Patrick Collison

When I first met Kevin Surace, I immediately understood why his reputation precedes him across Silicon Valley. He’s been building at the frontier of technology for decades and is deeply respected by people across the industry. Kevin was working in AI long before the world caught up to it—pioneering early voice AI technology, building multiple companies, and consistently seeing around corners before the market arrives. He also ‘grew up’ in Silicon Valley with my former co-CEOs, Ben and Marc, from Andreessen Horowitz which made the world feel very small very quickly in the best possible way. 🌎🚀 I was introduced to Kevin by David P Bovenzi at Grand Oaks Capital when I was asked to help bring Token— a company that has spent more than a decade building cryptographic biometric identity assurance technology— into the market in a whole new way… In one conversation I knew I wanted to work with him— and Token, where Kevin is Chairman and CEO. AI has fundamentally changed the identity landscape. Attackers no longer need to “hack in.” They log in—using AI-generated phishing, deepfakes, and automated attacks at global scale and unprecedented speed. AI attacks will continue to be faster and cheaper than anything enterprises and governments have had to defend against before. In Gov and highly regulated industries, identity failure means more than compromised accounts… It’s ransomware attacks on hospitals, critical infrastructure disruption, supply chain shutdowns, financial system compromise, and nation-state intrusion. Identity assurance has become a defining infrastructure challenge of the AI era (Gartner is tracking this emerging category closely). Since joining Token’s mission earlier this year, we’ve relaunched the brand, launched the TokenCore product line, rebuilt the GTM engine, assembled a world-class team, and are bringing a twelve-year innovation into the hands of enterprises, the U.S. government, and allied global organizations who need it most. And I’ve had the privilege of working alongside Kevin every day. In just a few short months I’ve learned an incredible amount from him as a leader, inventor, and operator. As investors we talk about how the biggest breakout companies happen when the technology, the market timing, and the right team all come together at once. That’s what this mission feels like. 🚀 A great read on Kevin’s journey through the early days of AI, finding joy in the process, and lessons on leadership from decades in the trenches: https://lnkd.in/e-iy5iWY Dianne Liu Albert Yanez Khamvong Thammasouk Dan Van Ostrand Paul Wazowicz Christopher DeBaggis Johnny Lam Marcus Yanez Jack Jackson Michael Okland Kortney C. Steve Hunt Ann-Marie Klein FCMA, MBA Ever Wonder The Juno Group Elevate Talent Ventures Torrell F. Elevated Value Partners Monique Shivanandan Robert C.

34

1 Comment

James Baker and I are both on panels this Friday at the London Venture Capital Network's Summit at the Guildhall. James covering the future of Spacetech at 12.10pm and I'll be talking about investing in Defence startups at 1.30pm. I shared my views on Defence investing in our latest newsletter: https://lnkd.in/esXbAcMg

23

1 Comment

How Vivek Sodera Built Two Iconic Companies, from LiveRamp to Superhuman Mail. This week, on "Further, Faster" Vivek talks about combining deep founder-market fit, obsessive customer understanding, and ruthless discipline around product-market fit. https://lnkd.in/eiwAdfFY https://lnkd.in/e8iaQHiC

26

Uber Is Investing $100M to Power Robotaxis Uber is putting $100M+ into building a dedicated autonomous vehicle charging network, starting in the Bay Area, LA, and Dallas. It’s partnering with EVgo Inc. in the U.S. and Ionity in Europe, while expanding robotaxi operations with Waymo and WeRide. This isn’t just about EV charging. It’s about securing the infrastructure layer of autonomy and especially as Tesla Inc. ramps up competition. Autonomy is becoming an infrastructure game. #AutonomousVehicles #Robotaxi #EV #FutureOfMobility

29

4 Comments

🚀 Big congratulations to BQP on raising USD 5mn to scale their quantum-powered simulation engine for aerospace, automotive and other mission-critical sectors. The round saw participation from many renowned global investors, reinforcing confidence in their breakthrough approach. As an o2 Angels Network portfolio company, BQP exemplifies the kind of #deeptech we back — building foundational IP, solving non-trivial computational problems, and developing defensible technology moats. Their quantum simulation platform delivers capabilities classical systems can’t; enabling faster design cycles, higher accuracy, and safer, more efficient outcomes in complex engineering environments. This is not just innovation — it’s infrastructure for the future of aerospace, defense, and energy. 💡 At o2 Angels Network, we back founders solving high-impact, high-risk industrial challenges with technology that protects lives and transforms operations. Our portfolio includes Fabheads Automation, Green Tiger Mobility Pvt. Ltd., Eeki, CultYvate, Skye Air Mobility, NAVARS EDUTECH, Janitri, Velectron Labs Private Limited, Abhiyantrik Solutions, Nexstem, REGRIP "RE-ENGINEERED TYRES", SpaceFields, Unibose Technology Private Limited, BQP, Vgenomics, and many others pushing the boundaries of innovation. Onward and upward! 🌍🔬 #QuantumComputing #DeepTech #Simulation #Aerospace #IndustrialInnovation #IPDriven #TechnicalMoat #VentureCapital #O2Angels #NextGenTech

10

3 Comments

Large scale construction projects involve a myriad of drawings, specfications, and other documents. Primepoint is bringing intelligence to this world, and you can read more in this WSJ article. Excited for them to close this large seed round.

15

An important discussion in venture capital these days is the industry's shift towards consensus investing and its fusion with politics and government at scale. We've been thinking / writing about those shifts for years and now the discussion is heating up. In my essay below (link in first comment) I discuss how consensus capital and the “venture industrial complex” funnel money toward incremental sameness—and why heresy still matters. Some core themes are: • Convergence across culture, tech, and policy reduces variance and outliers. • Big Venture coordinates capital, regulation, and narratives; small funds must adapt. • Alpha hides in scarcity bottlenecks (e.g. trust, provenance, energy), unregulated domains, and ideas that spark controversy / disagreement A shout out to my team members Jonatan H. Luther-Bergquist and Alex Patow and Bob Shapiro for the discussions at our offsite this year; Also Cem Sertoglu who asked the right questions at our AGM. Thanks to our colleagues Mike Maples, Jr, Lawrence Lundy-Bryan , Sinéad O'Sullivan and David Peterson for your recent contributions to the discussion, I quoted all of you (even if I disagree with some of your conclusions :).

40

5 Comments

Model ML continues to ship at lightening speed. Huge new set of capabilities as AI continues to rip through finance (and turbo charge the humans who adopt). Great work Chaz Englander Arnie Englander and team

40

2 Comments

GPUs have gotten faster, and models have gotten larger. But storage is still stuck in the past. Modern AI workloads need instant access to huge datasets. Instead, teams waste time on slow retrieval, idle GPUs, and costly pipelines. Archil is changing this. It delivers object-storage scalability at block-storage speeds. The platform allows for seamless, high-performance access to massive datasets. By eliminating cold starts and accelerating throughput 30X, Archil enables teams to fully utilize their infrastructure and move faster on training, analytics, and AI deployment. Archil’s founder Hunter Leath brings rare technical depth and operating experience from building Amazon EFS and optimizing Netflix’s cloud performance. This is a team building the foundational layer that AI workloads desperately need. I’m thrilled to lead Archil’s seed at Felicis with Nancy Wang and support their mission to reinvent cloud storage for the AI era. https://lnkd.in/gWueXhzz

65

2 Comments

Software needs California. Hardware not so much. The US is a large, diverse place and there are so many great places to build factories. You can start a hardware company in California, but don't plan on scaling it there. https://lnkd.in/gEkHc-BM

24

4 Comments

The old SaaS pricing playbook doesn’t work for AI. Madhavan Ramanujam and I partnered with Emergence Capital and Jake Saper to write a new one—built for where AI is going, not just where it is today. We lay out what state-of-the-art AI pricing looks like now—and what it will look like: ✅ Hybrid pricing (seats + usage) is the current best practice 🎯 Outcome-based models are the future—pricing tied directly to impact 💰 The best AI companies already capture 25–50% of the value they create As autonomy and attribution improve, outcome pricing will go from rare to expected. Founders who move early will win. Full read here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gwp6tDtp

67

3 Comments

Yesterday, two DCVC-backed companies raised about a half billion dollars. In today's funding environment, that's not that exceptional... Together, the two companies just happen to enable gigawatt-scale AI compute, except in the unprecedentedly small space of only about 40 shipping containers, no exotic cooling required. You have to wonder what the US military might do with a gigawatt-equivalent of compute they could fit in a few C5 flights... or a 100MW-compute platform that fits in a single rocket launch... Even that, in DCVC's world, isn't that exceptional. We like to say we help make the impossible and essential, profitable and available. But what is exceptional, and this is a theme with us folks, is that they are each only two of many of our companies delivering robustly on outcomes considered impossible on VC dollars or in reasonable time, at the point when we backed each company from very early on: - a safe, cost-effective, meltdown-proof, truck-portable 1 megawatt nuclear reactor (Radiant, see https://lnkd.in/gF3JAHwS) for American energy dominance - American-made AI semiconductor chips that match or outperform everything else at 100x the energy efficiency, on off-the-shelf models (Mythic, see https://lnkd.in/gWFdvZFT) We were able to make the calls on these, and how they could work together, along with similar calls on all of their brother and sister impossible companies, because of a very deep bench of unified scientific, engineering, operational, and business building experience considered passé by a lot of other folks. It's how we make the exceptional routine.

103

6 Comments

The next frontier of AI isn't just about choosing the right model. It's about building moats through implementation. Across the Emergence Capital portfolio, companies like Bland and Federato are scaling faster by embedding Forward-Deployed Engineers. These engineers bridge the gap between AI and reality, ensuring real results in production. Read more from my colleagues Gordon and Kyle on why FDEs are the key to unlocking AI's full value. https://lnkd.in/gcsRRGX2

29

3 Comments

San Diego-based Manifold (AI Detection and Response platform) has raised $8 million in seed funding; lead backer Costanoa Ventures, along with several institutional investors including Cherry Ventures, Rain Capital, Modern Technical Fund, and angel investors.

4

1 Comment

Trying something new this week - a studio industry roundup with my take on what matters. The studio model is no longer an experiment being run in a handful of places. It is infrastructure being built across geographies, sectors, and institutional types. 5️⃣ stories from the past seven days:  1️⃣ OSS Ventures hit a EUR 40M first close on a EUR 75M follow-on fund -- capital raised specifically to back the 30 companies their studio created since 2019. The "build then fund" lifecycle is maturing. B'More Venture Studio with a similar thesis: studio operations first, then dedicated capital to scale what's working.  2️⃣ Delta40 raised $20M from 54 investors across 13 countries to launch Africa's first integrated venture studio and fund. The LP base is almost entirely DFIs and foundations. Impact capital is discovering the studio model as a deployment vehicle, something I seeing across geographies (conversations with Michael Bob Starr and Damias McDonald this week alone) 3️⃣ Start Holdings launched Start.vc out of NYC and Barcelona after a $200M EV infrastructure exit. Another operator-turned-studio-founder. This is the pattern we see quite often in our work at 9point8 -- experienced operators like Jason Goldsmith who've built and exited deciding the studio model is how they want to build next.  4️⃣ UBC HATCH admitted 10 new deep-tech spinouts for Winter 2026 -- mostly climate tech. University venture builders are quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing segments. Follow Evan Allen and Jaimie Testai to keep track of its rapid evolution.  5️⃣ The INVEST Act is advancing through the Senate. If passed, it expands qualifying VC fund size from $10M to $50M and loosens general solicitation rules for accelerator and university events. For studio-funds -- and for folks in the The Venture Studio Forum community tracking policy -- this could be the most significant capital formation legislation since the JOBS Act. If this roundup format is useful, I'll keep it going. What other noteworthy news hit your desk this week, and what stood out to you?

13

1 Comment

When asked whether "AI is taking up all the oxygen," I generally respond: "Yes. Yes it is." Here's a decent indicator as to why: https://lnkd.in/ga7MCAPa

14

Hexcel Adds Independent Director in Deal With Activist Investor "Hexcel added a new independent director to its board in a move that avoids a potential proxy fight for the aerospace materials company with activist investor Vision One Fund. "As part of an agreement between the two sides, Vision One will withdraw their nominees to the board that were to be voted on at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Vision One will also support Hexcel's board nominees, and agree to certain standstill restrictions and mutual non-disparagement provisions, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. "The new director, former Kaman Chief Executive Officer Neal Keating, was appointed effective Tuesday." Keating's experience in aerospace may make him an ideal director choice. Yet from a bigger picture perspective, I wonder if this settlement is the right move for investors. More and more activist campaigns are settling rather than running the full process of a proxy fight with typically a greater number of directors nominated by the activist. Hopefully, activists are becoming like the public company boards they battle, i.e. more focused on reaching consensus than big results. #governancearbitrage #proxyfights #corporategovernance #activistinvesting #valuecreation https://lnkd.in/gazBUGFp

4

AI is changing what “scale” actually means. In CTech by Calcalist’s 2026 VC Survey, Haim Bachar and Lee Ben-Gal share how we’re seeing the scaling metric shift - from headcount growth to output per person. This isn’t about doing more with less. It’s about building companies differently from day one - and rethinking how success is measured. See the full article below 👇

13