20VC: Brex Acquired for $5.15BN | a16z Companies are 2/3 AI Revenues | Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket | OpenEvidence Raises at $12BN Valuation | The IPO Market: EquipmentShare, Wealthfront and Ethos Insurance

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:00)
The bad feelings last for a day, the five billion lasts forever.

**Jason Lankin** (0:03)
I worry this is the next final act.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:06)
At some point, NVIDIA ports will be a great buy because every semiconductor cycle for the last 40 years has ended up in a massive downswing. I ain't buying them today. Most of the time, we sit around here waiting, reading and thinking. And I thought, that's a real investor. SaaS is not dead, and now SaaS has an army. I love it.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:27)
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and it's my favorite show of the week. Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lankin, analyzing the biggest news in tech. This week, Anthropix Inference Costs Skyrocket, Brex's $5.15 billion deal with Capital One analyzed, and the $12 billion priced open evidence round. Who wins and who loses in this tech market? All to come in today's episode. 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 startups 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 and 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. A website should help your business grow, not slow it down. If updates to your.com feel harder than they should, Framer is the shortcut you've been looking for. 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.
framer.com/20vcrules and restrictions may apply.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (4:25)
You have now arrived at your destination.

**Harry Stebbings** (4:28)
Boys, it has been a big week of news. Now I was super, super happy when this news came out, because I got tagged on so many being like, can you do an emergency pod? And I was like, well, that is a great sign of product market fit for what we do. And so we're going to start on Brex's acquisition by Capital One, 5.15 billion, 50% cash, 50% shares. Diving right into it, how did we analyze the announcement of this, which did come as quite a surprise to many of us?

**Rory O'Driscoll** (4:56)