20VC: $3.5BN - The Price Zuck Paid for Thinking Machines Co-Founder | Goldman Sachs Acquires Industry Ventures for $665M | Softbank Borrows $5BN Against ARM Holding to Invest More Into OpenAI

Unknown Source October 16, 2025 80 min

artificial-intelligence startup investment openai anthropic meta google

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74 Companies

114 Key Quotes

3 Topics

2 Insights

🎯 Summary

20VC Podcast Summary: Valuation, Exits, and the Shifting Nature of Venture

This episode of the 20VC podcast, featuring Harry Stebbings alongside venture veterans Jason Lampkin and Rory O’Driscoll, dives deep into several major recent financial and personnel shifts in the tech and investment world, framing them through the lens of valuation, partnership dynamics, and the increasing transactional nature of the industry.

1. Focus Area

The discussion centers on Venture Capital and Private Markets Strategy, covering M&A activity in the asset management space, high-profile founder departures from heavily funded startups, and strategic financing moves by major tech conglomerates.

2. Key Technical Insights

Asset Manager Valuation Multiples: The valuation of asset management firms (like Industry Ventures) is highly variable, ranging from 1-2% of AUM for public managers to 20% for firms like KKR that own all economics. Industry Ventures, being a secondary/fund-of-funds business, was valued appropriately around 10% of AUM (approx. $700M valuation on $7B AUM).
Productizable vs. Partner-Dependent Businesses: The ability to sell a firm 100% hinges on its productizability. Firms reliant solely on the “IQ of the stock picker” (like a pure venture fund) are difficult to monetize fully, whereas businesses with strong brands, fee streams, and scalable platforms (like fund-of-funds or media companies) are highly monetizable assets.
Aqua-Hires at Scale: The departure of Andrew Tulloch from Thinking Machines to Matter is framed as an “asset purchase” or “aqua-hire” at a multi-billion dollar scale, indicating a trend where large companies acquire key talent/teams rather than entire, complex entities.

3. Market/Investment Angle

Goldman Sachs’ Private Asset Push: Goldman Sachs’ acquisition of Industry Ventures ($665M + $300M earn-out) is a strategic move to bolster its private assets platform (Apex), allowing them to distribute high-fee private market opportunities to their Ultra-High-Net-Worth clients and compete against traditional private equity distribution channels.
SoftBank’s AI Financing Strategy: SoftBank borrowing $5 billion against its ARM holding to invest further into OpenAI highlights the extreme capital demands and strategic prioritization of AI investments, even requiring leveraging core, recently public assets.
The Founder Dilemma (Wealth vs. Loyalty): The $2B+ equity stake held by a co-founder of a $10B post-money company leaving for a reported $3.5B opportunity (Andrew Tulloch) underscores the tension between unprecedented wealth realization and traditional founder loyalty. This prompts discussion on whether founders are becoming overly transactional.

4. Notable Companies/People

Industry Ventures (Hans S/Hans Morris): Acquired by Goldman Sachs. Praised for building a successful, productizable asset management business over 25 years, especially its secondary market focus.
Goldman Sachs (GS): The buyer, seeking to integrate Industry Ventures to expand its private asset distribution channels to HNW clients.
Thinking Machines & Matter: The context for the high-profile departure of co-founder Andrew Tulloch, who left a company valued at $10B post-money to join Matter.
SoftBank & OpenAI: SoftBank is leveraging its ARM stake to fuel further investment into OpenAI, signaling aggressive capital deployment in the AI race.
Arthur Rock: Mentioned as an OG investor, serving as a benchmark for direct, intimidating, and highly respected early venture capital figures.

5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion

No specific regulatory discussions were highlighted, but the M&A activity (GS buying IV) implies standard due diligence and market acceptance of asset manager consolidation.

6. Future Implications

The conversation suggests a future where:

Asset gathering and building scalable, productizable platforms will be crucial for VCs seeking high-multiple exits (via acquisition by large banks/institutions).
Founder relationships will require stronger contractual protections (extended vesting, repurchase rights) as the financial incentives for early departure become astronomical, leading to more transactional founder dynamics.
AI investment will continue to command massive, aggressive capital allocation, potentially forcing major players like SoftBank to use highly leveraged financing against existing assets.

7. Target Audience

Venture Capitalists (GPs), Institutional Investors (LPs), Technology Founders, and M&A Professionals interested in the strategic valuation of VC-adjacent businesses and evolving founder/partner alignment issues.

🏢 Companies Mentioned

Anthropic ✅ infrastructure

DST ✅ investment

Lightspeed ✅ investment

Stake ✅ institution

Crypto.com ✅ exchange

Bovada ✅ institution

Excel ✅ investment

David Sacks ✅ unknown

United States ✅ unknown

Aaron Levy ✅ unknown

And Aaron ✅ unknown

Stack Overflow ✅ unknown

Dreamforce Week ✅ unknown

Omja Replet ✅ unknown

AI CapEx ✅ unknown

💬 Key Insights

"My first check in to Wise was $750k at a $5.5 million post. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But then, you know, Valar came in and then we piled in with Valar to 20 and then we piled in with Valar to 160 and we just kept going and we were 17% at TTT IPO and we were 13% of Wise at IPO out of a little shitty seed fund."

Impact Score: 10

"When you look back on like a fund one, where there's like a meaningful timeline to actually look back on the six years now, the best performers, your liners of the world, were not obvious early. And the early out performers did not signify enterprise value in the long term. Clubhouse, Hopin, BeReal."

Impact Score: 10

"We've moved from a world where an exit is $200 million in ARR to a world where it exists $400 million in ARR at an IPO. You're just doing your thing here. But way over there at the finish line, the finish line has receded another two or three years, which means logically you've got more risk and more upside. You just got to hold these things longer."

Impact Score: 10

"concentration, diversification is the enemy of upside. Concentration gives you more potential, more variance."

Impact Score: 10

"I'm probably allowed to say this, because I'm outside the borders, and we're not going to go into political, but am I the only one to also realize that Eric Trump is on the board of one, another Trump is investing in the other? How would Lucknick's son happen to run the fastest-growing investment bank? My word, that seems like an awful lot of coincidences in one go."

Impact Score: 10

"That was in my FTX investment memo was to just get to that scale where we could push through some of these issues. I feel like we just came up just a little short."

Impact Score: 10

📊 Topics

#artificialintelligence 98 #startup 51 #investment 22

🧠 Key Takeaways

💡 be eternally grateful