Legion

SPVs made private markets easier to access.

They also made them easier to abuse.

If an SPV burned you, keeping it private is part of why it happens again.

SPV Confessions is live.

Tell your story. Change the system.

Fully anonymous: confessions.uselegion.com

The money keeps flowing into AI inference.

Fal raised $1.3B to run models. Fractile and FuriosaAI raised another $1.4B to build the chips behind them.

Together, they took three of the top four spots. A look at the biggest private-market raises of the past two weeks 🧵

Need someone to lead your seed?

We went through the 1,048 seed rounds we tracked from August through October and counted who actually led them. The 12 most active:

1. @generalcatalyst: General Catalyst. 10 seed rounds led or co-led, typical round $11.5M. Different ($48M), Transfyr ($25M), Proximal ($15M), and a co-lead with a16z on EON's space lasers.

2. @a16z: a16z. 7 from its main funds, typical round $11M. OpenReserve ($25M, a16z crypto), Dream ($17M), Ghost ($11M).

3. @sequoia: Sequoia. 6, and the biggest rounds on this list: Warhound ($200M), Corma ($60M), Catalyst ($30M).

4. @khoslaventures: Khosla Ventures. 6, from $4M (Decimal AI) to $90M (Veeda AI, co-led with Radical). Also Sabi ($50M).

5. @BessemerVP: Bessemer. 5, mostly around $10M. Twin1 ($20M), Malachyte ($10M), Herdr ($6M).

6. @accel: Accel. 4, typical round $20M. Keenable ($26M), Atira ($15M, Munich), Clarion ($10M).

7. @FoundationCap: Foundation Capital. 4, all under $10M. CatchBack ($8M), RadiantOps ($7M), Tandem ($4.9M).

8. @SauceVc: Sauce. 4 Indian consumer brands at $1-2.5M each. The Stack (Rs 21.5 crore), Be Clinical (Rs 21 crore), So Facet (Rs 10 crore).

9. @radicalvcfund: Radical. 3, AI only, and big: Veeda ($90M), Mantic ($25M), Discovery Loop.

10. @4biocapital: 4BIO Capital. 3 biotech seeds of $18-45M: Aptadir ($45M), Cloverleaf Bio ($33M), Undecimal Bio (€16M).

11. @PrimaryVC: Primary. 3. Teram ($37M, AI memory chips), Zero ($10.3M), Forgepoint ($9.8M).

12. @Base10Partners: Base10. 3, from $8M to $20M: Causa Prima ($20M), Harbor ($10M), Destro AI ($8M).

AlleyCorp, Gradient, Lightspeed, Endiya, Azolla, BDC and Inflection Point also led three each.

Round sizes are the whole round, not one firm's check.

Save this for your raise!

Somehow, the trillion-dollar AI labs look like the cheap ones.

We mapped the latest available valuations against publicly reported revenue figures and estimates across 13 AI companies.

OpenAI and Anthropic sit at ~28x and ~27x revenue, below the ~37x median in our sample.

Raising with no warm intro?

In a survey of almost 900 VCs, only 10% of the deals they closed came from founders reaching out directly.

These 10 funds publish how they handle the cold pitch:

1.@GoAheadVC : GoAhead Ventures. A one-way video pitch that all three managing partners watch. Typical response under 24 hours, about six days from pitch to offer. $1M typical check on a signable SAFE.

2. @January_VC : January Ventures. A two-minute form, no deck and no warm intro needed. Pre-seed. In 2022 it said about 18% of its investments came from a cold email.

3. @ajuniorvc : AJVC. India pre-seed. A three-minute form, yes or no within 48 hours, decision within a week of the call. Fixed terms: ₹1.5 crore (~$170K) for 9%. Read 11,000+ applications while investing its first fund.

4. @UnshackledVC : Unshackled Ventures. Replies to 100% of pitches through its form, with at most three calls to a decision either way. $150-750K first checks at day zero, for immigrant technical founders.

5. @NoaKhamallah : Don't Quit Ventures. Email your deck to the team address, get a reply within two weeks whatever the answer, with feedback on every pass. $50-150K. Solo GP, and 3 of the 17 Fund I bets are now worth $1B+.

6. @HarlemCapital : Harlem Capital. Investment form on the site, "allow us at least two weeks to get you our thoughts." $1-2.5M at pre-seed and seed, no product or revenue requirement, US only. In their 2019 review, 43% of investments came straight from founders.

7. @PrecursorVC : Precursor. Form on the site. Up to $500K first checks, 30-40 new companies a year, and their stated rule is never to tell a founder to come back with more progress. Four of five investors can write a check alone.

8. @KaporCapital : Kapor Capital. One of the first VCs to openly take cold pitches through its website. The form takes five minutes; if they're in, calls run over two weeks. Pre-seed to Series A for companies closing gaps of access.

9. @adaventures : Ada Ventures. UK pre-seed, £250K-1M, leads 70%+ of its deals. Open application, plus an AI tool it built that critiques your deck. Built on a British Business Bank stat: warm-intro founders are 13x more likely to get funded.

10. @ediggs : Eze Vidra, @RemagineV . Published his cold-email numbers: 400-500 a year, replies to most, a few dozen meetings, 1-2 investments. Tel Aviv pre-seed, $25M Fund II (Nov 2025).

Save this for your raise. And if your fund answers cold email, tell us how fast below.