How the AI Boom Is Rewriting Venture Capital Rules

The AI boom is pushing venture capital dynamics to extremes, with mega-IPOs creating companies valued at trillions of dollars, according to the Financial Times. This concentration of value is reshaping the industry's traditional risk-reward model. Anthropic investors expect a roughly $2 trillion valuation at its IPO, while SpaceX began trading in June at $2 trillion and OpenAI is considering private funding at $1.2 trillion. These three companies alone could exceed $5 trillion in total value, surpassing the combined $4.1 trillion valuation of all 3,365 US tech IPOs from 1980 to 2025. This comes as rising US interest rates since late 2021 have hurt many "unicorns," with private tech companies avoiding lower-valued IPOs. Total private unicorn value stands at $5.3 trillion, though questions remain about real investor returns, with funds having flexibility in how they value their holdings.