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?

**Rory Driscoll** (0:00)
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 precursor investor.

**Jason Lemkin** (0:16)
Where we have ascribed the odds of a downturn to less than zero. I think OpenAI has existential risk. It is a bet that the best of times lasts at least a decade. 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.

**Rory Driscoll** (0:32)
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.

**Jason Lemkin** (0:41)
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?

**Harry Stebbings** (0:48)
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, this week with Jason Lemkin and Royo Driscoll, we have a lot to cover. We have Anthropic's $10 billion fundraise. 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, harry at 20vc.com. But before we dive into the show today, are you a founder working nonstop to raise your next round? Are you an investor doing all you can for your portfolio companies to help them stand out? Funding and scaling a vision is challenging. Banking should not be. HSBC Innovation Banking caters to tech and healthcare founders all over the world who need a really great banking partner that matches their pace, offering fast onboarding, product packages designed for your business, and capital solutions built for high-growth start-ups and the VCs investing in them. With HSBC Innovation Banking's rapid onboarding, you can get access to your new accounts and facilities quickly, so your team can stay focused on building and scaling what's next. You'll be paired with your own dedicated team of venture ecosystem veterans who have the network and experience to guide companies in your specific sector, at your specific stage. And behind that support is this real strength, HSBC's $3 trillion balance sheet and global network that provides this stability in international reach needed to grow your operation with confidence. To see how HSBC Innovation Banking can support you, whether you're on day one or day a thousand, visit innovationbanking.hsbc to learn more and connect with an innovation banking specialist. That's innovationbanking.hsbc. While HSBC manages your corporate banking needs, Deal helps you build the global team behind it. Founders scale startups faster on Deal. Grow without borders. Deal handles the hard parts of global hiring so you can stay focused on growth. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere and get visas handled fast. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance. Everything your startup needs to scale quickly, all done fast in one place. And that's why 37,000 fast growing companies trust Deal to move really fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com/20vc, that's dealdeel.com/20vc.
Once Deal helps you hire your global team, Framer gets them wowed on the way in. Your marketing website sets the tone for your brand, let's face it. And it's the one touch point every single one of your customers has. So if you're struggling to make small changes and simple updates, you're falling behind. And that's why so many companies, from early stage startups to Fortune 500s, are turning to Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder that works like your team's favorite design tool, and it's used by companies like Perplexity, Miro, Mixpanel to move faster. Designers and marketers can fully own the site with real-time collaboration, a robust CMS built for SEO, and advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing, so you're not just shipping pages, but you're maximizing what works. And when you're ready to ship, changes go live in seconds with one click. Publish without relying on engineering. Plus, Framer is built for scale, with premium hosting, enterprise-grade security, and 99.99% uptime SLAs. Whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site fast. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at framer.com/20vc for 30% off, 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/20vc for 30% off.