Why the most expensive Seed deals are the cheapest | E2299

**Alex Wilhelm** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome back to Twist. Today is Wednesday, June 10th, 2026 And if it's a Wednesday here on Twist, you know that means it's venture capital roundtable time. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Netsuite. The business landscape is very chaotic right now. That's why you need Netsuite by Oracle. Get the free business guide, Demystifying AI at netsuite.com/twist.
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**Tomasz Tunguz** (0:59)
I'm phenomenal. Thanks for having me on the show. It seems like the world is changing every day. Excited to talk about it more.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:03)
Yeah, I feel like if we had done this show a week ago, it would have been literally an entirely different topic list, which I think goes to show how fast things are moving along, which is why I'm glad we have Michael Downing from Castalia Capital. Michael, welcome to the show. Welcome back, I should say.

**Tomasz Tunguz** (1:15)
How are you?

**Michael Downing** (1:16)
Thanks very much, Alex. Thrilled to be here.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:18)
Also, I'm glad you're wearing a suit jacket like Jason makes me. That way, I'm not the only person who looks like the waitstaff. Appreciate it.

**Michael Downing** (1:24)
I got the memo.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:25)
Good. I'm glad I made it to your house. All right. Then we have, once again, we have Paige Doherty from Behind Genius Ventures. Latest fund was 8.9 million fund too, making her one of the rare emerging managers that's really powering through and making it happen even in the era of mega funds. Paige, welcome back.

**Paige Doherty** (1:41)
Thank you, Alex. I'm so happy to be here. I'm excited to dive into the discussion.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:44)
Okay.
Clearly, we are sitting here two days before SpaceX will go public. It's supposed to price at $135 per share. No range, just a straight price. Elon's offering one number, take it or leave it. It's oversubscribed. We also have recently seen confidential IPO filings from both Anthropic and OpenAI, setting us up for about $3.5 trillion worth of liquidity. If you add 1.7 plus 8.56 plus 9.50, whatever it is, adds up to about 3.5 trillion. My question for you Tomasz is pretty simple. Are we seeing three unique companies go out and possibly return money to investors and should not read into that about what it means for other companies that may want to find liquidity? Or is this more an indication that the exit market is finally deicing itself and becoming a bit more amenable to the venture capital cycle?

**Tomasz Tunguz** (2:35)
I think we're going to see broad liquidity.
Reuters announced, I think this morning, that the SpaceX IPO was 2.5, maybe 3 times oversubscribed, which was a stunning number, just considering that some total of those three offerings that I mentioned, SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, if they raised what they intended to would be greater than the sum total of all IPOs dollars raised in the previous decade. So it clearly is just huge demand for exposure to AI and space. So I think that's really telling. And then you're starting to see some other S1s, right? Bending Spoons came out, which is a holding company. They bought AOL, which kind of blew my mind. And that business is doing incredibly well on the back of AI. They're, I think about them as like an AI holding company where they buy legacy businesses and then reinvigorate them with AI native coding practices. And it seems like there's more IPOs coming. So broadly, you know, speaking broadly, it looks like it will be a very good year. 2026 will be an excellent year for liquidity.

**Alex Wilhelm** (3:36)
I mean, I'm here for it. The Bending Spoons IPO, I didn't bake into the docket because it felt almost like, I don't know, Michael, something akin to like a PE roll up, but done under like a startup auspice. It's kind of an odd situation. Did you read that S1?

**Michael Downing** (3:49)
I didn't read the S1, but I'm familiar with the company. I mean, it's a kind of IAC type of model where they've found slightly distressed businesses out there, kind of assembled them, fixed them up, did some kind of fixer-upper work, and now taking it public. I think it's interesting. We'll see how that does in the public markets, but I agree with Tomasz that the liquidity that's about to come into the market is gonna be enormous, and there's a ton of companies lined up, potentially, to try to jump through the window here.