20VC: Mercor CEO on Why Application Layer Companies Have No Defensibility, The Model is the Product | Token Spend Will Exceed Headcount Spend in 5 Years | The True Cost of Hiring AI Researchers in the Valley Today with Brendan Foody

Matan Grinberg is the Founder and CEO @ Factory, an AI research lab, bringing autonomy to software engineering. Matan has raised over $220M for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, NEA, Evantic and 20VC. Last round valued the company at a whopping $1.5BN.  AGENDA:  00:00 – Why AI Means Everyone Will Become a Builder 04:55 – Will AI Finally Break the 200-Year GDP Growth Ceiling? 06:45 – The Rise of the 100x Engineer & Load-Bearing Talent 08:00 – The New Executive Job: Allocating Tokens Like Capital 10:35 – Kirkland's $500M AI Bet: Brilliant or Delusional? 12:45 – The AI Value War: Models vs Applications vs Infrastructure 18:45 – Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning 22:00 – Why AI Spend Could Soon Exceed Developer Salaries 24:00 – Open Source Can Already Replace 80–90% of Frontier Model Work 28:00 – What Makes a Great Engineer in the Age of Agents? 35:00 – Jobs That Will Disappear First Because of AI 40:00 – Why Matan Isn't Worried About AI Taking Jobs Long-Term 46:00 – From String Theory to Startup Founder: The Sequoia Origin Story 52:00 – The Meeting That Led to Sequoia's First Check 58:00 – Why America's Lack of Frontier Open Models Is Embarrassing 1:08:00 – What Matan Looks for in Every New Employee 1:12:00 – Why Elite Companies Will Treat Employees Like NBA Athletes 1:16:00 – The Most Important Prediction Matan Has Changed His Mind On    

AGENDA: 00:00 – SpaceX Launches the Largest IPO Roadshow in History at $1.77T Valuation 05:00 – Did Elon Break the IPO Playbook? The High-Risk Pricing Strategy Explained 12:00 – Will SpaceX Create a New Generation of Venture Billionaires? 17:00 – OpenAI Files to Go Public as the AI IPO Race Officially Begins 19:00 – Sam Altman's Vision: Why AI Is Becoming Always-On Infrastructure 22:00 – Apple Admits Defeat on Siri and Turns to Google AI 25:00 – Uber Cuts 23% of HR as AI Reshapes White-Collar Work 31:00 – Founders Revolt Against VCs: The Fundraising Horror Stories Going Viral 38:00 – Lovable Hits $500M ARR: The Rise of the 100-Person Billion-Dollar Company 48:00 – Elon's Masterstroke: Why the Cursor Acquisition Could Be the Deal of the Year  

Roman Chernin is Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Nebius, one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies in the world. Today, Nebius operates some of the largest AI compute clusters globally and serves leading AI labs, enterprises, and developers. Today, Nebius has a market cap of $57BN.  AGENDA:  00:00 — Why AI Infrastructure Is Not a Bubble 05:00 — The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic 11:00 — Jevons Paradox: Why Cheaper AI Creates More Demand 13:00 — The Four Layers of AI Infrastructure Explained 19:00 — If Nebius Had 10x More Capacity Tomorrow 26:00 — The Shift from Training to Inference and Agents 31:00 — How Token Factory Cuts AI Costs by 70% 44:00 — Sovereign AI, Europe, and the Future of Model Building 49:00 — Competing Against Hyperscalers with 10x More Capital 59:00 — The Biggest Threat to Nebius Isn't Competition—It's Consolidation    

Jacob Lauritzen serves as the CTO at Legora, the fastest growing B2B enterprise company in history; hitting $100 million in ARR in just 18 months . Legora boasts a valuation of $5.6BN and has raised a total of $866 million in funding. Legora's investors include the likes of Accel, Benchmark, and Bessemer Venture Partners, alongside strategic tech giants NVIDIA (NVentures) and Salesforce Ventures. AGENDA:  05:01 - How to Hire the Best Product Talent in 2026 06:21 - The New Product Bottleneck: Shifting Beyond Code Creation 09:24 - System Design vs. Code Creation: The Future Role of the Engineer 14:04 - The Evolving Software Development Lifecycle & The Death of the Design Phase 22:23 - Will Product and Engineering Fully Converge? 29:16 - Scalability and UX: Designing for 10x vs. 100x Spikes 38:15 - Scaling the Organization: What Breaks with a 250 Person Product Team 47:05 - Quick-Fire Round: Hyper-Growth Tactics & Out-Working the Giants  

AGENDA: 00:00:00 — Private Markets Are "F***ing Done" & The Shift to Heavy CapEx 00:00:46 — Anthropic Files to Go Public  00:04:59 — Will the Anthropic IPO Break the Startup Ecosystem? 00:06:22 — The "Billion-Dollar Position" Era: VCs Reset Their Expectations 00:18:11 — The Trillion-Dollar Cash Grab: Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI Rush the Queue 00:23:15 — Is the SaaS Apocalypse Over? Bouncing Off the Bottom 00:25:34 — The Death of Human Per-Seat Licenses as Multiples Shift 00:27:18 — Winners vs. Losers: How Agentic Focused Products Captured the Market 00:30:26 — Cognition Raises $1 Billion at a $26 Billion Valuation 00:33:04 — Token Budgeting Panic Hits Corporate America 00:35:46 — Multi-Model Workflows and the Future of Cost Containment 00:41:20 — Choosing Tokens Over Humans: The 2027 Engineering Reality Check 00:46:42 — Can Large Companies Survive Slashing One-Third of Their Engineering Talent? 00:57:40 — Big Law Flex: Kirkland & Ellis Pledges $500 Million to Build In-House AI 01:01:21 — Giving Away the Crown Jewels: Will Firms Trust Claude? 01:08:44 — Robinhood's AI Move: Automating Financial Planning vs. Beating the Market 01:16:15 — Apollo Warns PE Software Returns Are About to Be Disastrous 01:19:15 — $10 Billion Carry Pools: Will VC Winners Quit the Game? 01:24:10 — The 9-9-6 Work Ethic: Performative Theatre or Startup Reality? 01:30:10 — The Great Valley Contradiction: Working 24/7 to Automate White-Collar Work  

Brendan Foody is the Founder and CEO @ Mercor, one of the leading data providers to the largest labs on the planet including OpenAI. In the last two years, Brendan has scaled the company to $1.5BN in ARR and a valuation of $10BN.  AGENDA:  True or False: Mercor lost Meta and OpenAI as a customer with the hack? Mercor has been poaching competitor talent, paying them millions?  Mercor revenue is not real revenue and is only GMV? 12:56 Would Brendan sell Mercor for $30 billion?  14:23 Why everyone is wrong that AI will lead to labor displacement? 15:59 We will create many new jobs that do not exist with AI.  16:59 Why training agents will be a massive labor category that does not exist today  19:51 Will we see the data provider market unbundle and specialize into verticals?  22:24 Is the stated revenue really revenue or is it really GMV?  27:55 How a 1 million ARR company secured one of the best investors in the world with a helicopter ride  29:41 How Felicis secured the deal of the decade with a race track and a set of Ferraris  32:59 Which investment round felt like the highest price to grow into?  34:49 Why will value accrue to the infrastructure layer, not the application layer, in the next 12 months?  35:46 Why the model is the product and why application layer companies should be scared as a result  37:22 Why network effects will be the determinant of value creation  38:46 Why the forward-deployed motion, not the GTM motion, will determine true value creation.  41:59 Why token spend within organizations is going to continue to increase  43:54 Why agent evaluation to commoditize the model layer will be a massive business for enterprises?  51:13 Why we should have increased capital gains tax  01:01:31 How to compete with $20 million a year from Meta?  01:08:49 Will Mercor go public and when?  

Nico Laqua is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgi Insurance, an AI-native insurance carrier built for startups. Corgi is the most intense workplace culture in America. The team works 7 days per week. The founder sleeps in the office. ⅔ of the first 30 team members have a Corgi tattoo. This week, Corgi raised $106M, valuing the company at a whopping $2.6BN.  AGENDA:  06:35 Why going to university was a massive waste of time  09:42 Why we work seven days a week  11:58 Why we do work trials and how that is a test of people's stamina  18:41 Why we created a cafe in the biggest annoyance with San Francisco  22:00 Why I am so bullish on London  23:49 Why I haven't sold a single secondary  24:19 Why people who found companies in New York prioritise dating over their company  30:46 Biggest lessons on cash comp and equity  31:13 Team members can be split into three separate groups  34:59 Biggest lesson from Brian Chesky on price  35:44 What is the right amount of time to be fundraising for?  36:47 Good companies get deals done and what makes the best venture investors?  40:34 Why AI makes sales and marketing more valuable  43:12 Why I don't like boards and I don't think they're effective  46:19 What I would like to see more of from venture funds  48:05 Who was Corgi's first believer?    

AGENDA:  05:16 Nvidia Blowout Quarter: $81BN Revenues and Stock… Flat!  10:39 Uber and Microsoft Declare Productivity Gains Questionable from AI 25:26 The Layoffs Continue: ClickUp and Cloudflare 34:39 OpenAI S1: Is it a Race? How Will it be Received? 38:28 Do Anthropic Rush Out Their IPO Also? 45:49 SpaceX S-1: "Why I Would Never Invest" 48:06 Why Colossus is a Stroke of Genius By Elon 51:31 Data Centers In Space is BS and Will Not Be Core to SpaceX 58:04 Polsia Raises $30M at $250M Price: Is this the Peak?  01:06:08 Exa Raises at $2.2BN to Build Search for Agents 01:14:34 Is Replacing Your CRM with Vibe Coding Always Ragebait  

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a monumental, multi-year $20 billion compute agreement from OpenAI. AGENDA:  05:58 - Why we are not in an infrastructure bubble and it is just the start 08:00 - Sam Altman's superpower is his ability to forecast capex spend. 08:58 - Anthropic did not get a good deal with Elon. They got a deal that was available.  10:39 - What is going on with the price of memory and why is it a problem? 16:40 - Are Google best positioned to produce tokens and what challenges do they face? 19:23 - Is Coreweave dramatically undervalued or overvalued? 24:34 - My biggest advice to entrepreneurs scaling their business  30:13 - Why most of the layoffs are AI-washed and 33:41 - What will we spend on tokens for software engineers in five years? 34:48 - Why does the role of HR change so significantly in the world of AI? 35:36 - Why lawyers are the biggest inhibitor of enterprise AI adoption 39:20 - Why Jensen and Nvidia are wrong to sell chips to China 42:49 - What needs to change in the U.S. to build a strategic asset in chips? 51:00 - Should Cerebras invest in companies building on top of their platform; as Nvidia is? 53:28 - Nothing changed when Cerebras IPO'd but I did make 800 millionaires.

Chad Peets is one of the most straight-talking, no BS sales leaders of our time. Today, he partners with founders of the fastest growing companies in the world, like Harvey, Factory to build the best sales teams in a world of AI.    Chris Degnan is a legendary technology sales leader who achieved the historic feat of scaling Snowflake from $0 to $4BN in ARR.  AGENDA: 00:00 – The $100M CRO Packages Nobody Believes Are Real 04:10 – Why Most "Elite" Salespeople Are Actually Just Order Takers 08:00 – The Secret to Hiring Killer Sales Talent at Early-Stage Startups 10:05 – 20x Quotas & The Death of Traditional Pipeline Generation 16:20 – The ARR Scam: Why Most AI Revenue Numbers Are Fake 17:45 – Why the Best Engineers Do Not Want to Be Forward Deployed Engineers 21:10 – Why Paying Everyone the Same Kills Great Sales Organisations 24:15 – Anthropic's Crazy Compensation Is Breaking the Entire Sales Market 29:00 – The Brutal Truth About Replacing CROs & Firing Sales Leaders 32:20 – Forecasting in AI Is Completely Broken 38:20 – The Fatal Mistake Founders Make Chasing Venture Valuations 39:40 – Why Most VCs Give Absolutely Terrible Sales Advice 42:10 – Global Sales From Day One: The New AI Go-To-Market Playbook 44:15 – "Anthropic Is a $5 Trillion Company" 47:40 – The Death of the Traditional SDR & The Rise of Full-Stack AI Sellers 49:00 – Consumption Pricing, Vertical AI & Why SaaS Is Getting Rewritten 52:00 – What the Best Sales Cultures Still Get Right in the AI Era