(Bloomberg)-In the calm days preceding Christmas from last year, while most venture capital investors had withdrew for a vacation in Aspen or Jackson Hole, the Lightspeed Venture investment team Partners planned to make an offer on part of the Openai rival, Anthropic.
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The venture capital company approached Anthropic with an offer to lead an investment of several billion dollars, according to a person close to the file. An agreement quickly took shape: a table of $ 2 billion for a valuation of $ 60 billion, the triple of the value of the startup a year earlier. In early January, the agreement was actually concluded.
With 25 billion dollars under management, Lightspeed is part of a rarefied stratum of venture capital companies that wish and capable of supporting the most popular and expensive technological companies. In addition to Anthropic, Lightspeed recently participated in an important financing cycle for the artificial intelligence company Databricks Inc. which valued it at $ 62 billion, as well as an investment in XAI of Elon Musk for a valuation of $ 50 billion.
IA megatransactions have become a must of the leading venture capital regime despite the risks, in particular the fact that companies have not yet proven that they could take advantage of these investments.
“It is poker with high issues,” said Tim Guleri, managing manner of Sierra Ventures, an AI investor.
Over the past three months, XAI, Openai and Anthropic have raised more than $ 20 billion to support their high IT costs. These transactions collectively value the three companies at more than $ 250 billion. In total, AI American startups raised a record amount of $ 97 billion in 2024, according to Pitchbook data.
For venture capital investors, there is increasing pressure-especially on those who have missed the opportunity to support the largest AI companies at lower prices-so that they align with the main Actors before it is too late, investors said. The representatives of Lightspeed and Anthropic refused to comment on this story.
“This shows that you are in the game,” said Peter Werner, co-president of the Cooley venture capital practice group. “What you do not want to be is a venture capital fund that tries to be in the mix, which misses something or that develops a reputation that you are not agile enough to participate in the towers better and hottest. “
Change of venture capital
Lightspeed was founded over 20 years ago in the wake of the bankruptcy of the Internet sector by Barry Eggers, Christopher Schaepe, Peter Nieh and Ravi Mhatre, who led the negotiations on Anthropic. It is best known for its judicious investments in consumer technologies, financial technologies and corporate software, and bet early on companies like Snap Inc., Affir Holdings Inc. and Rubrik Inc. despite its history, the company has not yet become such a known name. Like some of the most famous first level VC actors. With its aggressive bets on AI, the initiates claim that these agreements could sustainably raise its reputation – if they succeed.
Like a large part of the venture capital industry, Lightspeed has reoriented its attention to AI startups, by supporting start-up businesses such as the music company Suno Inc. and the video startup Pika, in addition to ‘more important actors. In December, the company separated from its two main consumer investors and declared that it adjusted its consumer investment strategy to better adapt it to “the AI era”.
In total, Lightspeed has already invested $ 2.2 billion in AI agreements, a figure that does not include its last anthropic investment, according to another person close to the file. Soon, it will have an additional fire power to deploy against companies eager for liquidity. A fundraising that should bring in $ 7 billion is coming to an end, said a source close to the file. A Lightspeed spokesperson refused to comment on fundraising. The Information had previously reported the fundraising efforts.
The anthropic investment of the company is one of the most ambitious to date. And even if the value of $ 60 billion may seem exorbitant, Lightspeed partners hope that the agreement will one day look like a good deal.
“Overall, it seems that the valuations are high because we see a lot of activity and many transactions,” said Guru Chahal, partner of Lightspeed, at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference last year. “When you look back, each round, at the time, seemed incredibly expensive and, retrospectively, was incredibly cheap.”
The major AI agreements remain a source of debate in Silicon Valley. While the largest companies seem to be the most transformative, some venture capital investors say that participation in enormous fundraising will not report the returns that technological investors need to satisfy their donors. These investors target small AI applications and services, rather than giants like Anthropic and Openai, engaged in the development of the expensive basic elements of the industry.
The recent proliferation of megatransactions in matters of AI also testifies to a broader change in terms of venture capital: a break with the traditional start-up investment strategy, in which companies acquire greater participations in more valuations weak. Today, venture capital companies pay an important premium and bet that a small number of IA companies could ultimately be worth more than $ 1,000 billion.
The growing size of venture capital funds has also forced companies to issue larger checks, said Weber. Rather than targeting multiple massifs on their investments, companies “do not necessarily try to find circuits, they try to find ways to double their money,” he said.
“Today there is only a limited number of emblematic and generational companies in pre-production on the stock market,” said Ajay Vashee, general partner of IVP. “If your mandate is to invest at this stage, you must then find opportunities to make your capital grow.”
Fragile start
The race to find these opportunities has many risks, including regulatory uncertainty, fierce competition and the infrastructure costs for the main AI developers.
Investors fear that their bets on AI will not be up to par, leaving the companies on display if the bubble is bursting. The sector has already seen businesses that are worth several billion dollars.
For example, Lightspeed co -managed a large -scale investment in Stability AI, the developer of the stable dissemination image generator, estimated at $ 1 billion in 2022. Shortly after, several key developers resigned from the company in a context of increasing tensions with the CEO of Mercurial. Emad Mostaque officer, prosecution and financial difficulties. Mostaque resigned from the company in early 2024. The company has since appointed a new CEO and lifted additional capital, Bloomberg reported.
Lightspeed is also a major investor in Mistral, the open source company based in Paris, now in competition with a multitude of better funded linguistic models.
Of course, Lightspeed and other large venture capital companies hope that placing several bets on competing companies will produce at least a large winner in terms of AI. Otherwise, the consequences could be significant.
“You cannot lose too many games of this poker with high issues,” said Gurleri de Sierra Ventures. “This is the risk of strategy.”
