At a glance
- Beezer Clarkson of LGT Capital Partners and Amit Bhatti of TrueBridge said their concern is how quickly venture firms are coming back to raise new funds, TechCrunch reports.
- A portfolio built on two or three venture feeder funds may hold the same two AI labs two or three times, so diversification across managers is not diversification across holdings.
- Bhatti called the overlap a feature of venture's power-law returns.
Nearly every venture investor has piled into OpenAI and Anthropic, often within the same firm, and limited partners behind those funds describe the result as a "yellow light," TechCrunch reports. Both companies' valuations rose quickly enough that investors bought in on the way up.
Beezer Clarkson of LGT Capital Partners and Amit Bhatti of TrueBridge said their concern is how quickly venture firms are coming back to raise new funds, TechCrunch reports. LGT Capital Partners is a Zurich diversified asset manager, and TrueBridge is a Chapel Hill firm that invests only in venture. The two limited partners are not worried about the OpenAI and Anthropic overlap. The overlap cuts against venture's convention of avoiding conflicting portfolio positions, and both expect the overlap to pay off.
A portfolio built on two or three venture feeder funds may hold the same two AI labs two or three times, so diversification across managers is not diversification across holdings. A look-through of underlying positions, and of how much of a fund a manager can put into one company, tells an advisor whether a new commitment adds exposure or doubles it.
Bhatti called the overlap a feature of venture's power-law returns. "Venture has always been a power law business, so I actually view the concentration as a good thing," he told TechCrunch. A power-law pattern means a fund's result is set by its few largest winners, which he said supports holding the same winners across several funds, provided the marks hold.
Clarkson said the current stretch is busy, not frightening. "It's very busy, but I wouldn't say it's scary," she told TechCrunch. She pointed to the visibility that comes from sitting through several cycles.
Anthropic filed for a Nasdaq listing under ANT this month, as Alternatives previously reported, leaving the share count and price range blank. TechCrunch put the mark on Anthropic backers' stakes at $965 billion on Oct. 23.
A listing would give LPs a public price for a position many of them hold several times over.
Reported by the Venture Capital desk from TechCrunch, Alternatives archive and Alternatives archive. Published . Corrections