Jaden Schaefer

Welcome to the podcast.

I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer.

Today, I want to talk about what investors are doing in 2026 when it comes to investing in AI startups.

And I think it's interesting because right now, investors are basically telling you what they aren't looking for anymore in AI SaaS companies.

It has shifted a lot, which is interesting for me being someone who has my own SaaS company, AIbox.ai, which I'm sure you've heard me talk about before, because we recently did an entire redesign of the platform where you get access to over

50 of the top AI models in one place for $8.99 a month.

But I think this is broadly speaking, pretty interesting and important for the overall AI industry, because what investors are looking for here, number one means this is what people are building.

But this is also what we're likely to see more of when it comes to updates inside of the AI industry as a whole.

So this is what we're going to jump into on the podcast today.

What I think is interesting is investors have poured billions of dollars into AI for the last few years.

This isn't a trend that is slowing down.

And I think all of this technology really has played a huge role in Silicon Valley's basically their priorities and a lot of what comes out of the global tech industry.

I think even in a market right now that is obviously very obsessed with AI.

I mean, if you if you look at every basically every single company that is raising money now is no longer just a SaaS.

It's like an AI company.

And so I think while every company has kind of added AI to their sales, like their pitch deck, basically for VCs, I think it's becoming a lot more selective on who's actually getting money, right?

You can't just put AI on your pitch deck and get money.

So according to one of the first interviews or kind of data points I got on what VCs are looking at as far as investing in AI companies today that maybe they weren't in the past is from Aaron Holiday.

He's a managing partner at 645 Ventures.

And by the way, TechCrunch did a whole rundown where they interviewed a bunch of different people.