The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Anthropic's $10BN Fundraise: Have They Beaten Cursor Already | a16z's $15BN Fundraise: Is the Middle Dead in VC Today? | How OpenAI Could Go to Zero and ElevenLabs at $11BN: Buy or Not?
15 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
In the early stage, you're taking uncorrelated business risk. And in the late stage, you're taking 100% correlated valuation risk. If the growth is there for one more year, it looks cheap. I would be nervous if I was a $27 billion pre-cursor investor.
Where we have ascribed the odds of a downturn to less than zero.
Chapter 2: What insights do we gain from Anthropic's $10 billion fundraise?
I think OpenAI has existential risk. It is a bet that the best of times lasts at least a decade.
Chapter 3: Has Claude Code surpassed Cursor in the AI space?
It's pretty interesting that Andreessen not only raised the most capital, but on a two by two, I think has the strongest founder brand.
They've won and they've won really well. You can be promiscuous at the A if you have enough late stage stuff to cover it up.
Can you still find a $10 billion gem outside of the boundaries of this system or not? Now, $100 billion doesn't feel like that much, does it? This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings.
Now, this week with Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll, we have a lot to cover. We have Anthropic's $10 billion fundraise.
Chapter 4: What risks does OpenAI face in the current market?
We have... XAI raising an astonishing $20 billion. We have Andreessen Horowitz raising $15 billion, over 20% of the total funds raised by venture firms in 2025. So much to unpack today. Let me know what you think of these shows. I always love to hear your feedback. But before we dive into the show today, are you a founder working nonstop to raise your next round?
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Chapter 5: How significant is Andreessen Horowitz's $15 billion fundraise?
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Chapter 6: What does 'The Middle is Dead' mean in the context of venture capital?
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Chapter 7: What is the future outlook for venture capital?
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We're going to start with two monster rounds. It seems the only thing anyone's talking about right now is Anthropic. Anthropic raising 10 billion at a $350 billion price.
Chapter 8: How will wealth taxes impact the venture capital landscape?
Is this the last round before they go public? How do we feel about the price? Over to you.
Probably yes on the first question. because they've stated they want to, and it feels like they can. And if someone says they want to do something and it feels like, and that thing is doable, then logically it should get done. So yeah, I think it probably would be the last one before the IPO. And you know, how do you pay with the price?
Look, when they raised at 160, I mean, I remember internalizing, we talked about it. And frankly, we talked about it in our partnership. You kind of go big number, wow, that's the second or third largest private cap valuation ever.
And then you look at the market traction and the revenue traction and you go on a revenue multiple basis, it's cheaper than some of the stuff we're doing at 200 and 100 pre. Because this is a company that's gone from... It's easy to remember the numbers for Anthropic because they very kindly did them in round units of 10.
They went from 100 million at the end of 23 run rate to a billion at the end of 24 run rate to allegedly about between 9 and 10 billion at the end of 25. So let's assume those numbers are roughly correct. They 10x-ed two years in a row. I don't know. Next year, let's just say they only, quote, only 3x. So they go to 30 billion.
Now, a rule of thumb is I'm going to go now from ARR and run rate at the end. to gap revenue for the year, a rule of thumb says, take the opening ARR, the closing ARR, and calculate the average. 10 billion, 30 billion, average is 20 billion. That says they do actual gap revenue of 20 billion next year. So it's 17 times NTM revenue. It's a much lower revenue multiple than Palantir.
It's kind of comparable with Cloudflare, for God's sake, in the public markets. So you do that math. If the growth is there for one more year, it looks cheap. It's the old rule. It turns out you really, really can pay up for anything that goes 10x year on year. So that's the bet. And the guys who did it at 170 three months ago are feeling pretty smart now. There are 2x in four months.
Calculate that IRR, Harry. Only raising 10 billion, it's actually a sign that the unit economics are probably healthy.
That's a good point.
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