech.

Rachel Wilson moved to The BMF Fund as a managing partner to continue backing Black and diverse founders.

Dinika Mahtani was promoted to partner at Cherry Ventures, having led investments in Swap, Finesse, and Julienne Bruno.

Dr. Carolin Althoff became a partner at Cusp Capital, where she backs digital startups in the environmental, social, and governance domains.

Lily Wang made partner at Expon Capital. She has been sourcing key investments for the Luxembourg-based firm and covers sectors such as energy, AI, and health.

Foreground Capital promoted cofounder and women's health investor Alice Zheng to partner.

Claire Zau made partner at GSV Ventures, where she spearheads its AI investments.

Lavanya Bhamidipati was promoted to partner at InHealth Ventures, a London-based, healthcare-focused fund.

Initialized Partners elevated investor Zoe Perret to partner. She invests in AI, energy, and climate.

Insight Partners promoted infrastructure and cybersecurity investor Philine Huizing to partner.

Inspired Capital elevated Charlotte Ross to partner after five years with the firm.

Yuri Lee made partner at IVP after sourcing deals like medical scribe startup Abridge and healthcare provider Accompany Health.

Esha Vatsa joined London-based seed-stage fund Mercuri as a partner.

Ex-Uber employee Vivian Cheng became a partner at Next47, investing in AI and software.

Erika Nash became a partner at Next Frontier Capital, after holding roles at Pelion Venture Partners and OpenView.

Cecilia Zhao joined General Catalyst's London office as a partner. She focuses on fintech and enterprise software.

Charlotte Salasky was promoted to partner at Notion Capital, where she recently helped to fundraise its €300 million, fifth fund.

Rebecka Löthman Rydå joined Norrsken Accelerator as a general partner. She brings 10 years of experience as an active VC investor.

Molly Alter made partner at multistage firm Northzone, after holding roles at Insight Partners and Index Ventures.

Tara Stokes rose to the role of partner at Point72 Ventures and leads the firm's AI and machine learning investments.

Plus VC promoted Zainab Al Sharif to partner to invest in early-stage startups across the Middle East and North Africa.

Louise Kingston was promoted to partner at the venture capital arm of wealth management firm Baird, where she also leads its internal data projects.

QED Investors promoted Camila Vieira to partner. She leads its Brazil investments.

Megan Kelly made partner at Threshold Ventures, where she works closely with portfolio companies Odaia and QA Wolf.

VamosVentures promoted Ashley Ryder to partner to continue backing Latinx and diverse founders.

Lily Bernicker made partner at Wireframe Ventures, where she invests in climate and health.

Vera Baker is a partner at French VC 4P Capital, leading the firm's early-stage investment strategy.

• Tiun has secured a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round to innovate media monetization.
• The startup offers a pay-for-what-you-use model to reduce friction for media consumers.
• Business Insider got an exclusive look at the 9-slide deck it used to raise fresh funding.

Zurich-based startup Tiun has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding for its digital wallet, which lets users pay only for the online media they consume and provides businesses with an alternative way to monetize their content.

The startup aims to streamline the online subscription process, which its cofounder and CCO Nikolaos Christoforakos says is "full of friction" — from registering and authorizing an account to committing to an upfront subscription.

"Our mission is to help media providers — and more broadly service providers — to attract, engage, and convert younger audiences," Christoforakos told Business Insider.

Instead of subscribing to multiple individual media providers, Tiun offers users a digital wallet they can use across multiple media partners to purchase preferred content on a "pay-for-what-you-use" basis.

The account is free to create, with users topping up funds using an established payment method. This eliminates the need to enter new payment details for every outlet and eases the friction in the consumer journey, Christoforakos said.

Tiun gets a slice of each transaction, splitting the rest with the media provider. Companies providing the content — from podcasts to streaming to online news — can also access Tiun's business suite with metrics on reader data and conversions.

"There's a value to the product outside of the infrastructure, and on top of that, we make money with a revenue share," Christoforakos told BI.

Media organizations have been exploring micropayment models for several years — but with limited success. Dutch online news platform Blendle, one of the main champions of micropayments, later ditched its model in favor of subscriptions. Christoforakos says that Tiun is not positioning itself as a micropayment service that's in competition with previous efforts.

But the startup is providing the infrastructure that addresses one of the oft-cited reasons for the micropayment model's slow adoption: the lack of a standard payment method across media outlets.

"Our vision is to redefine how the next generation will consume and pay for online content by establishing a new standard that improves interoperability between wallets and applications," Christoforakos said.

Tiun's funding round was led by Swiss VC firm Founderful, with additional funds coming from Blue Wire Capital and a16z scout Maximilian Lehmann, among other angel investors.

With the fresh funding, Tiun will develop some core product offerings in the coming year.

We got an exclusive look at the 9-slide pitch deck used to secure the fresh funding.

• Vercel said it added Steffan Tomlinson to its board.
• Tomlinson is the CFO of Stripe and has experience taking tech startups public.
• He used to be CFO at several other tech companies, including Palo Alto Networks and Confluent.

Vercel, an AI startup valued at more than $3 billion, just bulked up its board with the addition of a finance executive who has experience taking tech companies public.

Stripe Chief Financial Officer Steffan Tomlinson will serve as a director on Vercel's board, the startup said on Tuesday.

Tomlinson was previously CFO at several other tech startups, guiding Palo Alto Networks, Confluent, and Aruba Networks through the IPO process.

Stripe, one of the world's most valuable startups, has long been mentioned as an IPO candidate. Vercel is earlier in its lifecycle, however the AI startup has been putting some of the early pieces in place to potentially go public someday.

"Steffan's experience leading developer-focused companies from startup to public markets makes him an ideal addition to Vercel's Board of Directors as we continue to put our products in the hands of every developer," Vercel CEO and founder Guillermo Rauch said.

Last year, Vercel tapped Marten Abrahamsen as its CFO. He's been building out Vercel's finance, legal, and corporate development teams and systems while leading the startup through a $250 million funding round at a $3.25 billion valuation in May.

"Steffan's financial expertise and leadership experience come at a pivotal moment for Vercel as we scale our enterprise presence and build on our momentum," Abrahamsen said.

GenAI growth

The generative AI boom has recently powered Vercel's growth. The startup offers AI tools to developers, and earlier this year it surpassed $100 million in annualized revenue.

Vercel's AI SDK, a software toolkit that helps developers build AI applications, was downloaded more than 700,000 times last week, up from about 80,000 downloads a year ago, according to NPM data.

The company's Next.js open-source framework was downloaded 7.9 million times last week, compared to roughly 4.6 million downloads a year earlier, NPM data also shows.

Abrahamsen said they are building a company to one day go public, but stressed that there's no timeline or date set for such a move. 

Consumption-based business models

At Stripe and Confluent, Tomlinson gained experience with software that helps developers build cloud and web-based applications — and how these offerings generate revenue.

"Steffan's track record with consumption-based software business models makes him the ideal partner to inform strategic decisions," Rauch said.

Vercel is among a crop of newer developer-focused tech companies that charge based on usage. For instance, as traffic and uptime increase for developers, Vercel generates more revenue, so it's aligned with customers, Abrahamsen told Business Insider. 

Similarly, Stripe collects a small fee every time someone makes a payment in an app. Confluent has a consumption-based business model, too.

This is different from traditional software-as-a-service providers, which often charge based on the number of users, or seats. For instance, Microsoft 365 costs a certain amount per month, per user. 

Tomlinson also has experience working with developer-focused companies with technical founders, such as the Collison brothers who started Stripe. 

• 2024 has been a solid year for creator-economy fundraising.
• Creator startups focused on AI, e-commerce, influencer marketing, and newsletters drew in dollars.
• These 17 startups raised at least $10 million in 2024 — totaling over $900 million.

Money is still flowing in the creator economy, even as the investor hype cycle has died down.

In 2024, 17 creator startups raised at least $10 million in new funding, totaling over $900 million. A large amount of that investment went toward creator companies whose work overlaps with trendy categories, such as artificial intelligence or social shopping. But tried-and-true business models like influencer marketing and newsletter subscriptions also scored new rounds.

"For the second year in a row, the trends kind of stayed the same. AI, community, and revenue diversification for all creators," said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at the investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies.

Startups that offer automated dubbing, AI editing, or generative AI features — such as Captions, ElevenLabs, and OpusClip — all raised hefty rounds this year. Social-commerce startups like ShopMy and Levanta captivated venture firms, alongside newsletter companies like Beehiiv, Workweek, and Substack.

A few startups — Agentio, Beehiiv, and Captions — that raised capital in 2023, when creator-economy investments were at a low ebb, also raised again in 2024. Meanwhile, some venture firms have consistently tapped into the creator space, such as AlleyCorp, Inspired Capital, and Volition Capital.

Investor interest in the creator economy surged when social-media consumption spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, but then fell off dramatically. It's now steady, Forsyth said.

"We're no longer in the hype cycle," he said. "Maybe it has lost its trendiness a tiny bit, but it's stabilizing, which is needed."

Business Insider worked with data providers PitchBook and Crunchbase to sort through fundraising data in order to highlight big creator startup rounds from 2024. We focused on companies whose products significantly impact the businesses of creators and their partners.

Here are 17 of those companies, listed in alphabetical order:

1. Agentio, an ad platform streamlining creator-brand marketing on YouTube, raised a $12 million Series A. The round, announced in November, was led by Benchmark and included returning investors Craft and AlleyCorp (the latter firms co-led Agentio's $4.25 million Seed investment last year). Agentio's Series A is being used to scale the startup's go-to-market teams and expand its product offerings beyond YouTube creator ads.

2. Beehiiv, a newsletter platform competing with Substack, raised a $33 million Series B this year — $32 million from venture capital investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Sapphire Ventures, and $1 million from a crowdfund. Beehiiv will use the money to expand hiring, build its ad network, and continue its M&A strategy (the startup acquired Typedream in May).

3. Cameo, a video shout-out platform for celebrities and creators, raised $28 million with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Valor Siren Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, and cofounders Steven Galanis, Devon Townsend, and Martin Blencowe. The aim of the raise was to build out Cameo for Business, an offering focused on connecting its creators with brands for promotional content, per a company spokesperson.

4. Already on its Series C round after launching in 2021, AI video startup Captions closed a $60 million round in July led by Index Ventures. The round included returning investors like A16z and Sequoia Capital, as well as new investments from Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto. Captions will use its funding to grow its machine learning team and in-house research, and also shared plans to invest $100 million into generative video research.

5. ElevenLabs closed an $80 million Series B round at the start of the year, led by A16z, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross. Other firms, like Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, and SV Angel, joined the round. The startup announced at the time that the raise would be used to "refine" its products and safety measures in the deployment of AI.

6. Flip, a social-shopping platform set up in a TikTok-like feed, raised $144 million in a Series C round led by Streamlined Ventures with participation from advertising firm AppLovin, the companies announced in April. Flip planned to integrate marketing tech from AppLovin as part of the deal.

7. Infinite Reality, a tech company that owns talent-management firm TalentX, Drone Racing League, and other holdings, closed a $350 million fundraise from an undisclosed family office, the company said. The investment was meant to support efforts in hiring, with a focus on tech and product, as well as allow the company to pursue M&A opportunities.

8. Influur, an influencer-marketing platform, closed a $10 million Series A in November, led by Point72 Ventures and HTwenty Capital. The startup will use its funding to develop products like AI tools to help brands predict campaign performance and fintech tools for its users.

9. Levanta, an affiliate-marketing company that connects Amazon sellers with creators and other affiliates, raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Volition Capital. The company said the round would help it grow its business development team and improve its user experience.

10. OpusClip, an AI video editing platform that helps creators turn long videos into short clips, closed its Series A in April, bringing total funding to $30 million, per the company. Millennium New Horizons led the startup's Series A with participation from other investors like AI Grant, DCM Ventures, Samsung Next, GTMfund, and Alpine VC, among others. The company said it plans to use the funding to build its products and grow its team.

11. Passes, a subscription and memberships platform for creators, raised a $40 million Series A round in February from Abstract Ventures, Crossbeam Venture Partners, and individuals like Alexandra Botez, Emma Grede, and Michael Ovitz. The funding will be used for hiring and product, CEO Lucy Guo told BI.

12. Podcastle, a content-creation platform for podcasters, closed a $13.5 million Series A round led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from returning investors Sierra Ventures, RTP Global, and Point Nine, among others. The company is using the funding to expand its AI and video products and grow its team with a new base in London.

13. ProRata.ai, a startup focused on helping creators and media firms get compensation for contributing to generative AI products, raised $30 million in a rolling Series A that closed in Q4, led by Mayfield Fund and other investors like Revolution Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, and Calibrate Ventures.

14. ShopMy, an affiliate and influencer-marketing company, raised an $18.5 million add-on to its Series A in March, closing the round at $26.5 million. The startup previously told BI that it raised from firms like Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp to grow the platform and attract more brand and creator partners.

15. Slushy, an adult-content platform competing with OnlyFans, raised a $10.2 million seed investment that closed in June. The round included investments from The Chainsmokers' Mantis VC, Electric Feel Ventures, and individuals like Jon Oringer (the former CEO of Shutterstock) and Sean Rad (the former CEO of Tinder). Slushy will direct its new funds toward developing its product, onboarding more content creators to the platform, and expanding into new markets.

16. Substack closed an investment round of about $10 million (the company directed BI to Axios' reporting on the matter) in the fall. Substack recently announced that it had 4 million paid subscriptions on its platform. It has worked to ramp up in-person events this year.
17. Workweek, a business-focused newsletter startup, announced a $12.5 million Series A round in June led by Next Coast Ventures. It's using the investment to build out a professional networking service for Workweek's subscribers.

• EvenUp vaulted past a $1 billion valuation on the idea that AI will help automate personal injury demands.
• Former employees told BI the company has relied on humans to do much of the work.
• EvenUp says it uses a combination of AI and humans to ensure accuracy, and its AI is improving.

EvenUp vaulted past a $1 billion valuation on the idea AI could help automate a lucrative part of the legal business. Former employees told Business Insider that the startup has relied on humans to complete much of the work.

EvenUp aims to streamline personal-injury demands and has said it is one of the fastest-growing companies in history after jumping from an $85 million valuation at the start of the year to unicorn status in an October funding round.

Customers upload medical records and case files, and EvenUp's AI is supposed to sift through the vast amount of data, pulling out key details to determine how much an accident victim should be owed.

One of EvenUp's investors has described its "AI-based approach" as representing a "quantum leap forward."

The reality, at least so far, is that human staff have done a significant share of that work, and EvenUp's AI has been slow to pick up the slack, eight former EvenUp employees told Business Insider in interviews over the late summer and early fall.

The former employees said they witnessed numerous problems with EvenUp's AI, including missed injuries, hallucinated medical conditions, and incorrectly recorded doctor visits. The former employees asked not to be identified to preserve future job prospects.

"They claim during the interview process and training that the AI is a tool to help the work go faster and that you can get a lot more done because of the AI," said a former EvenUp employee who left earlier this year. "In practice, once you start with the company, my experience was that my managers told me not even to use the AI. They said it was unreliable and created too many errors."

Two other former employees also said they were told by supervisors at various points this year not to use EvenUp's AI. Another former employee who left this year said they were never told not to use the AI, just that they had to be vigilant in correcting it.

"I was 100% told it's not super reliable, and I need to have a really close eye on it," said the former employee.

EvenUp told BI it uses a combination of humans and AI, and this should be viewed as a feature, not a bug.

"The combined approach ensures maximum accuracy and the highest quality," EvenUp cofounder and CEO Rami Karabibar said in a statement. "Some demands are generated and finalized using mostly AI, with a small amount of human input needed, while other more complicated demands require extensive human input but time is still saved by using the AI."

AI's virtuous cycle of improvement

It's a common strategy for AI companies to rely on humans early on to complete tasks and refine approaches. Over time, these human inputs are fed into AI models and related systems, and the technology is meant to learn and improve. At EvenUp, signs of this virtuous AI cycle have been thin on the ground, the former employees said.

"It didn't seem to me like the AI was improving," said one former staffer.

"Our AI is improving every day," Karabibar said. "It saves more time today than it did a week ago, it saved more time a week ago than it did a month ago, and it saved a lot more time a month ago than it did last year."

A broader concern

EvenUp's situation highlights a broader concern as AI sweeps across markets and boardrooms and into workplaces and consumers' lives. Success in generative AI requires complex new technology to continue to improve. Sometimes, there's a gap between the dreams of startup founders and investors and the practical reality of this technology when used by employees and customers. Even Microsoft has struggled with some practical implementations of its marquee AI product, Copilot.

While AI is adept at sorting and interpreting vast amounts of data, it has so far struggled to accurately decipher content such as medical records that are formatted differently and often feature doctors' handwriting scribbled in the margins, said Abdi Aidid, an assistant professor of law at the University of Toronto who has built machine-learning tools.

"When you scan the data, it gets scrambled a lot, and having AI read the scrambled data is not helpful," Aidid said.

Earlier this year, BI asked EvenUp about the role of humans in producing demand letters, one of its key products. After the outreach, the startup responded with written answers and published a blog post that clarified the roles employees play.

"While AI models trained on generic data can handle some tasks, the complexity of drafting high-quality demand letters requires much more than automation alone," the company wrote. "At EvenUp, we combine AI with expert human review to deliver unmatched precision and care."

The startup's spokesman declined to specify how much time its AI saves but told BI that employees spend 20% less time writing demand letters than they did at the beginning of the year. The spokesman also said 72% of demand letter content is started from an AI draft, up from 63% in June 2023.

A father's injury

EvenUp was founded in 2019, more than two years before OpenAI's ChatGPT launched the generative AI boom.

Karabibar, Raymond Mieszaniec, and Saam Mashhad started EvenUp to "even" the playing field for personal-injury victims. Founders and investors often cite the story of Mieszaniec's father, Ray, to explain why their mission is important. He was disabled after being hit by a car, but his lawyer didn't know the appropriate compensation, and the resulting settlement "was insufficient," Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of EvenUp's investors, said in a write-up about the company.

"We've trained a machine to be able to read through medical records, interpret the information it's scanning through, and extract the critical pieces of information," Mieszaniec said in an interview last year. "We are the first technology that has ever been created to essentially automate this entire process and also keep the quality high while ensuring these firms get all this work in a cost-effective manner."

EvenUp technical errors

The eight former EvenUp employees told BI earlier this year that this process has been far from automated and prone to errors.

"You have to pretty much double-check everything the AI gives you or do it completely from scratch," said one former employee.

For instance, the software has missed key injuries in medical records while hallucinating conditions that did not exist, according to some of the former employees. BI found no instances of these errors making it into the final product. Such mistakes, if not caught by human staff, could have potentially reduced payouts, three of the employees said.

EvenUp's system sometimes recorded multiple hospital visits over several days as just one visit. If employees had not caught the mistakes, the claim could have been lower, one of the former staffers said.

The former employees recalled EvenUp's AI system hallucinating doctor visits that didn't happen. It also has reported a victim suffered a shoulder injury when, in fact, their leg was hurt. The system also has mixed up which direction a car was traveling — important information in personal-injury lawsuits, the former employees said.

"It would pull information that didn't exist," one former employee recalled.

The software has also sometimes left out key details, such as whether a doctor determined a patient's injury was caused by a particular accident — crucial information for assigning damages, according to some of the employees.

"That was a big moneymaker for the attorneys, and the AI would miss that all the time," one former employee said.

EvenUp's spokesman acknowledged that these problems cited by former employees "could have happened," especially in earlier versions of its AI, but said this is why it employs humans as a backstop.

A customer and an investor

EvenUp did not make executives available for interviews, but the spokesman put BI in touch with a customer and an investor.

Robert Simon, the cofounder of the Simon Law Group, said EvenUp's AI has made his personal-injury firm more efficient, and using humans reduces errors.

"I appreciate that because I would love to have an extra set of eyes on it before the product comes back to me," Simon said. "EvenUp is highly, highly accurate."

Sarah Hinkfuss, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, said she appreciated EvenUp's human workers because they help train AI models that can't easily be replicated by competitors like OpenAI and its ChatGPT product.

"They're building novel datasets that did not exist before, and they are automating processes that significantly boost gross margins," Hinkfuss wrote in a blog post earlier this year.

Long hours, less automation

Most of the former EvenUp employees said a major reason they were drawn to the startup was because they had the impression AI would be doing much of the work.

"I thought this job was going to be really easy," said one of the former staffers. "I thought that it was going to be like you check work that the AI has already done for you."

The reality, these people said, was that they had to work long hours to spot, correct, and complete tasks that the AI system could not handle with full accuracy.

"A lot of my coworkers would work until 3 a.m. and on weekends to try to keep up with what was expected," another former employee recalled.

EvenUp's AI could be helpful in simple cases that could be completed in as little as two hours. But more complex cases sometimes required eight hours, so a workday could stretch to 16 hours, four of the former employees said.

"I had to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving," said one of these people. "They [the managers] acted like it should be really quick because the AI did everything. But it didn't."

EvenUp's spokesman said candidates are told upfront the job is challenging and requires a substantial amount of writing. He said retention rates are "in line with other hyper-growth startups" and that 40% of legal operations associates were promoted in the third quarter of this year.

"We recognize that working at a company scaling this fast is not for everyone," said the spokesman. "In addition, as our AI continues to improve, leveraging our technology will become easier and easier."

Highlighting the continued importance of human workers, the spokesman noted that EvenUp hired a vice president of people at the end of October.

• Insider compiled its annual list of rising stars of venture capital for 2024.
• These 45 investors represent the future of VC investing and hail from many different backgrounds.
• Here's a glimpse into the makeup of this year's rising stars list by the numbers.

Artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for early-career investors to shine when it comes to sourcing hot startups and writing checks for eye-popping funding rounds.

Business Insider asked for nominations for our annual class of most promising investors. We selected 45 young VCs from a wide array of backgrounds, from associates to founding partners at their funds. As in previous years, BI also included a few picks of our own based on investors' performance throughout 2024.

We compiled data about this year's rising stars and broke it down into five charts that show these investors' locations, areas of focus, and education.

Three of our rising stars this year are founders — Emerson Collective's Julien Barber, who co-founded carbon tech startup Commons; Khosla Ventures' Jon Chu, who built software testing company Koality; and Accel's Ivan Zhou, who founded social gaming company Mayhem.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of investors are based in New York and San Francisco. However, several rising stars call Washington, D.C., Texas, or the Midwest home.

Most of this year's rising stars say they're focusing on doing deals for AI and enterprise startups, while others focus on healthcare, consumer, fintech, and other categories.

Learn more about Business Insider's 45 rising stars of venture capital, by the numbers:

Most rising stars are based in San Francisco, with other investors calling New York, Washington, D.C., and a few other cities home.

Most rising stars invest in AI or enterprise startups.

The majority of rising star VCs went to Harvard or Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. 27 schools in total were represented among the 45 rising stars.

15 rising stars completed graduate degrees. Four rising stars have multiple graduate degrees.

Of the rising stars with graduate degrees, most have MBAs, while others have master's degrees in computer science, AI, or a related field.

• Nscale has raised $155 million in Series A funding for its hyperscaler platform.
• The startup offers everything from access to data centers to GPU infrastructure.
• BI got an exclusive look at the pitch memo the startup used to secure the fresh funds.

Nscale, a London-based startup providing companies with access to data centers and clusters of AI chips, has raised $155 million in fresh funding.

The startup, which came out of stealth in May 2024, bills itself as a fully integrated AI infrastructure platform.

As a hyperscaler, Nscale provides the "full stack" of technologies companies need to train and run AI applications like large language models. That includes data centers, software, and graphics processing units, Nscale's founder and CEO Joshua Payne told Business Insider in an interview.

The startup differentiates itself from AI cloud providers, such as Lambda Labs and Coreweave, which offer only specific components, such as GPUs, in the AI infrastructure layer. By providing everything from its own data centers to virtualized GPU nodes, Payne said that the company could leverage better unit economics than its competitors.

"The problem for the industry is chicken and egg. Take an LLM customer — they may want 10,000 GPUs, but they don't have the expertise for that," he told BI. "Many of our competitors don't own their own data centers, so they have to license them. In our case, we have all of that in-house. Given that we are able to own all those segments in the value chain, we're faster and cheaper."

Payne said that Nscale pivoted to focus on AI infrastructure across the full stack after the public release of ChatGPT-3. "So our thesis was, if this is indeed the fourth industrial revolution as people are claiming, then how would you build a resilient AI cloud that would survive commodity cycles? said Payne. "We found the best way to do that was to vertically integrate it, building both data centers, GPUs, and software."

Since it emerged from stealth, it has rapidly grown its pipeline of greenfield data center capacity across Europe and the US from 300 megawatts to 1.3 gigawatts.

The startup makes its money by building data centers, purchasing GPUs, and deploying AI cloud services, which it then leases on an hourly basis. Clients can sign contracts for any given period of time to use the services.

Sandton Capital Partners led the $155 million round, which also included participation from Kestrel, Bluesky Asset Management, and Florence Capital. The startup previously raised more than $30 million in pre-seed and seed funding, with the size of those early-stage rounds reflecting investors' heightened appetite to back startups operating in the AI infrastructure layer.

With the fresh funding, Nscale plans to invest in large clusters of GPUs and also double down on software development for its public cloud platform, which will be released in January 2025.

BI got an exclusive look at the 9-slide memo the startup used to secure fresh funding.

• Bill Gates said 2024 brought a corporate "pivot" toward climate tech, in a foreword to a new report.
• The report, by Gates's firm Breakthrough Energy, urged VCs to "prime the pump" on climate startups.
• While new climate tech emerges, proven solutions like solar energy still need help proliferating.

This has been a big year for the technologies that could save our planet.

America's first large offshore wind farm began powering homes. The Bill Gates-backed startup Graphyte opened its first carbon-removal plant in Arkansas. Another startup, Sublime Systems, secured a site and funding for its first low-carbon cement manufacturing facility.

There's also been a "corporate climate pivot," according to a report by Breakthrough Energy, a climate investment firm and startup catalyzer founded by Gates.

"We noticed a subtle, but important, perspective shift from both the investors and corporations we engage with," Gates wrote in an intro to the report, which the firm published in October with the tagline "climate tech has arrived."

More than just reducing their carbon footprint, corporate leaders "want to get in at the ground floor of new industries that, one day, will be crucial to the survival of their businesses," Gates wrote.

Other industry experts also told Business Insider that climate tech is picking up steam, and now emerging companies need more funding to scale up.

Corporate investment in climate tech

Breakthrough Energy focuses on its own partners in the report, such as American Airlines investing in a startup making hydrogen-based plane fuel. It's not the only VC firm seeing large corporations lean into climate tech more, though.

A number of long-standing corporate partners, like the chemicals giant BASF or the building-materials manufacturer Saint-Gobain, work with the nonprofit climate-tech incubator Greentown Labs to support early-stage companies.

Aisling Carlson, the senior vice president of partnerships at Greentown, told BI that the firm's oldest corporate partners have been hiring, "beefing up" their teams that invest in emerging climate tech.

"Their approach to climate innovation and their internal expertise has matured," Carlson said.

Meanwhile, other corporations are beginning to engage with climate tech for the first time. Carlson said Greentown has seen new interest from corporations that haven't invested much in climate tech, though no partnerships have been publicly announced yet.

"They are all thinking about their carbon footprint and how they can decarbonize," she added.

Don't forget about old reliables like solar

Though new technologies, like direct air capture plants that suck carbon out of the sky, can be part of the solution, Foley wants investors and politicians to remember that fighting climate change is a race against time.

"Let's deploy things that actually are cheap enough and scalable enough and ready enough," like solar power, battery storage, EV charging stations, and other tech that's already proliferating, he said.

We also have to shut down coal-fired power plants and plug abandoned gas wells that leak methane, Foley said. Efforts to stop deforestation can prevent huge amounts of carbon emissions and they're "desperately starved for money," he added.

These are the low-hanging fruits of fighting climate change.

Foley said that Gates has a history of investing in "science fiction experiments" that don't move fast enough, such as small modular nuclear reactors. After nearly 20 years of development and Gates's investment, there still isn't a single one in operation.

Sustainable aviation fuel is a similar "boondoggle," Foley said.

"That's a science experiment still, and it doesn't need or deserve billions of tax dollars," he said, adding that public funding should go to reliable solutions.

Breakthrough Energy did not respond to a request for comment.

VC can 'prime the pump' on garage innovators

Lots of futuristic climate tech just needs the funding to deploy and scale up, Gates wrote. The Breakthrough Energy report argues that venture capitalists, investors, or corporations should get in on it now, at the ground floor.

"By waiting, venture firms are only hurting their own bottom lines," the report says. By getting in early, though, investors can "prime the pump" and help early-stage companies design a product that's scalable and capable of attracting even bigger investment.

However, funding for climate tech slowed down this year, Carlson said, possibly due to investors taking a "wait and see" stance in the lead-up to the US election.

Indeed, Biden administration initiatives have boosted climate tech in recent years including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act.

New policies have driven more government investment in green concrete and steel, according to the Breakthrough Energy report, and the IRA created more than two dozen tax credits for investing in clean-energy projects. Breakthrough concluded those credits could unlock "more than $1 trillion in private sector investment."

However, incentives like that could change with the new Trump administration.

"What I am hopeful for is that corporate commitments to net zero targets will continue to drive innovation," Carlson said. "And if there are unfavorable federal policies, that the private sector can continue to play a driving role in ensuring at least that the early-stage climate technologies are getting to market."

• We asked our readers and top VCs to name the best up-and-coming investors of 2024.
• These VCs come from big and small firms and invest in startups across all sectors and stages.
• These 45 venture capitalists are the names to keep on your radar in 2025 and beyond.

Over the last two years, artificial intelligence has exploded into public consciousness, leading to a boom in new startup creation and an antidote to an otherwise sleepy VC investing landscape.

The trend is creating more opportunities than ever for early-career investors to shine when it comes to helping source big deals — or even being the one to write the check.

Every year, Business Insider asks top investors to name the most promising young VCs in their networks. BI also asked the general public, as well as previous rising stars, who they thought should make the cut.

The investors selected to be our 2024 rising stars of venture capital come from a wide array of backgrounds and range from associates to founding partners at their funds, and we also threw in a few picks of our own based on the investor performance throughout this year.

Unsurprisingly, many young VCs are making a name for themselves by betting on hot AI startups. But BI's list also includes investors specializing in healthcare, defense tech, climate tech, and other industries.

Scroll to see 2024's rising stars of venture capital, organized alphabetically by the investor's name.

Daniel Aronovitz, Insight Partners

Over nearly a decade at Insight, Aronovitz has risen from analyst to principal, helping lead investments in Own Company, which Salesforce acquired, and Run:ai, which Nvidia bought. He looks for high-growth B2B SaaS companies in cybersecurity, infrastructure software, and vertical AI. Investments typically span Series A to Series D, with check sizes ranging from $5 million to $500 million.

In 2019, Aronovitz helped open the firm's office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he lives with his family.

"I draw on years of software investing and pattern recognition to help founders navigate the challenges of scaling internationally," he said.

Casey Aylward, Accel

Aylward joined Accel in 2022. Since then, she has established herself as a go-to early-stage, open-source investor, continuing a firm tradition of early investments in companies like Cloudera, Sentry, and Vercel. She led Accel's seed investments in competitive deals, including VoidZero, founded and led by Evan You, the creator of widely adopted projects in the JavaScript ecosystem, and Astral, a startup building developer tools for the Python ecosystem.

This fall, she also helped organize the first CUDA Mode Hackathon alongside Nvidia and PyTorch, an open-source deep learning framework, attended by hundreds of developers.

Before Accel, Aylward worked at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage enterprise fund, and was a software engineer at Pinterest, joining through the acquisition of the Accel-backed company URX.

Julien Barber, Emerson Collective

Climate tech investor Barber advises founders to "go deep" on a topic. He's done that himself as a venture investor at Emerson Collective, where he focuses on backing companies that use technology to break down barriers to a clean economy.

Specifically, he focuses on the hardware solutions needed to decarbonize the economy, such as nuclear fusion, energy storage, and other physical solutions in the energy, industrial, and transportation sectors. This year, Barber helped the firm invest in several clean energy startups, including Antora Energy, Xcimer Energy, and Zap Energy.

Before joining Emerson Collective, Barber completed his graduate program in Mechanical Engineering at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) where he specialized in studying nuclear fusion technology. He also co-founded Commons, a carbon-tech start-up, and advises companies on corporate climate strategy.

Maggie Basta, Scale Venture Partners

Basta was promoted to Vice President at Scale Venture Partners, where she focuses on AI infrastructure and developer tools. This past year, she sourced Scale's investments in Galileo, Cortex, Lumos, and QA Wolf. Scale led a $45 million Series B round in generative AI security and monitoring startup Galileo.

Basta is part of a growing number of technically trained VCs with deep expertise in AI and machine learning. Before Scale, Maggie worked as an ML engineer at QuantCo, building AI technology for algorithmic pricing and fraud detection. Her prior academic research focused on Deep Learning.

Basta, formerly a Harvard collegiate soccer player, has authored several key pieces on building and investing in AI infrastructure.

Lori Berenberg, Bloomberg Beta

Berenberg has made herself a staple of the New York City tech scene by organizing regular community events, including parties at NY Tech Week and her series of tech breakfasts.

"Venture is one of those rare careers you can start before getting the job," she said. "Build your network, explore your city's startup scene, meet founders, and practice evaluating live deals."

A former product manager, Berenberg joined Bloomberg Beta in 2022 and focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in the future of workspace. Her portfolio includes the lawyer time-tracking platform Ajax and the community-hiring platform Twill. Berenberg earned her undergraduate degree from New York University's Stern School of Business.

Morgan Blumberg, M13

Blumberg joined the venture capital world in 2021, and she's since made a big impact on M13's portfolio. As a principal at the early-stage tech-focused firm, she helps lead M13's AI strategy and has sourced or led five of its most competitive AI investments in the past year, including its investments in Norm AI's $11 million seed round, led by Coatue, and RadiantGraph's $11 million Series A, led by M13.

She currently supports 11 of the firm's portfolio companies and sits on the boards of the freelance fintech startup WorkMade and the AI sales platform Lantern.

Blumberg previously worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. After leaving banking, she worked on Mike Bloomberg's 2020 presidential campaign and consulted for political media startups before joining M13. Her recent investments have focused on AI applications for the future of work and healthcare.

Molly Bonakdarpour, Drive Capital

Bonakdarpour shapes healthcare strategy as a partner at the Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital. This year, she's invested in early-stage startups bringing AI to healthcare, including Droxi AI and Clarence Health. She also sits on the board of the insurtech startup Sidecar Health, which raised a $165 million Series D round in June.

She's supported portfolio companies to successful exits even as M&A has lagged, including the Japanese food producer Ajinomoto's acquisition of Forge Biologics, a biotech startup she helped incubate, for $620 million at the end of 2023.

Before becoming an investor, Bonakdarpour led commercial partnerships at the diabetes company Livongo and held analyst roles at 7wire Ventures and JPMorgan.

Vig Chandramouli, Oak HC/FT

Chandramouli first saw the limitations of a healthcare system growing up in South India, where his grandfather still runs a small clinic for patients who can't afford to go to the hospital or seek specialty care. Now, at Oak, he backs founders building for underserved patients who can't advocate themselves.

Chandramouli joined Oak in 2014 as one of the firm's earliest employees. He's since worked on 35 of Oak's 58 healthcare investments to date, from new company incubations to growth-stage deals. He has largely focused on investments in value-based care enablement, with a recent eye for startups using AI in healthcare.

Chandramouli helped incubate the generative AI startup Trovo Health, which emerged from stealth in April with $15 million in seed funding led by Oak. He also sits on the boards of startups including Trovo Health, the virtual-reality surgery company Osso VR, and the healthcare training platform Stepful.

Sherry Chao, GV

Chao brings a scientific background to her role investing in life-sciences startups at GV. After finishing her MBA at Harvard Business School, Chao completed her doctorate in bioinformatics at Harvard, during which she worked in a cancer immunology lab at the Broad Insitute of MIT and Harvard. Collaborating with leading scientists there sharpened her eye for evaluating the science and market viability of GV's biotech investments.

Chao joined GV as a principal in 2021, and the firm promoted her to partner in January. She's worked on deals like GV's bets on the obesity biotech Metsera, the immunology startup Santa Ana Bio, and several companies still in stealth. Before securing her graduate degrees, Chao spent three years at Goldman Sachs as a private-equity analyst.

Jon Chu, Khosla Ventures

Chu is one of the investors leading Khosla's charge into AI. His focus on machine learning and its impact on enterprise infrastructure, applications, and developer tools has led the firm to make investments in high-potential startups such as Sakana, a research lab building a foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence, and Loft Labs, a startup that virtualizes Kubernetes clusters that raised $24 million in funding in April.

Chu began his career as an engineer at Palantir and founded and sold a software-testing company, Koality, to Docker, where he ran Docker's enterprise group. More recently, he spent time at Opendoor, leading engineering for core machine learning, and at Facebook, overseeing engineering teams in both virtual reality and machine learning.

Zeeza Cole

Cole recently wrapped up her time at Bain Capital Ventures, where she wrote checks for the clothing resale infrastructure startup Archive, the inventory-management platform Cofactr, and Arc, which is a digital bank for SaaS startups. Based in New York, she's focused on application software with a focus on industrials and vertical Saas.

Prior to her time at BCV, Cole was an associate at WeWork's creative fund and completed a stint in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. When it comes to founders, she says that the most important quality she looks for is earned insight.

"Whether that is domain expertise from years of working in the industry or simply becoming self-taught in a space where the founder is passionate, having a strong industry perspective is critical for building a future-facing company," she said.

Deedy Das, Menlo Ventures

Although having only been at Menlo Ventures for less than a year, Das has already made his mark at the firm for his AI investing prowess. Das, who was previously on the founding team of hot AI search startup Glean, has helped launch the $100 million Anthology Fund in partnership with Anthropic (Menlo invested in the AI giant's $450 million series C round in 2023).

Deedy is one of only three team members (others include partners Matt Murray and Tim Tully) responsible for making investments out of the fund. Having held technical roles at Facebook and Google Previously, Das is also involved with the firm's investment in Pinecone and serves as an advisor to a number of AI startups including Perplexity.

Das is also a prolific contributor to AI and immigration thought leadership and has amassed over 100,000 followers on social media platform X.

On what he looks for in a founder: "Consistency. Focus is one of the most fleeting qualities in today's day and age. We're all distracted by the shiny new thing. Whether it comes from obsession, discipline or simply drive, being consistent is essential. A successful startup takes 7-10 years — that's a longer duration than most people have done anything."

James Detweiler, Felicis

Detweiler found his way into venture by accident, rejecting roles in physics research and Wall Street trading and working at Silicon Valley Bank. In 2021, Detweiler bet big on AI investing, joining AI-focused fund Zetta Venture Partners. A year later, he joined Felicis with the intention of scaling out the firm's AI portfolio. Over the past few years, Detweiler has helped deploy around $100 million into 8 AI startups.

Detweiler, a physics major and Minecraft lover, has made several early bets on AI and machine learning startups, backing Shield AI. and Flower Labs. He also led Felicis' investment in Skild AI, a company building a foundation model for robotics. Shield AI was last valued at $2.7 billion, and Skild AI was last valued at $1.5 billion.

On what he looks for in a founder: "humility, grit/resilience, clear/secret narrative, talent magnet, fast learner/updates priors, high energy/rate of execution, extraordinary background/track record, and bonus points for expanding the scope of my imagination."

Dion Dong, Leadout Capital

Dong joined Leadout as a principal in 2022. Since joining the firm, which focuses on early-stage startups and helping companies find "founder-market fit," Dong has sourced seven investments, including Creatify, which makes video advertisements with AI, and the food-service sales platform First Bite.

Dong considers himself a generalist investor, though he says he's recently been focusing on the AI app layer. The University of California at Berkeley graduate has made over a dozen angel investments and completed stints at companies including Rippling and Laika. He said the latter experience had been crucial to his success on the VC side of things.

"Be more intentional about developing an investor mindset even before stepping into a full-time investor role, whether it's how you allocate your time, energy, resources, or relationships," he said. "Many skills will likely transfer when allocating capital if you excel at that."

Caroline Fiegel, Salesforce Ventures

At Salesforce Ventures, Fiegel manages investments for the firm's Slack Fund, which targets early-stage companies creating software and infrastructure meant to power the future of work. Since joining in 2022, Fiegel has helped define the fund's early-stage strategy and sourced and led investments such as Ensemble, a company dedicated to lowering barriers to state-of-the-art machine learning, and Tribble, which automates the "request for proposal" process.

Before she became an investor, Fiegel spent over three years leading product and go-to-market strategy at Quip, a horizontal productivity suite that Salesforce acquired in 2016.

Outside work, she hosts a recurring dinner series for female founders and operators — an effort she hopes to grow and formalize in the new year.

Samuel Garcia, Amplo

The Austin-based Garcia has been with Amplo for six years, starting out as an associate in 2018 and rising through the ranks before being promoted to partner in 2023. The fund focuses on seed and Series A investing, and Garcia considers himself a generalist investor, though he says he tends to gravitate toward the B2B SaaS, telecom, and legaltech sectors.

His investments include the legal-tech startup Steno, the AI-powered product-management software Axion Ray, and the digital network procurement startup Lightyear.

For Garcia, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin as well as Harvard Law School, it's important to him that startup founders are experts in their chosen fields.

"I like to ask myself, 'If there was a graduate-level class on what this company does, could this CEO be a professor on it?'" he said.

C.C. Gong, Menlo Ventures

Gong has an unusually long résumé, especially for someone so young — product roles at Meta and Microsoft, an investor at Bain Capital Ventures, founder of her own video startup, and White House Presidential Innovation Fellow. She added another title to her résumé this year, joining Menlo as a principal. There, she focuses on pre-seed to Series C startups trying to revolutionize how people live, work, and play.

Gong prides herself on her hustle.

"I love breaking down doors for founders," she said. "Having been a founder myself I know how hard it is, and now as a VC my job is to make their job easier."

Jaya Gupta, Foundation Capital

Since joining Foundation in May 2023, Gupta has already made five seed-stage investments in the AI space, including the sales engineering company DocketAI. Based in San Francisco, Gupta previously completed a stint at the investment-banking firm RBC after graduating from Georgia Institute of Technology.

When it comes to finding success in the world of VC, Gupta said that it's important to find and trust your gut instinct.

"In this business, value for investors means sending relevant deals to the right people, and especially in early-stage investing it's more art than science," she said. "So, it's important to demonstrate you have the capability to identify potential breakthrough people and companies."

Fawzi Itani, Forerunner Ventures

Itani began his career at LinkedIn before starting a gaming research and advisory firm. In 2021, he joined Forerunner, which leads seed, Series A, and Series B rounds for consumer startups. Companies Itani works with include Fay Nutrition, which provides insurance-covered dietitians, and Feed, a retailer of healthcare supplements.

"I'd say my superpower has been identifying and engaging in markets that are on the precipice of change," Itani said. "I'm someone who can support our portfolio in any task no matter how big or small, unblocking them, brainstorming alongside them, and getting them in front of people they need to meet."

Tanay Jaipuria, Wing Venture Capital

As a partner at Wing, Jaipuria leads seed and Series A funding rounds in AI-powered applications and infrastructure. Since joining the firm in April 2022, Jaipuria has written checks for the AI social-media ad platform Sesame Labs and the time-tracking legaltech Billables.

Jaipuria, who is based in New York, says aspiring investors should fake it before they make it.

"Be in the flow — help founders with advice, connect them to investors, develop perspectives on sectors and share them online," he said. "You can practice most parts of the job without actually being in the job yet."

Prior to joining Wing, Jaipuria held roles across Big Tech, including product lead at Instagram, product manager at Facebook, and forward-deployed engineer at Palantir. He also spent time as a consultant at McKinsey. Jaipuria earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and also graduated from Harvard Business School.

Bryce Johnson, Primary Venture Partners

Johnson, based in New York, has been investing at Primary since 2023, and his focus areas include healthcare, fintech, and vertical SaaS. He's made bets on the AI construction startup Bobyard and the fund-management platform Maybern, in addition to a stealth healthtech company.

For Johnson, who graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in computer science focusing on AI, an important part of VC investing is identifying your strengths and building them into networking.

"VC is all about sharing your grand vision and then executing against the plan," he said. "A question I constantly ask myself as an investor is, 'Why would an incredible founder want to take a call with me when they have other investors knocking at their door?' If you can clearly answer that, doors will open."

Brannon Jones, AlleyCorp

After working as an engineer at SpaceX, Jones joined AlleyCorp in 2023 to invest in robotics, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and energy transition technologies at the pre-seed through Series A levels.

"I've found that one of the most important values I'm able to bring to founders is a thorough understanding of deep tech, specifically its scalability throughout industries," Jones said. "The transition stage from concept to commercialization is notoriously challenging, and so that is where there can often be the most need from a founder's perspective."

Cynthia Kuo, IVP

After starting her career as a banker at Goldman Sachs and working in finance at Hopin, Kuo joined IVP in 2022. She has worked with two of the hottest startups of 2024, Perplexity and Glean. At IVP, Kuo focuses on AI applications, vertical software, and consumer platforms with check sizes ranging from $10 million to $50 million.

"My time at a startup — joining what was a lean finance team during a pivotal moment in the company's growth trajectory — gave me valuable insight into sustaining hypergrowth and, more importantly, tremendous empathy for founders and their teams," Kuo said. "That experience, combined with my background in finance, honed at Goldman Sachs, enriched my understanding of scaling."

Ashwin Lalendran, Moxxie Ventures

Lalendran, Moxxie's newest recruit, has designed and deployed computer vision and robotics systems across land, air, and sea. He worked on drones for the Air Force, shipped 3D vision software for Apple's mapping and self-driving-car projects, and led a team of engineers to scale the world's largest private-owned network of ocean sensors at Sofar Ocean.

In his latest role, Lalendran lends founders his operating expertise — having gone from napkin sketches to scaled deployment many times over — and his technical and commercial network. He specializes in regulated industries, whether manufacturing and mining or maritime and medicine.

Before Moxxie, Lalendran cut angel checks into Milu Health, a healthcare startup that raised a seed round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz, and Driver, a startup seeking to take the slog out of technical writing and recently announced $8 million in funding in a round led by GV.

Yuri Lee, IVP

IVP promoted Lee to partner in July, two years after she joined the firm from Morgan Stanley, where she worked on investment-banking deals like Affirm's and SentinelOne's 2021 IPOs. She's sourced and supported some of IVP's hottest deals this year, like its February investment in the AI-powered medical scribing startup Abridge's $150 million Series C. (The Information reported in October that Abridge was raising a fresh $250 million round at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation, with IVP set to co-lead the deal alongside the tech investor Elad Gil.)

Lee makes investments across tech and healthcare. She serves on the board of the healthcare staffing startup Clipboard Health and helped IVP secure its investment in the hybrid care provider Accompany Health, which launched in January with a $56 million Series A. She also supports some of IVP's highest-value tech bets, including Discord; she cohosted Discord's B2B product launch event at the Game Developers Conference in March.

Beyond VC, Lee is an avid player and creator of video games — she developed the online multiplayer game "Arena of Kings," released in 2021. She was ranked in the top 1% of "League of Legends" players in the US for multiple years. She's lived in five countries, including South Korea, where she was born, Hungary, where she grew up, and now the United States.

Alex Lehman, Sapphire Ventures

Lehman rejoined Sapphire in 2022 after getting an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She focuses on generative-AI startups at all layers, from infrastructure to application to large language models.

"As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I believe I'm transforming the industry while performing at the highest levels in an ecosystem across which people like me are not widely represented," Lehman said. "The founders I work with know that they are getting my honest take no matter what the context and that I am driven, hungry, and dedicated to working tirelessly towards their success."

Lindsey Li, Bessemer Venture Partners

Lindsey Li, who joined Bessemer Venture Partners in 2019 as an analyst, has sourced more than seven investments for the firm, including AI and software startups Seam AI and Rundoo.

This year, Li, who makes early-stage bets on startups across gaming and consumer, developer platforms, and crypto, was promoted to Vice President at Bessemer in 2024. She also spearheaded a study focused on AI's effect on developer tasks and contributed to Bessemer's annual State of the Cloud report.

Internally at Bessemer, she created and led the firm's Steel DAO initiative, which developed a platform for deal sourcing for crypto and web3. The DAO evaluated over 300 companies and resulted in four early-stage startups funded by Bessemer.

On what Li looks for in a founder: "Clarity of thought and vision. I find this is often predictive of other very important qualities, including being able to see the present clearly (i.e., hard-headed about the facts) and communicate in granular detail the steps between now and the future they envision."

Radhika Malik, Dell Technologies Capital

Malik was promoted from principal to partner at Dell Technologies' VC arm. She invests in AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, and deep tech. Her current investments include RunPod, Secuvy, SiLC, TheLoops, and several companies still in stealth mode. Malik sourced the seed investment in AI startup RunPod from an engineering subreddit; the startup raised $20 million from Dell and Intel Capital earlier this year.

A deeply technical software engineer, Malik was previously an investor with Samsung Catalyst Fund, Samsung's deep technology venture fund. Prior to becoming an investor, she worked as a software engineer and product manager at Microsoft and Amazon.

Malik's advice for any aspiring VCs: "Learn the fine balance between being analytical and data-driven and 'suspending disbelief' at the right time when you believe you may have come across a potential outlier. There are a million reasons to say no to any investment. Finding that one reason to say 'yes' takes being able to believe in a big vision that may be supported by very little data."

Abby Meyers, Bain Capital Ventures

Meyers says that in VC, it's crucial to do your homework.

"Coming into conversations informed, with interesting insights that can further the thinking of investors that you're interacting with, can demonstrate the type of value you'd bring as a member of their team," she said. "And, everything you learn while breaking in will help you do the job when you get there."

Meyers, who is based in New York, has been at Bain Capital Ventures since September 2022 and was promoted to principal in January 2024. She focuses on the application-software vertical, and her bets include the industrial workplace platform MaintainX, the legal-tech startup EvenUp, and the sales-focused Apollo.

Jesse Middleton, Flybridge Capital Partners

When Flybridge decided to take a big swing on New York's tech ecosystem with a dedicated fund, it named Middleton as the dealmaker in charge. He helped launch and now leads Next Wave NYC, a pre-seed venture fund, wholly owned by Flybridge, that invests in local entrepreneurs using artificial intelligence to build next-gen products.

Middleton is a general partner at Flybridge, having cut his teeth as an angel investor. He built up his network as an early employee at WeWork, where he built and supported a community of thousands of founders in WeWork Labs, the coworking company's take on a startup incubator.

His notable investments include Chief, the professional network for women in executive roles; Jackpocket, a lottery app that DraftKings purchased this year for $750 million; and Arcee.ai, an early-stage developer of small language models that announced two separate funding rounds this year.

Andrew Montgomery, Collaborative Fund

Montgomery has boomeranged back to the world of VC: He previously spent eight years at the seed investment firm Mesa Ventures but left in 2020 to be vice president of finance and strategy at the early-childhood edtech startup Lovevery. While at the company, Lovevery closed a $100 million Series C funding round led by TCG, valuing the startup at $800 million.

Montgomery, who's based in Boise, Idaho, and spends time in New York, went back to venture capital in 2023, joining Collaborative Fund as a partner to focus on next-generation consumer startups. He's backed the teen-focused marketing and data startup Cafeteria.

"Showing initiative and the ability to spot potential will set you apart," he said of people looking to get into venture capital. "This could mean helping startups or writing publicly about your ideas. Build a track record of insights that demonstrate how you think about opportunities."

Chris Morales, Point72 Ventures

Morales leads Point72 Ventures' defense tech practice, a field he's been passionate about since starting his career as a naval flight officer, wherein he was responsible for operating the weapon systems of fighter aircraft. He served in the Navy for eight years before transitioning into investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

Morales joined Point72 Ventures in 2020 as a vice president and was promoted to partner in April. He opened the firm's first office in Washington, DC, in May to build up Point72's military tech presence. He's led and worked on some hot defense tech deals, including the autonomous-pilot startup Shield AI's $90 million Series C in 2021 — the startup clinched more funding last year at a $2.7 billion valuation — and a 2020 investment into Stoke Space, a reusable-rocket company backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Morales led the autonomous-driving-tech startup Overland AI's $10 million seed round in May. He's backed several other defense tech startups that are still in stealth this year.

Mason Murray, New Enterprise Associates

Mason Murray joined NEA as a Senior Associate in 2022 and helped form its AI investment thesis. He's been involved in several recent AI bets, including Glacier, Limitless AI, and Twelve Labs. Earlier this year, Twelve Labs raised $50 million in funding from NEA and Nvidia.

Prior to NEA, Murray worked in investing banking at Bank of America.

As for his advice for any aspiring VCs: "VC is multidisciplinary and there's no single path in. My advice would be to assess your operational strengths, areas of expertise, and unique networks. Your recruiting, sourcing, and network-building strategies will be most effective when tailored to where you can deliver near-term value. When you find your sweet spot, lean into it."

Sruthi Ramaswami, Iconiq Growth

Iconiq Growth had only a handful of healthcare investments when Ramaswami joined the firm in 2018. Over the past seven years, she's helped Iconiq establish a presence in the industry with 15 healthcare bets, sourcing and leading deals such as the firm's investments into Benchling, Devoted Health, and Unite Us.

This year, she sourced and closed Iconiq's investment into the medical device startup AcuityMD's $45 million Series B round, and she now sits on the startup's board of directors. Her 15 startup investments are worth $1.5 billion today.

Beyond the firm, Ramaswami works to improve diversity in venture capital as a cofounder of Neythri.org, a community of South Asian professional women, and a founding limited partner of the Neythri Futures Fund, a fund made up primarily of South Asian investors that's focused on backing startups with underrepresented founders, especially South Asian women. Two of that fund's portfolio companies, Cacheflow and Rupa Health, were acquired this year.

Naren Ramaswamy, Alumni Ventures

Naren Ramaswamy has been promoted four times over the past two years at Alumni Ventures, moving from associate to now the youngest junior partner at the firm. Ramaswamy helped craft Alumni Ventures' AI thesis and created a data-driven sourcing engine for the form. He sourced and led more than deals across AI, SaaS, and deep tech, including Daydream, Vectara, and Vanilla.

Before his work in Silicon Valley, he was a touring soloist/composer on the Indian bamboo flute under musician Ravi Shankar's school of music. Ramaswamy holds three degrees from Stanford, including bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering and an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He also teaches a course at the university on venture capital.

Jordan Segall, Redpoint Ventures

Segall joined Redpoint in 2021, concentrating on SaaS, developer tools, AI, and security startups. He likes to invest in companies early, at either seed or Series A, with checks ranging from $1 million to $30 million.

"I've worked in startups like Palantir, C3.ai, and RelateIQ across engineering, product, and presales and leverage those experiences to help founders on everything from recruiting and interviewing candidates, sourcing key customer leads and helping founders with GTM strategy, and thinking through core strategic initiatives and goal setting/planning," Segall said.

Iris Sun, 500 Global

Earlier this year, Sun moved from TSVC to 500 Global, where she focuses on data infrastructure, vertical intelligence applications, and cybersecurity startups. Sun invests in pre-seed to Series A rounds, with check sizes ranging from $150,000 to $5 million.

"What truly excites me is finding highly technical founders who deeply understand their domains and are committed to building ambitious global companies that can reshape their industries," Sun said.

Companies she has backed include d-Matrix, which is developing a digital in-memory computing architecture, and Ridge Security, an AI agent platform for security validation.

Christopher Wan, Bessemer Venture Partners

Wan has been spearheading Bessemer Venture Partners' early-stage deep tech investments, including in quantum computing, defense tech, and AI and machine learning. Wen has worked closely with the firm's AI and defense companies, including Bastille, Lumachain, and ModelCode.ai, Bastille, a company developing hardware and software to provide wireless intrusion security software to the US government, recently raised a $44 million in Series C funding.

Wan also helped lead Bessemer's investment in defense AI startup DEFCON AI's $44 million seed round this year.

Prior to joining Bessemer, Wan was an investor at In-Q-Tel and Tusk Ventures, investing in companies at the intersection of technology and government. While getting his MBA and law degree at Stanford, Wan was part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, where he researched and wrote policy reports on artificial intelligence.

Andrea Wang, General Catalyst

Wang joined General Catalyst as a partner in May 2023 to focus on early-stage B2B software and AI investments. In the year and a half since, she's worked on 17 of the VC firm's deals, including General Catalyst's seed investment in Pylon, which raised a $17 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in August.

Before joining General Catalyst, Wang led product growth efforts at the analytics company Amplitude, which now helps her understand the pain points of the enterprise startups she invests in. She's also an angel investor, making bets alongside VC heavy-hitters like Sequoia Capital and Coatue, as well as General Catalyst.

Based out of General Catalyst's San Francisco office, Wang helps cultivate relationships between the firm and founders in the Bay Area, including by working with student organizations at Stanford University to identify top student builders. She recently hosted a speed-dating-style event series meant to help entrepreneurs find cofounders in the community.

Derek Xiao, Menlo Ventures

Menlo has called Xiao a "driving force" of its investments at the frontier of artificial intelligence. Early last year, he led the diligence process for Anthropic — before it had any revenue and before others saw it as a threat to OpenAI's dominance. His iron grasp on the technicals helped the firm establish a thesis for how enterprises would adopt large language models and allowed it to gain conviction in Anthropic before the opportunity was obvious.

Xiao found further success with an investment in Neon, a serverless-database provider that has since raised from Microsoft and is now seeing rapid adoption from enterprises.

He also led Menlo's thesis work around infrastructure to power the next generation of apps. This led Menlo to lead a $40 million Series B round of funding for Unstructured, a startup that helps enterprises transform unstructured data into formats compatible with large language models.

Before he became an investor, Xiao worked as a consultant at Bain & Company.

Mark Xu, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Xu is a growth investor at Lightspeed, focusing on enterprise software companies raising Series B rounds and beyond. He typically deploys $50 million to $150 million. Xu splits his time between finding new companies and doubling down on existing investments like Wiz, Glean, Grafana, Verkada, and Anduril.

Xu prides himself on connecting companies to the right people.

"I've been fortunate to build individual relationships with a wide variety of people," Xu said. "I love being able to 'activate' my network and share those relationships with the companies I work with."

Yuanling Yuan, SignalFire

Yuan, who goes by "YY," came to VC from particularly unconventional beginnings — as a women international master in chess. She landed that title at age 14 and was the top female player in Canada for seven years, leading her to start a nonprofit during her high-school years called Chess in the Library, which has run more than 30 chess programs at public libraries across Canada.

Now, as a partner at SignalFire, Yuan tries to predict several moves ahead in healthcare. She's helped grow SignalFire's healthcare portfolio to 30 startups, including by co-leading the firm's investments into startups like the AI-powered medical coding company CodaMetrix, which SignalFire first backed in 2023 at the time of its $55 million Series A, and Praia Health, which spun out of the health system Providence to land a $20 million Series A in April. She sits on the boards of Praia Health, the medical data annotation platform Centaur Labs, the medication adherence startup Wellth, and the clinical documentation company Health Note.

Before joining SignalFire in 2019, Yuan spent two years at Blackstone working on the firm's emerging-markets team and then evaluating late-stage and IPO investments. She also cofounded the New York Corporate Chess League, which saw Blackstone players face off with teams from top institutions like Goldman, JPMorgan, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Jelena Zec, Citi Ventures

In her three years with Citi Ventures, Zec has executed on nearly a dozen investments — more deals than some investors hope to make in twice the time. This year, she led Citi's investments in Wealth.com, an estate-planning company; Finix, a payment processor taking on Stripe; and Norm AI, a company working to automate regulatory compliance.

Zec has spent her career in venture capital and growth investing and now acts as a critical bridge between founders of fintech and wealth companies and large financial institutions that are target customers. Her efforts help startups win enterprise business and ensure Citi has access to startups whose partnerships keep the bank competitive.

Emily Zhao, Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce Ventures has committed $1 billion to invest in new applications for artificial intelligence, and it's counting on Zhao to surface the best and brightest teams for investment. Since she joined the firm in 2022, Zhao, a principal, has played a pivotal role in leading some of its biggest investments, including Anthropic, Hugging Face, RunwayML, Protect AI, and Cohere.

More recently, Zhao sourced and led the latest round in Together AI, a startup that allows businesses to train and deploy their own large language models or an open-source model, and one of the largest investments Salesforce Ventures has made in the genAI category to date.

Before Salesforce Ventures, Zhao started her investment career as an associate in the private equity group at Blackstone, where she focused on corporate buyouts. Her passion for finding and backing exceptional founders led her to switch to earlier-stage investing.

Ivan Zhou, Accel

Zhou's arrival at Accel in March felt more like a homecoming than a fresh start. Before he became an investor, Zhou founded and led a social gaming company, Mayhem, that raised money from Accel. In 2021, Niantic, the maker of "Pokémon Go," acquired his startup for an unknown sum and put Zhou in charge of product for its game platform. He built out new social and community features and, on the side, advised early-stage founders in Accel's portfolio.

This past spring, Zhou led Accel's Series A investment in Decagon, a buzzy startup developing virtual agents for customer support. He chased down the team before his official start date with Accel, and the term sheet was signed during his first week on the job.

• Modern factories, supply chains and Amazon have turned 'stuff' into a commodity. 
• The same inevitable supply-and-demand dynamic could wash over us again with generative AI.
• The ultimate outcome may be a new limited-edition luxury item: Humans. 

"Live experiences are the new luxury good," Kevin Hartz said in 2013 when Eventbrite, the ticketing startup he cofounded, got a big new funding round.

By that point, modern factories, supply chains, and Amazon had boiled down "stuff" to a commodity. You can now buy an overwhelming variety of tennis shoes, or spatulas, or sweatpants online. This abundance has taken much of the satisfaction away from purchasing physical things. This is why experiences, which by definition are finite, became more valuable.

There are only a few opportunities to see Taylor Swift on stage, versus the availability to purchase more than 20,000 kinds of tennis shoes on Amazon. So the price of Eras tickets soar, and shoes are cheap.

The same inevitable supply-and-demand dynamic is about to wash over us again with large language models and generative AI.

The ultimate outcome could be a new limited-edition luxury item: Humans. 

Unlimited content vs 'finite resources'

AI models can now automatically generate text, software code, medical diagnoses, images, voices, music, video, and lots more. The barriers to using this technology are falling away quickly. Anyone can fire up ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E and other tools to produce an almost unlimited quantity of content.

This should be a boon to society. Many tasks will be completed more efficiently, making products and services more affordable and accessible, as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently explained.

There will be a reaction though: In a world of machine-generated abundance, human-centered services and experiences will become increasingly rare, valuable, and therefore desirable.

"The world's information is being turned into 1s and 0s and all this is being commoditized," Hartz told BI. "What can't be commoditized is finite resources like real estate, travel, seeing the sunset on Mediterranean, or surfing in Fiji. These are the luxury goods of the power elite."

Cooks, tutors, and robo-advisors

The more that AI automates restaurants, the more we'll want personal chefs such as John Barone, who cooks five days a week in the home of a wealthy Silicon Valley couple.

As AI tutor bots proliferate in education, the richest will pay for more exclusive access to the best human tutors for their kids.

The more robo-advisors handle our money, the stronger the urge of the wealthy to recruit savvy human experts to manage their family offices.

A new flood of automated emails

Email marketing is a simple example that some technologists are already worried about.

Generative AI tools are making it much quicker and easier to write marketing copy. The end result will be a flood of new emails that will overwhelm recipients and make them even less likely to open the messages.

"And our own machines will read those AI automated sales emails," Hartz quipped.

So, either your marketing email won't reach the humans you're trying to engage, or another AI bot will open it and you'll never be quite sure who read the message. A hand-typed email from a real human will be, relatively speaking, a rare and beautiful thing (complete with typos).

AI tutors versus small classrooms

AI models are beginning to revolutionize education, according to Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy. His organization has been working with OpenAI models to coach students in powerful new ways and help teachers develop class plans.

The gold standard throughout history has always been to have a personal tutor, and AI models can help personalize the education experience to bring some of this curated approach to more students, he explained during a No Priors podcast earlier this year.

"We don't have the resources to give everyone a tutor," he said during the podcast. "A generative AI tutor supporting students. That's going to be mainstream in 3 to 5 years," he added.

Pricey schools and a personal carpenter

And yet, Silicon Valley's top private schools, where many tech execs send their kids, are all about getting access to human teachers in small group settings. 

Castillja in Palo Alto highlights a student to faculty ratio of 7 to 1. Nueva, a Silicon Valley school for gifted kids, promises a similar ratio. The Menlo School in Menlo Park says it has a student-teacher ratio of 10 to 1 in the upper school.

These institutions cost $58,000 to $60,000 a year and I don't see any drop-off in demand among the tech elite. They're still jostling to get their kids into these bespoke, human-centered learning environments.

One persistent, apocryphal Silicon Valley story illustrates this point. On weekends, one tech billionaire has been known to hire a personal carpenter to hand-make wooden toys for their kids build and play with.

Who manages the money?

What about when it comes to managing fortunes amassed by successful tech entrepreneurs? The wealthiest rely on talented financial advisors who are hired directly to oversee this money in family offices.

Bill Gates has his own private investment firm, Cascade, which has been run by money manager Michael Larson since 1994. Elon Musk's family office, Excession, has been run by a former Morgan Stanley banker called Jared Birchall for years.

Using AI for trading has been tough so far. AI models are trained on masses of data from the past. When new situations arise, they struggle to adapt quickly enough.

Even quantitative hedge fund firms, which use machine learning and other automated techniques, rely on humans. Two Sigma, a famous quant firm, is for the first time exploring ways to add traders who rely on their human judgment to make money, Bloomberg reported recently.

"The major challenge with using things like reinforcement learning for trading is that it's a non-stationary environment," AI researcher Noam Brown said on the No Priors podcast in April. He's worked on algorithmic trading strategies in the past and was a researcher at Meta before recently joining OpenAI.

"So you can have all this historical data but it's not a stationary system," he explained, referring to how markets respond swiftly to world events and other developments.

Part of the problem relates to what he calls sample efficiency. Humans are good at learning quickly from a small amount of data, while AI models need mountains of information to train on.

"Humans are very good at adapting to novel situations," he added. "And you run into these novel situations pretty frequently in financial markets."

Social media bots vs. martial arts

AI is making social media increasingly machine-driven, too. Soon, human content creators will be vying for attention with content generated by AI models.

Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled more than 25 new AI assistants with different personalities that use celebrities' images. Users will be able to interact with these bots on Meta's platforms in the future.

In a recent podcast, he described this new supply-and-demand situation well, saying human creators can't keep up with demand from followers.

"There are both people who out there who would benefit from being able to talk to an AI version of you," Zuckerberg explained. "You and other creators would benefit from being able to keep your community engaged."

So Meta will make an AI version of celebrities that can post constantly. Again, this will be infinite. And actually interacting with the real human celebrity will become more rare and valuable.

Meanwhile, when Zuckerberg is relaxing outside of work, he spends some of that time pursuing a very human pastime: Rolling around with other humans in martial arts contests.

Medical models and human doctors

AI models, such as Google DeepMind's Med-PaLM 2, are becoming incredibly good at answering medical questions and analyzing x-rays and other health data. But when wealthy parents have really sick children, they will still seek out the smartest doctors in the relevant fields of medicine.

You can see this in Silicon Valley's embrace of medical concierge services that provide special access to doctors and other human health specialists.

One Medical succeeded by offering better access to human doctors, and Amazon ended up buying it for almost $4 billion.

"We're inspired by their human-centered, technology-forward approach," an Amazon executive said when the deal was announced.

'Utility, value and signaling'

Hartz, a venture capitalist who now chairs Eventbrite's board, says successful technologists will continue to spend heavily on human experiences. But he says this depends on the activity and the motivations behind different actions.

He breaks this into "utility, value and signaling."

Many standard, common situations can be handled by software bots or even physical machines. Repetitive tasks at work and some educational functions are examples of these utility-type solutions.

In other situations, users will get more value from having machines handle the work, so humans can focus on more valuable tasks. If you're a well-paid machine-learning engineer, it will be better to have a robot clean your house so you can focus more on your job, he explained.

And then there will still many situations where humans will want to enjoy their success and signal the fruits of their achievements. And these activities will increasingly focus on finite human resources and experiences, Hartz said.

"You can't put on headset and pretend to be in Fiji," he added.

• It's still a good time to embrace the AI revolution, according to VC firm Insight Partners.
• A recent Insight survey showed that 72% of its portfolio companies are using AI in their workflows.
• The firm advised founders to take a "crawl, walk, run" approach to automating parts of their business.

Insight Partners, one of the largest and most active venture capital and private equity firms of the last decade, is advising founders that artificial intelligence is here to stay.

In a two-page memo shared with Business Insider, Insight issued a forecast that, while somewhat expected, carries weight for the industry's future: "AI was the buzzword of 2024 and isn't going anywhere in the next year."

A recent survey by Insight showed that 72% of its portfolio companies are using AI, with 36% of them allocating new budgets specifically for these initiatives. Its portfolio includes Wiz, the Israeli cybersecurity firm that declined a $23 billion sale to Alphabet over the summer, and Weights & Biases, a machine-learning operations company used by OpenAI for tracking and comparing its experiments.

Insight said automation has the potential to boost productivity and simplify tasks across functions, but acknowledged that founders might feel overwhelmed when trying to integrate these new technologies into their workflows. The firm advised a stepped approach.

"As AI assistants and GenAI continue evolving, founders should take a 'crawl, walk, run' approach — starting with simpler automated tasks and gradually incorporating more advanced workflows," said the memo. "Embracing a 'human-in-the-loop' framework, which combines AI with human oversight, will be essential as these systems are still maturing."

While automation plays a vital role across business functions, Insight highlighted three areas for early-stage companies to focus on: knowledge management, content generation, and customer insights. For developers, coding assistants can speed up code generation and reviews, enabling quicker market entry and a broader range of products. In marketing, automated copy and content testing can enhance engagement, while AI-powered tools in customer support can accelerate response times and improve access to the company's knowledge base.

Insight also identified one area where human connection can't be beat. It encouraged founders of growth-stage companies to lean into events — from intimate gatherings with potential buyers to larger industry events — as a means of connecting with customers and scaling demand. This will help companies "stand out in a world increasingly flooded with digital, AI-powered outreach," the memo said.

Read the letter Insight shared with execs.

All,

Loyal Field Notes readers, as 2025 approaches, we wanted to share some insights on high-impact strategies for scaling your company effectively in the coming year. Our Insight Onsite team, made up of 130+ professionals with deep operational expertise, is here to support your growth journey and help you capitalize on opportunities across AI, go-to-market (GTM) strategies, talent, and beyond. We hope you find the following helpful and as always, reach out to your Portfolio Manager or Onsite contact if you have any questions.

The shift to AI is imminent and leads to advanced scaling and sophistication among entrepreneurs

AI was the buzzword of 2024 and isn't going anywhere in the next year. AI has the potential to drive the next wave of innovation, offering growth opportunities. For early-stage companies looking to scale with AI in 2025, the focus should be on high-impact applications that drive efficiency and empower teams. Key areas for immediate gains include developer productivity, quality assurance/testing, and marketing content creation.

Automation can simplify repetitive tasks across functions: for developers, it means faster code generation and reviews; for marketing, automated copy and content testing enhance engagement strategies; and for customer support, AI-powered tools streamline response times and improve knowledge management.

Talent acquisition and sales also benefit from AI, with tools like "Copilot" that assist in candidate research, onboarding, and customer relationship management—enhancing personalization, productivity, and scalability.

Tracking progress and refining AI strategies over time enables companies to scale efficiently, positioning them for sustainable growth and a competitive edge in the market.

Focus on leveraging emerging AI technologies

The idea of incorporating generative AI (GenAI) into companies can be daunting but it also has the potential to impact every function of a business. In a recent portfolio company survey, we found that 72% of portfolio companies are using Artificial Intelligence, with 36% of those companies creating a net new budget for those initiatives.

To scale effectively with AI in 2025, early-stage companies should prioritize practical GenAI use cases that can yield high impact in areas like knowledge management, content generation, and customer insights. GenAI can enable efficient product development by automating tasks such as coding, design and rapid prototyping, leading to faster market entry and broader product variety.

In market research, GenAI supports data-driven decisions by analyzing unstructured data sets, including customer interviews and competitor reviews, to reveal actionable insights. Additionally, for go-to-market (GTM) efforts, AI can streamline lead scoring, personalize customer engagement, and optimize sales campaigns, making the process scalable and significantly enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

AI-driven automation presents a huge opportunity to boost productivity and streamline operations. As AI assistants and GenAI continue evolving, founders should adopt a "crawl, walk, run" approach—starting with simpler automated tasks and gradually incorporating more advanced workflows. Embracing a "human-in-the-loop" framework, which combines AI with human oversight, will be essential as these systems are still maturing.

To differentiate themselves, founders should focus on creating unique, data-driven workflows that add clear value and improve user experience, setting their businesses up for sustainable growth in an AI-enhanced market. We created a blog post exploring this topic earlier this spring.

Scale your GTM engine on strong foundations and personalized engagement

For early-stage founders, especially B2B SaaS companies, aiming to scale effectively in 2025, ensuring GTM strategy and engine works before you scale is critical. Once you have Product Market Fit (PMF) it's critical to continue to validate that your product creates real, differentiated value for your buyers (and that your messaging effectively communicates this).

It's not just about having a great product with cutting-edge features. Having a customer-centric mindset is key; products that solve a pressing problem, resonate authentically, and are easy to use will drive organic word-of-mouth and advocacy, which are priceless (and cost-effective) assets for growth. Add in high retention rates from strong PMF and effective onboarding and you've got the foundation for efficient, sustainable scaling.

For growth stage companies and beyond, it's key to scale demand on top of this foundation by leaning back into events and in person connection. Look to personal, high-impact engagements to stand out in a world increasingly flooded with digital, AI-powered outreach. Companies can build meaningful connections and gain firsthand insights into their audience needs through hosting intimate gatherings with target buyers or attending larger industry events.

AI-powered outreach can't be ignored though – just don't expect AI to do it all for you. It's imperative to first find a battle-tested approach that works, and then augment it with AI to help scale personalized outreach efficiently.

Know and understand your brand to hire key talent

In 2025, early-stage founders need to approach talent acquisition with a compelling and cohesive narrative that highlights the unique value and culture of their company. Given the competitive landscape, your company's story should resonate through every touchpoint, especially the company website and the CEO's personal brand.

Candidates are increasingly thorough, relying not only on public content but also on personal reference checks to understand a company's values and trajectory. A well-defined, authentic narrative that reflects both the mission and culture of the company can attract high-caliber talent by demonstrating transparency, stability, and alignment with employee priorities.

Managing relationships effectively with candidates—even those not selected immediately—will be equally essential. With top talent in high demand, it's important to view every interaction as part of an ongoing relationship; a candidate who may not be the right fit today could become an ideal match as the company evolves. Keeping doors open with a gracious and professional approach to rejections can foster goodwill, making it easier to reconnect with talented individuals down the line.

By cultivating a respectful and thoughtful hiring process, founders can build a network of potential future hires who feel positively about the brand, regardless of the immediate outcome.

• PyannoteAI is in talks to raise $10 million in initial funding, sources told Business Insider.
• The startup's AI platform detects and identifies speakers in audio transcriptions.
• Voice AI is gaining traction, with startups like ElevenLabs in talks to raise significant funding.

A French startup developing voice intelligence models is in talks to raise around $10 million in initial funding, Business Insider has learned from two people with knowledge of the deal.

PyannoteAI, which launched in 2024, has developed a model to automatically detect and identify speakers in audio transcriptions. The concept, known as "speaker diarization," aims to enhance audio transcriptions so that they can be better deployed in industries such as customer service and sales.

The startup is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of around $40 million, the two sources said.

Details of the latest funding round are not yet finalized, and the figures involved are subject to change.

Pyannote's cofounder and CEO, Vincent Molina, confirmed to BI that the company is "in the process of fundraising" but said he could not provide further details.

According to its website, the startup's platform is based on research conducted by Hervé Bredin, its other cofounder. Bredin has a research background in speaker diarization and deep learning for audio, speech, and natural language processing.

France has established itself as a hub for AI development since 2022, with buzzy upstarts such as Mistral and H raking in hefty early-stage funding just weeks after their launch. According to Dealroom, French startups that bill themselves to be in the generative AI space have raised over $2.29 billion this year, surpassing any European country.

AI tools for generating voices have also gained traction this year. Voice-cloning startup ElevenLabs is looking to raise funding at a $3 billion valuation, Business Insider first reported. This year, OpenAI released Voice Mode, a tool that allows users to have spoken conversations with ChatGPT.

• Trump's proposed tariffs could raise costs for hardware startups making physical goods.
• Startups fear that the potential tariff hikes could make profit goals harder to reach.
• Investors warn that this could lead large numbers of founders to throw in the towel.

The potential for increased tariffs in Donald Trump's second term is making hardware startups nervous and could push more founders in this tough sector to throw in the towel.

While large retailers have begun to rejigger their supply chains to avoid the possible tariff hikes on Chinese goods, hardware startups have less room for maneuver, according to conversations with a dozen tech founders and investors.

Trump's suggested tariffs come after four-and-a-half tough years for the hardware industry. The pandemic threw a wrench in the global supply chain. Investors pulled back from hardware as they coalesced around shiny new AI software tools.

"Hardware companies have been through the wringer," said Nikhil Basu Trivedi, a general partner at early-stage investment firm Footwork.

Hardware startups rely on a host of manufacturers that are mostly based in China. The typical process works something like this: A US-based startup with a few talented engineers designs a gadget, such as a wearable device. But they don't make this product. Instead, they send the design out to Asia and have another company there make prototypes and, if all goes well, mass-produce the item.

That gets shipped back to the US for sale. This is where Trump's proposed tariffs would likely kick in. When China-based manufacturers ship the final products back, the hardware startups may get hit with levees of up to 60 percent on goods from China, according to Trump's statements during his campaign.

Jared Friedman, a group partner at Y Combinator, said hardware startups could face a major hurdle because critical components for electronics are primarily produced in Asia and must be transported globally. "This isn't simple to fix because it's not a matter of replacing one supplier," Friedman said, "it's an entire ecosystem."

Importal, a logistics company that helps businesses stay compliant with customs law, told Business Insider that retail brands are asking the company to estimate the profit margins of new products under Trump's proposed tariffs before they even reach the procurement stage. "Anxiety is probably eight out of 10 right now," said Importal cofounder Graham Anderson, a former employee at Flexport. "I'm getting emails that are basically like, what can we do?"

The impact on startups: 'We're done here'

In the aftermath of Trump's election win, euphoria is sweeping through the business world. Famed investor Marc Andreessen has likened Trump's victory to a "boot off the throat," while Elon Musk, as Trump's new efficiency czar, has vowed to slash excess regulation.

Excitement is tempered for those working in hardware or selling consumer goods. Tariffs create a gnarly paradox for small companies: While intended to boost domestic production, they can result in higher prices and softer customer demand. Startups will absorb what costs they can, but many will see their profit margins squeezed.

Bradley Tusk, a political strategist turned venture capitalist, highlighted how the pressure from tariffs could spell disaster for a certain company.

"A small startup definitely would be worse positioned to absorb the cost than big tech, but if they're selling something truly unique in the marketplace, it may not matter," said Tusk. He explained, "A truly unique product can handle the price increase. Others cannot."

The worst-case scenario is that tariffs unleash a wave of capitulation in the next few years, causing an unusually large number of hardware and consumer goods startups to shut down.

"You could certainly see — I don't want to call it an extinction event," said Santosh Sankar, a managing partner of Dynamo Ventures, a supply chain and mobility investor. "It's hard to foresee that. But there'll certainly be a classic company that either cannot make it or maybe even chooses to say, 'Hey, we're just kind of done here'" and winds down before the money runs out.

Supply-chain gymnastics

Large companies can influence tariff policies by lobbying the government or seeking exclusions. During Trump's first presidency, Tim Cook helped persuade the White House to skip tariffs on most Apple products. Cook famously showed his thanks by sending Trump a Mac Pro.

The average startup lacks the leverage, not to mention the financial firepower, that Big Tech has to influence policy, said Alan Deardorff, an economist at the University of Michigan.

"Trump has said he'll place 10% or 20% tariffs on all imports from everywhere, and certainly that would not by itself target or avoid startups," Deardorff said in an email. "In practice, he'll probably make many exceptions in response to deals he will make with those who will be affected, but presumably, startups will not be big enough to do that."

The tech giants have an additional advantage: the budget to support supply chain gymnastics.

Startups are in a tight spot when shifting operations out of tariff-laden countries. They often go through costly processes of ordering samples and refining prototypes before committing to bulk orders, which puts a financial strain on a company that may not have any revenue. Moreover, startups may find themselves shackled to specific suppliers that produce components crucial for their products.

Spencer Penn, who helped develop the Model 3's bill of materials at Tesla, recalled how hard it was to persuade suppliers to make and sell parts to the automaker back in 2016. At the time, Tesla was delivering thousands of vehicles a week — a volume that, while substantial, wasn't convincing enough for suppliers to fully commit. Suppliers often prefer working with buyers who require large volumes because it can lead to more stable, long-term business relationships and higher efficiency.

Now, Penn is working to rein in the chaos of procurement. His startup, LightSource, offers software to help enterprises make better sourcing decisions and reduce import costs.

Since Trump's election win, Penn noted that about half of LightSource's clients — who are mostly automotive, consumer electronics, and chemical companies — have brought up concerns about tariffs or trade wars in conversations with him or his team. Some are in talks to go on a "purchasing spree" to stock up on inventory before potential new tariffs take effect.

Chris Van Dyke's startup, Overview, sells industrial cameras that it buys from a Taiwanese supplier and spiffs up with software that can help identify defects on the assembly line. It has cameras installed in over a hundred facilities, making everything from car parts to sliced cheese.

He said he's worried about the potential for Trump tariffs to spark a recession. If fewer people buy cars, for instance, Overview may struggle to sell more to domestic auto-part manufacturers. The startup's next step is to diversify where it sells and reach new customers in Europe and Asia.

On tariffs, Van Dyke said, "The sentiment is good, the upside is good, but I don't feel comfortable just banking on the upside."

• ElevenLabs is raising new funding, boosting its valuation to over $3 billion, according to multiple sources.
• The startup offers tools for creating voice agents that mimic the user's own voice.
• ElevenLabs is well-funded, but OpenAI's secretive voice project could pose a major threat.

ElevenLabs, a startup that can recreate a person's voice from a recording, is close to raising a new round of funding this year that would push its valuation to over $3 billion, Business Insider has learned from two people with knowledge of the deal.

This time, a year ago, the voice-cloning startup was worth $100 million. The startup is aiming to raise $200 million in the round, according to one source.

The potential round is being led by the wealth-management juggernaut Iconiq Capital, both people said, and included participation from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, one of the people said.

Details of the latest funding round are not yet finalized, and the figures involved are subject to change.

The story of ElevenLabs began with founders Piotr Dąbkowski and Mati Staniszewski's desire to improve voice-dubbing in movies. Their idea turned into an advanced system for turning text into speech that can now create original dialogue bearing a striking resemblance to the user's own voice. The tool only needs minutes of audio of someone speaking to clone their voice.

The company, which sells mostly to publishers, content creators, and media and entertainment companies, has reached $90 million in annual recurring revenue, according to the two people familiar with the new funding. It's pacing to hit $100 million in annual revenue by year's end.

That kind of growth had investors flinging term sheets at the two-year-old company, the people familiar with the deal said. The company has been increasing its targeted round size and valuation during the process of raising funding, according to these sources.

Funding for voice technology companies has picked up even as some of the shine comes off the digital intelligence category as a whole. ElevenLabs competes with Vapi, a voice-based developer tool with $2 million in seed money from Kleiner Perkins and Abstract Ventures, and companies like Thoughtly and Retell that are developing voice agents for call centers.

ElevenLabs has gathered more money than any of them, though the real competition may come from one of the world's most valuable startups. In March, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT and Dall-E, shared details about a pilot program that will allow a closed group of companies to create a synthetic voice based on a real person's speech.

Business Insider emailed ElevenLab's co-founders on Wednesday morning and did not receive a response. Representatives Iconiq Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.