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20VC · Jun 1, 2026

20VC Newsletter - 1st June 2026

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20VC · 20VC

Tuesday’s episode with Andrew Feldman, Founder & CEO @ Cerebras:

Download the full transcript:

My 6 key takeaways:

  1. Why We Are Not in an Infrastructure Bubble and It Is Just the Start

Unlike past tech bubbles that overbuilt ahead of demand, the AI infrastructure rollout is running significantly behind immediate market needs . Major chip makers face massive multi-billion-dollar backlogs because data centers cannot be built fast enough to keep pace with the exploding, real-world user demand happening today.

  1. Anthropic Did Not Get a Good Deal With Elon. They Got a Deal That Was Available.

Founders are often forced to take action on what is available in the market rather than what is ideal. Anthropic’s deal with Elon Musk required them to buy “down rev gear”, older H100 chips rather than cutting-edge B200s, leaving them a generation and a half to two generations behind the absolute leading edge.

  1. Why Jensen and NVIDIA Are Wrong to Sell Chips to China

Widespread security consensus confirms that selling leading-edge tech to China means their military and government will inevitably leverage it to compete with Western industry . As an industrial adversary driving down global costs in vital sectors like solar and automotive, American chip companies should be completely comfortable selling fewer chips to protect strategic boundaries.

  1. What the F**k Is Going on With the Price of Memory and Why Is It a Problem?

Exploding AI demand makes High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) the most critical bottleneck right after fab space. Because only three manufacturers produce this specialized memory and cannot keep up, prices have skyrocketed, allowing suppliers to command software-like 80-85% gross margins on hardware fabrication.

  1. Are Google Best Positioned to Produce the Lowest Cost Tokens and What Challenges Do They Face?

Owning the full stack from data centers to chips gives hyperscalers an immense cost advantage over standard clouds paying high hardware margins. However, the historical downside is that your market is constrained strictly by your own internal demand, meaning hardware innovators must sell externally to maximize volume and lower unit costs.

  1. My Biggest Advice to Entrepreneurs Scaling Their Business

Your initial focus must be entirely on winning just one customer. Landing that first anchor client forces your company to build the necessary operational muscle, adjust your supply chain, and learn how to properly service a massive organization so you have the capability to keep the next ones happy.

Thursday’s episode with Rory O’Driscoll, GP @ Scale, Jason Lemkin, Founder @ SaaStr:

Download the full transcript:

My 7 key takeaways:

  1. Is OpenAI Rushing to Go Public Before Anthropic?

OpenAI may need to rush its IPO to protect its category leader narrative from Anthropic. OpenAI did $5.4B to $5.5B in Q1, while Anthropic generated $5B, matching its entire prior year in a single quarter. With Anthropic growing 10x year over year versus OpenAI’s 2 to 3x pace, it could soon become the bigger, more profitable business.

  1. Do Venture Investors Have to Risk More With Less?

The venture playbook has shifted from the SaaS era. VCs now have to back higher valuations on far less information. Waiting for one-year renewals or clean trailing data is a losing strategy because AI adoption curves move too fast. Success now requires acting on raw product traction and market conviction.

  1. What Is the Right Venture Play in AI?

Traditional seed investing has become a bottleneck. The winning move is wiring capital the moment a breakout leader emerges. These startups can move from pre-revenue to hyper-scale almost overnight, so investors have to underwrite real-time momentum instead of waiting for the market to settle.

  1. Is SpaceX the GeoCities of Our Time?

At 100x trailing sales, SpaceX risks becoming the GeoCities deal of the AI era if market euphoria fades. Its valuation is detached from traditional discounted cash flow models and depends on a massive Elon Premium that multiplies its baseline economic value.

  1. Why the SpaceX S-1 Does Not Make Sense

Combining unrelated assets into the SpaceX S-1 looks like financial engineering designed to hide weaker pieces of the story. It uses AI hype to absorb Twitter’s revenue collapse and expensive chip clusters that failed to compete with OpenAI. It feels like SolarCity on steroids, using a clean private business to bail out an insular investor circle.

  1. What Will SpaceX’s Core Business Be in Five Years?

Starlink will likely drive most of SpaceX’s value. Terrestrial data centers remain a low-ROE business, and space data centers are still negligible. The valuation only works if Jensen Huang’s $3T to $4T CapEx vision hits by 2030 and Earth power constraints force compute infrastructure into space.

  1. Are Tech Layoffs From COVID Overhiring or AI Efficiency?

Blaming layoffs on COVID overhiring does not hold up after years of normal attrition. Corporate America is redirecting opex from mid-level headcount toward token budgets and agentic automation. Companies are cutting average roles to overpay elite, highly productive talent who use AI workflows to multiply output.

Saturday’s episode with Nico Laqua, Co-Founder & CEO @ Corgi:

Download the full transcript:

Let us know what your big takeaways from this week’s shows were in the comments below!

Thank you for reading, and don’t miss the great guests we have next week:

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