One among Sequoia’s most outstanding buyers, managing accomplice Roelof Botha, sees indicators of one other greed cycle brewing in enterprise capital, one the place the least subtle buyers will seemingly get most harm.
He posted a warning on X on Thursday, writing, “We stay destined to repeat the errors of the previous! SPVs are making a come-back, the place the lead investor speaks for lower than 10% of the capital, but eagerly traces up the newest set of vacationer chumps who suppose the story will finish in another way this time. It’s solely been 3 years.” (He punctuated the submit with an exploding-head emoji.)
That final cycle ended badly. In 2022, the overheated VC market of 2021 crashed. The fallout remains to be ongoing, with 2025 anticipated to be one other brutal 12 months of failed startups.
Botha is particularly warning about particular goal autos (SPVs) — a construction that enables a startup’s investor to promote entry to a piece of their shares to others. However the brand new buyers usually are not really shopping for shares within the startup; they’re shopping for shares of the SPV, usually at tremendously inflated costs. Which means the startup’s valuation must soar only for a number of the SPV share house owners to interrupt even.
SPVs have gotten particularly widespread in AI investing, the place some startups are elevating astronomical sums. A search of SEC filings finds at least 9 SPVs tied to Anthropic since 2024 alone. The corporate is reportedly in talks to boost one other $3.5 billion.
Determine AI’s try to boost $1.5 billion can also be reportedly stuffed with SPVs, per the Info. Word that neither firm is in Sequoia’s portfolio.
The development isn’t restricted to only a few corporations. Almost each main multi-billion AI firm has buyers providing SPVs. And if a big-name VC agency agency — say, Sequoia’s archrival Andreessen Horowitz — is main the deal, that title alone can lure in consumers.
One individual concerned within the secondaries markets describes SPV-laden offers like this: “They’re passing the hat on all of the offers that may’t discover sufficient VC buyers and the title agency places up a tiny quantity and these silly household workplaces say oh, ‘Andreessen is main it should be good,’ although we all know that these are their worst corporations that may’t elevate cash from conventional VCs.”
Botha’s message to those would-be buyers? “Don’t purchase it.”
Sequoia didn’t instantly reply to a request for additional remark.
