Where is the alpha in venture in the new AI era? My two cents... A couple new fu
By Alexabinns · October 27, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Where is the alpha in venture in the new AI era? My two cents...
A couple new fund models come to mind that are designed to capture Alpha in the AI Era: Theory Ventures where there are more AI engineers on staff than investors, Iolar Ventures where they expect to be the last check at Series A, and of course Connect Ventures where we assume distribution is key.
I'm also seeing a ton of new investment models focused on one of two ends of a barbell: fund of funds focused early early or later stage opportunity funds and secondary plays for the late stage stuff. Makes me wonder if that's now consensus and ironically we can find more alpha in the middle where others have left. I'm LPing into John Lin who's got a super smart strategy for investing in this missing middle.
Hearing from one LP a week on Swimming with Allocators podcast, most institutional allocators are now in maintenance mode when it comes to venture. I think this could prove problematic, top tier firms are basically the Adobe and Salesforce of venture. My prediction: there will be a big range in terms of which top tier VC firms adopt AI to the fullest and which don't make that transition.
One area I'm extremely bullish where we have yet to see the AI winners emerge is consumer tech: A16Z recently identified 9 of 15 consumer internet categories have zero AI products in the Top 100. There's so much white space in consumer tech. https://lnkd.in/gJymkGcz
Very curious to hear what the rest of the folks at Reinventing VC have to say on this topic.