Yuliya Chernova

Cerebras IPO is a fund returner for early VCs several times over. Benchmark’s $3.26 billion stake at offering price cost $268 million; Foundation got $2.83 billion on $36.8 million invested, Eclipse turned $145.4 million into $2.49 billion.   wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

@pitdesi @iamjakestream Journalists?

On June 2nd, we’re co-hosting The Vertical AI Summit in New York. A closed-door event featuring founders and leaders from top vertical AI companies, including Legora, Basis, Ramp, and more. If you’re building in vertical AI, join us!

Scoop: Arif Janmohamed (Lightspeed) and Trevor Oelschig (GC) are raising $375 million for their new firm Duration Ventures to invest in early-stage enterprise AI startups wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

A sign of the times: two of crypto's most prominent VC firms have moved into AI investing, too

Two Sigma Ventures has spun out of the hedge fund and is now operating as Deviation Capital. It's raising a $300 million fund, per a source wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

@JJColao @keachhagey @sama @laureltouby Great event, as always, thanks!

Huge thanks to @keachhagey for walking us through the reporting in her fantastic @Sama biography, "The Optimist", last night. We inadvertently distracted a sizable cohort of tech reporters from like 3 breaking AI stories, but it was worth it. As always, grateful to @laureltouby and @jonfine for being stupendous co-hosts, and to everyone who spent their night with us, including @alexrkonrad, @RebeccaBellan, @DominicMadori, @ychernova, @JordynJournals, @Jenna_Goudreau, @MtthwRose, @christopherzara, @lalpert1, @dbiello, @BenLucasSherry, @sindap, @EmmaBurleigh1, @dianebrady, @jyarow, @StevenLevy, @alexbruell, @InTheMkts, @_constantjo, @DavidJeans2, @Hilarx, @maloneyfiles, @britneycath, @louisamira, @daviddotwalker, and @sahmehta. We're doing another one in June, hopefully with fewer breaking stories this time.

Growth more interesting than ever given the magnitude of the outliers in the AI wave. You don’t have to look far….👀 @AnthropicAI @Lovable @suno @WeAreLegora @OpenRouter @WisprFlow @EvidenceOpen (all basically $0 to 100m ramps or > in 1 year)

PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom (@ychernova / Wall Street Journal) wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… #a260415p10" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">techmeme.com/260415/p10#a26…

LPs love late-stage venture funds nowadays. I noticed this trend going into the new year. Q1 really confirmed it. Late-stage vc funds raised $23.6B, an annual record just through April 13. wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

Scoop on fund returns for @apartovi's Neo. Neo's 2018 Fund 1 is at 7.5X, its 2021 Fund 2 is at 6.5X net. There's a widening gap between high performers and everyone else in VC now. More on how Neo did it: wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

Space startup Aetherflux, led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, is raising a new round at a $2 billion valuation, sources say wsj.com/articles/orbit… with @EmilyGlazer via @WSJ

New York tech founders and investors mobilize to fight proposed capital-gains tax hike on startup exits wsj.com/articles/new-y… via @WSJ

Scoop out: Prediction-market platform Kalshi is raising about $1 billion in a funding round that values the startup at $22 billion, according to people familiar with the information wsj.com/articles/kalsh… via @WSJ

Scoop on Kalshi’s $22 billion valuation on Dow Jones Newswires. More coming

Fundrise Innovation Fund is putting its public listing on hold due to the volatility caused by the Iran war, CEO Ben Miller says. “I’m watching the Strait of Hormuz like everyone else" wsj.com/articles/iran-… via @WSJ

Friday night scoop: Crypto firm Paradigm expands mandate to invest in AI and other frontier tech, sources say. The firm is raising up to $1.5 billion for its next fund, sources say. wsj.com/articles/crypt…

Scoop: Thrive Capital invested about $1 billion into OpenAI at a $285B blended valuation, a fraction of the price in the LLM company's ongoing round wsj.com/articles/thriv… via @WSJ

Every venture firm now says it invests in "early-stage startups that are harnessing artificial intelligence to let people perform more productively." Basis Set's website said this in 2017! Now @xuezhao raised her firm's 4th fund, at $250M. wsj.com/articles/basis…

I asked a16z's @DavidGeorge83 what's the upside for a private investment in OpenAI at a valuation approaching a trillion dollars. It's all about monetization of the huge user base, he said. Here's more of what he told me: wsj.com/articles/andre…

Great mention of @ArrivedHomes in WSJ today, by @ychernova. wsj.com/articles/real-… “We think it’s healthier when homes are owned more directly by individuals even if they’re rentals, rather than being concentrated inside massive funds,” said Ryan Frazier (Arrived CEO)