20VC: Dario and Anthropic Declare War on Open-Source | Coinbase Slash AI Spend by 50% | Kalshi's $40BN Valuation and Impending IPO | Bending Spoons: Smartest IPO of 2026 and the Year for SaaS Roll-Ups
episode
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
1h 17m
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did Coinbase slash its AI spending by 50%?
I am getting burnout on struggling CEOs on Twitter sharing performative AI data when they're not AI companies. Like, show me the money.
If you can be the largest tech company on the planet and still not make money, you might have oversized your ambitions a little and it might pay to come back a bit. Software companies in the age of AI are either accelerating or irrelevant.
AI is going to be like the oil situation in the Persian Gulf today.
Paul Warren Buffett is like, it's time for me to die because you people have lost the plot. As we record this, greed will still trump fear, right?
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today it's my favorite show of the week. Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin coming together to discuss the biggest, best news that's happened in the last seven days. This is the only podcast that you need to listen to every week to stay up to date on what matters in tech. But before we dive into the show today, let me tell you about Omni. It's an AI analytics platform, and it solves a problem every scaling company hits.
What warning did Anthropic give about open-source AI?
Your team needs insights, not just data lookups, the stuff that really matters, and it's critical to get it right, like CAC payback protocols. periods and net dollar retention for AI agents to act on your company data. They need your business context, your definitions, your logic, your permissions, and that's what Omni's governed context graph provides. Your data team defines it once, then anyone, your ops lead, your CFO, your PM, can ask a question in English and get an answer in seconds. Perplexity, Mercury, and DBT run on Omni, and 20 VC listeners get a free three-week trial. week, very specific, not a month, but three weeks, go to omni.co forward slash 20VC.
How is Dario escalating the AI war with China?
That's omni.co forward slash 20VC. After Omni helps you find the right customers, checkout helps you close them. Over the past few For 15 years, Guillem Pozaz has led Checkout.com through what he calls the velocity years, a period of hypergrowth with relentless product building.
Should the US consider banning Chinese AI models?
The lesson? High growth is a gift, but it demands ruthless focus. As his mother put it, play the game you're good at. For Checkout.com, that game is digital payments, obsessing over data, chasing basis points, and compounding learnings over time. And that discipline is paying off. 2025, Checkout.com processed over $300 billion in total volume, up 64% year-over-year, and returned to full-year EBITDA profitability. They now support over 1,000 enterprise merchants globally, including 63 that process more than a billion annually, with brands like eBay, Vinted, Amex, ASOS, and Tmoo. Guillaume's message, though, it's pretty clear. They've earned the right to win anywhere. Now, they're investing in innovation across marketplaces, issuing financial experiences and agentic commerce.
If you want payments built for what's next, talk to the team at checkout.com.
What challenges is Microsoft's AI strategy currently facing?
That's checkout.com. While checkout powers the moment money changes hands, invisible powers the people behind the work. Why don't we hear more real AI success stories from big companies? The models are insanely good, but implementation is the problem. It's really, really hard.
What does Kalshi's $40 billion valuation indicate?
There's data all over the place. There's legacy tech and manual workarounds. It's a Ferrari engine in a shopping cart.
Has SpaceX's IPO impacted the AI IPO market?
Meet Invisible. Invisible trains 80% of the top models and then adapts them to the messy reality of your business.
Why might Bending Spoons be the smartest IPO of 2026?
Take the Charlotte Hornets NBA team. Invisible took years of game tape and analog scouting notes to go from uncertainty to a draft pick and summer league championship win in weeks, not seasons. Get the data in order first, and suddenly AI can do almost anything for you in the enterprise. If you want AI that hits the P&L, go to invisibletech.ai forward slash 20VC. You have now arrived at your destination. Boys, it is the holiday edition, baby, coming to you from the British Riviera. I'm looking forward... I always say this is like, you know, the UK's Saint-Tropez, and then people look up Frinton-en-Sea, and they're like, huh, Americans don't get the British sarcasm.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did Coinbase slash its AI spending by 50%?
0:00–0:55
2
What warning did Anthropic give about open-source AI?
0:55–1:35
3
How is Dario escalating the AI war with China?
1:35–1:51
4
Should the US consider banning Chinese AI models?
1:51–2:38
5
What challenges is Microsoft's AI strategy currently facing?
2:38–2:54
6
What does Kalshi's $40 billion valuation indicate?
2:54–3:01
7
Has SpaceX's IPO impacted the AI IPO market?
3:01–3:09
8
Why might Bending Spoons be the smartest IPO of 2026?
3:09–1:17:09
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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