Delphi Digital

Tommy × Tarun Chitra

Robot Ventures led Nous Research’s $90 million round on Tarun Chitra’s thesis that Hermes can own AI’s user relationship through a packaged harness.Unsolicited forks by Chinese small-robot makers provide product-fit evidence grounded in Nous’s training, inference and context research.Enterprise distribution and token-order-flow rebates offer growth paths, but Tarun says demand is not secured until contracts are signed.

Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington frames AI panic, sovereign debt, geopolitical tension, and institutional decay as overlapping Fourth Turning symptoms, not one clean “doom” event.He argues US labs cannot slow AI development while China may continue racing; Bitcoin could hedge institutional risk and become autonomous AI’s native transaction layer, while founder psychology and capitulation inform bear-market entry.

José Macedo × Rohan Pujara

Pujara avoids consensus-heavy seed categories where inflated prices, copycats, and weak margins destroy early economics, underwriting distinctive founders instead.Valhalla’s $80 million–$100 million fund makes only two to four new investments annually and can concentrate 20%–30% behind a clear fund-returner.K2 Space’s more than $1 billion of signed business and $6.8 billion valuation illustrate the playbook, while the roughly 30-check diversification case remains unresolved.

José × Ian Rountree

Cantos’ edge is deliberate smallness: Fund IV reached $70M, supporting $1.5–4M checks before websites and same-day SAFE execution.Ian favors hard tech, vertical integration and manufacturing scale, with Neros at 1,000 drones weekly and targeting a million annually.The opportunity is cost advantage and defense demand; China’s control of motors, actuators and rare-earth inputs remains a physical-AI risk.

José × Michael Dempsey

Venture momentum is uniquely fragile: without scaled liquidity, dilution and preferred stacks can turn a softening bid into a 100% drawdown rather than 10–20%.Compound’s seed data finds that every valuation bucket above the bottom quartile produces similar top-decile outcomes, while Dempsey sees a 2028–2030 AI window and must rebuild the firm’s edge through higher-order analysis.

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.

José × Andrew Kang

Humanoid robotics may be approaching the pre-ChatGPT phase of AI, with $50,000 robots requiring only 20,000 units for $1B revenue and a projected tens-of-billions industry within two to four years.Robo Strategy (NASDAQ: BOT) seeks to challenge SoftBank through public markets, favoring vertically integrated players with embodiment-specific data; US restrictions on Chinese robots could help, while robotics data businesses face a two-to-five-year durability test.

José × Jordan Nel

Jordan Nel argues venture’s bottom-up opportunity can survive weak venture beta because outlier funds capture multiples from overlooked companies and signal larger funds before they can deploy $30–100M tickets.The investable edge lies in pre-consensus access and GP calibration, but frontier AI is a winner’s market, advantages decay, and first funds need a prior angel record.

Sandy Kory

Sandy Kory’s roughly half-net-worth Palantir bet around March 2009 rested on talent density and mission, despite top-tier VCs viewing the company as government consulting.His founder-first screen prioritizes pre-startup evidence and talent magnetism; BillionToOne’s roughly $400 million revenue run rate, roughly 100% growth and profitability provide evidence of traction, while funded rivals and hiring quality remain key tests.

Ceteris × Jason × Yan × Jose × Kevin

Crypto’s 2026 stock-pickers’ market favors structural flows, revenue, or strong narratives; Venice shows the fundamental case with roughly $60M ARR and weekly additions above $2.5M.Falling VVV issuance and a clean, self-funded structure could support at least $200M of additional ARR, but value transfer is not guaranteed as L1 token accrual breaks down and HYPE expands beyond crypto.