From Contrarian to Consensus

Anthropic closed a $13 billion Series F at a $183 billion valuation in September, capping a year where revenue grew from $1 billion to over $5 billion in run-rate in just eight months. They’re on track to meet a goal of $9 billion in ARR by year-end and have set targets of $20 billion to $26 billion for 2026. Claude Code, launched in May, was already approaching $1 billion in annualized revenue. Their enterprise partnerships and API growth prove how breakthrough technology becomes critical infrastructure.

xAI raised $10 billion in September at a $200 billion valuation, with an additional round in process approaching $230 billion by year-end. The Colossus supercomputer expansion ended the year with the world’s largest AI training cluster, combined with X platform integration reaching approximately 600 million monthly active users, creating data advantages that nobody else can likely replicate.

SpaceX maintained its position as the world’s most valuable private company, with its December secondary pricing at approximately $800 billion. Starlink generated approximately $7.5 billion in 2024 revenue across 4.7 million subscribers with total company revenue projected at $15 to $16 billion for 2025. Our secondary positions continue benefiting from valuation appreciation as commercial space becomes foundational infrastructure.

Klarna completed its US IPO on September 10th, pricing at $40 per share above the expected range and closing its first day of trading at $45.82, valuing the company at over $17 billion. The listing was the largest US IPO of 2025. Their AI transformation, handling 2.3 million customer conversations while driving $40 million in profit improvements, shows how category leaders leverage emerging technologies to transform their economics.

Groq delivered one of the year’s most significant exits when Nvidia announced a $20 billion deal for Groq’s assets and inference technology on December 24th. What started with our participation in the $640 million Series D at a $2.8 billion valuation became a landmark transaction at roughly 7x that price in under 18 months. Their LPU inference technology had attracted over 360,000 developers and earned public recognition from Mark Zuckerberg before Nvidia moved to bring the technology in-house. The deal, Nvidia’s largest ever, validates our thesis that AI infrastructure would become a strategic battleground and that inference, not just training, would drive the next wave of value creation.

Kodiak Robotics delivered a landmark liquidity event through its business combination with Ares Acquisition Corporation II, valuing the company at $2.5 billion pre-money. Kodiak became the first company to deliver a driverless semi-truck to a paying customer, with Atlas Energy Solutions committing to an initial order of 100 autonomous trucks. Their Driver-as-a-Service recurring revenue model addresses a $4+ trillion global opportunity in autonomous transportation. The company will trade under ticker “KDK” upon closing.

RapidSOS deepened its position as critical public safety infrastructure through a landmark integration with Apple’s Emergency SOS Live Video in iOS 18. The UNITE platform now serves 5,700+ Emergency Communication Centers covering over 99% of the US population, processing data from 540 million+ connected devices. When Apple builds their emergency response features around your technology, you’ve become the standard.

HawkEye 360 closed a $150 million Series E in December at a $2 billion valuation and secured a multi-year international contract valued at more than $100 million. The company continued expanding its constellation and deepening critical government partnerships, including a renewed US Navy contract for Indo-Pacific maritime awareness and selection by the NRO for RF data and analytics. Commercial space technology creating strategic national security value.

Capella Space was acquired by IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) to create the world’s first space-based quantum-secure communications network. The acquisition brings together satellite sensing capabilities with quantum encryption to build a global space-to-space and space-to-ground quantum key distribution network. When we invested in Capella, we recognized that satellite capabilities would become increasingly central to both commercial and defense applications. This deal validates that thesis while creating something entirely new at the intersection of quantum computing and space-based infrastructure.

Figure AI exceeded $1 billion in committed capital through its Series C at a $39 billion valuation in September, a 15x increase from its $2.6 billion valuation just 18 months earlier. Their humanoid robots achieved commercial deployment at BMW’s Spartanburg facility, running daily 10-hour shifts and loading over 90,000 parts across 1,250+ runtime hours. The exact moment science fiction became factory reality.