17 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $633Million - Week of March 3, 2025

🌴 Upfront Summit 2025 Recap 💰 Why Is Warren Buffett Hoarding $300B in Cash 💰 US Crypto Strategic Reserve ⚡ Blackstone / QTS AI Power Strains 🇨🇳 Wan 2.1 - Sora of China

Mar 03, 2025

Happy Monday!

I was in Los Angeles last week, not for the Oscars, but for Upfront Summit. I’ve always enjoyed attending the Upfront Summit and have learned a lot each time—this year was no exception. Huge props to Mark Suster and his team for putting together such an incredible gathering with some star-studded speakers.

Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:

🌴 Upfront Summit 2025 Recap — A few key takeaways for me:

Venture capital should NOT be an asset management business.
OpenAI’s $150B round is essentially a public round, despite being private.
Valuation has become a badge of glory for founders—which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
AI has been the saving grace for the venture asset class.
The promise of AI-driven innovation transforming industries is keeping spirits high.
El Segundo, CA is emerging as THE defense tech hub.
The cost of intelligence is dropping by ~8x per year.
Uber is the world’s largest independent contractor platform, handling 33M bookings per day and $160B in annual bookings. Uber’s biggest concern: Insurance.
Celebrities are getting deeper into venture:
- Metrodora Ventures (Chelsea Clinton)
- Serena Ventures (Serena Williams)
- Prince Harry investing in BetterUp, Ethic, and Archwell Audio
- Will.i.am investing in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stability

💰 Why Is Warren Buffett hoarding $300B in cash? — Within Berkshire’s hunting ground of large, high-quality businesses in industries Buffett understands, prices have risen too high (Apple is now valued $3.63T at 38.37 P/E ratio) for the stock picker to feel confident an investment would lead to worthwhile returns. The cash pile itself is making money. Berkshire reported $8 billion in interest and other investment income in its insurance operations in the first nine months of 2024, along with $3.8 billion in income from dividends. Read more on WSJ.

💰 US Crypto Strategic Reserve — President Trump announced on Truth Social yesterday that he will issue an Executive Order on Digital Assets, directing the Presidential Working Group to advance a Crypto Strategic Reserve—including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Solana, and Cardano. I mentioned this in my Bloomberg interview in February, but it’s probably nothing 😛.

⚡ Blackstone’s Data-Center Ambitions & AI Power Strains — QTS is building 10 hulking bunkers around Fayetteville, Georgia that’s more than 600 acres big. The complex is expected to consume as much electricity as about a million US households — leaving utility Georgia Power rushing to build the infrastructure to meet demand. Blackstone, which bought QTS in 2021 and turned it into the fastest-growing data-center landlord. It’s now a major driver of returns for the private equity giant, ~$50 billion in data centers and some $50 billion of prospective developments in the pipeline. QTS isn’t a household name to most people. But CEO Chad Williams, who founded the Kansas-based business two decades ago, has aims to make it the biggest business of its kind. QTS alone now has some 2.5 gigawatts of signed power capacity. Read more on Bloomberg.

🇨🇳 Wan 2.1: Sora of China — Alibaba is making waves with the release of Wan 2.1, an open-source AI video generation model that rivals OpenAI’s Sora, Runway, and Pika. This move aligns with Alibaba’s broader strategy to strengthen its cloud computing and AI capabilities, backed by a planned $52 billion investment over the next three years. It’s pretty cool. Alibaba is now valued $315B at 19.32 P/E ratio.

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