Harry Stebbings × Rory

SpaceX’s all-stock Cursor takeover, completed within a week and carrying a breakup fee, highlights AI M&A’s currency and clearance advantages while testing premium pricing against forward revenue.Stripe’s OpenRouter bet monetizes routing complexity but faces model drift, while Workday’s take-private underscores system-of-record durability without guaranteed upsell; AI-budget ceilings and agentic roadmaps remain key risks.

Steve McLaughlin

Fintech remains a single-digit percentage of financial services, growing 20-30% versus banks’ 3-5%, as Fiserv, FIS, and PayPal face AI-native challengers.FT Partners’ Lynk sale—$550M versus $150M bids after only 15% growth—and its $50M Revolut bet illustrate how diligence, conviction capital, and incentives can capture value, while no-moat AI applications remain exposed to competition.

David Senra × Micky Malka

Malka’s “token factory” thesis puts identity, value, and intelligence at the center of machine-readable information, while money remains largely outside AI in year four or five.Founder-led platforms including Stripe, Robinhood, Nubank, and Revolut could drive agentic finance, with OnePay’s Walmart joint venture testing Ribbit’s branchless-bank playbook and prediction markets’ rails worth monitoring.

Koji × 吴恺

Airwallex以13亿美元ARR、90%增速和约七成毛利支撑110亿美元估值，并押注AI把十类金融SaaS整合为一个agent入口。从20多万客户到100万、单客年贡献1万美元是千亿路线图，但Stripe等潜在对手与流量和数据博弈仍待验证。

Patrick O'Shaughnessy × John Kim

John Kim frames fundraising as a trust problem: desire minus fear drives action, while returns alone miss the motivations of most LPs and committees rarely make contrarian bets.His operating rules are to anchor scale to the first close, simplify the story, choose two of size, speed and terms, and build pipeline through conversion and bite size without sacrificing the differentiation that created the franchise.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

After eight months across 20-plus sectors, Santos says Inversion’s crypto-embedding thesis failed to clear the return hurdle, shifting focus to quality, cash-flowing businesses.On-chain B2B borrowing costs 8–12%, while crypto FX quotes sit 20–50 basis points above mid-market; Robinhood Chain’s more than $500 million in Uniswap volume and roughly 150,000 new active wallets show verticalization, though P&L value remains disputed.

刘旌 × 红杉公元

XBench把评测从“聪明”推向经济价值，红杉X则在公司成立前机构化Sam Altman式的战略、技术与组织功能。一年约5家独角兽的市场中，红杉X过去三年每年完成约1家，目标是2家、将creation占比由约20%推至40%，其机会成本与长期return仍待验证。

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Crypto venture is splitting into a weak early-stage market and improving later-stage payments, stablecoin, tokenized-asset and M&A activity.Stablecoin transfer volume remains distorted by bots, but adjusted metrics, card swipes and about 30 public-company implementations offer stronger adoption evidence.Kalshi’s reported $40B raise remains unconfirmed as fee compression looms, while institutional clearing and block trades could expand prediction markets.

Harry Stebbings × Paul Erlanger

FOMO raised a $75M Series B at a $550M post-money valuation from Index and USV, with founders anchoring the price before receiving a term sheet.Its 17-person, AI-enabled organization has no meetings, 1:1s, or hierarchy, while founder-grade equity aligns a small group for a decade-long build.Pre-IPO perps and thesis-driven trading could define its global wedge, but SpaceX’s retail performance and prediction-market regulation remain key tests.

Yiwen × Jove × Oliver Søe

OpenAI成立Deployment Company并收购Tomorrow带走150名FDE，Anthropic也与Blackstone等成立合资企业，模型公司正下场做企业部署。FDE按结果而非工时收费，AI coding与skills提升复用和迭代效率，但数据平台、确定性流程及人才供给仍是规模化落地的关键变量。