This story is from October 8, 2026. For the latest, see today's news.
A panel featuring MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria, SaaS investor Jason Lemkin, and Scale GP Rory O'Driscoll discusses the current state of AI funding and valuations. Topics include OpenAI's $1.4 trillion valuation, questions about Anthropic's Q3 performance and competitive momentum, and whether recent moves by founders like Chris Degnan (Factory vs Cognition) represent shifts in industry loyalty.
The group also covers ElevenLabs' $22 billion valuation, Salesforce's $2 billion acquisition of Listen Labs, and Vercel's $600 million ARR driven partly by adoption. They debate whether AI startups risk becoming features rather than standalone franchises, and discuss Reflection's Beam as a US-built alternative to Chinese open models.
Other topics include enterprise AI adoption potential, competition, Nvidia's $17 billion licensing deal lawsuit, and Meta's Muse versus OpenAI's approach to AI.
This is an AI-written summary. The original reporting belongs to @20VC. How we write these · Spot a mistake?