Yuliya Chernova

By one metric, China’s slice of global biotech venture capital has risen to 15% from 9% last year, while the U.S.’s has slipped to 58% from 64%. The U.S. industry has taken note - by @wsj's Brian Gormley wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

“The amount of co-investment we’ve seen in the last month has been more than what we’ve seen last year. It’s absolutely crazy,” says Aakar Vachhani, managing partner at Fairview Capital Partners. More in my column in WSJ Pro Venture Capital. venturecapital.cmail19.com/t/d-e-wnltjy-j…

Chemistry Ventures, one of the strongest newcomers on the venture scene of late, is closing in on a $500 million sophomore fund, with the bulk of capital already committed, sources said. A fun scoop with my new colleague @sarahklearman! wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

@Katie_Roof @BusinessInsider @politico @Telegraph What a get for @businessinsider! Congrats!

Poached again! 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve accepted a new role as Editor-at-Large at @BusinessInsider, where I’ll continue covering VC, IPOs etc. I’m also joining Axel Springer’s new program contributing to sister publications including @politico and @Telegraph . businessinsider.com/business-insid…

Scoop: Ashton Kutcher exits from Sound Ventures to set up a new firm with Morgan Beller, former GP at venture firm NFX. wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

The share of 2025 computer science graduates becoming founders doubled to 6% from 2.9% in 2022, according to SignalFire. About a fifth of the startups founded by these young entrepreneurs already raised venture capital. wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

Payments startup Forage raised a $40 million Series B to help retailers accept SNAP food assistance benefits wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

NY City Council Speaker Julie Menin & a16z’s @dhaber kicked off NY Tech Week at City Hall today. The Speaker proposed a local Y Combinator, praised Cornell Tech & said NY officials shouldn’t use rhetoric that pushes businesses away. Background: the mayor’s spat w/ Ken Griffin

The best founders don't end up in New York by accident. They come because this is where the hardest problems, the biggest customers, and the highest stakes are. The city demands you build something real. I've always believed the best opportunities live between fields of expertise — not inside any single industry, but at the intersections. No city in the world has more intersections than New York. Finance and media. Healthcare and technology. The customers who need AI to actually work — banks, hospitals, newsrooms, asset managers — are all here, within a few miles of each other. AI adoption is accelerating faster than any cycle I've seen. Per @PitchBook, AI is now 65% of NYC venture deal value, up from 16% six years ago. Early-stage funding hit $8.9B in 2025, up 50% in a year. Active unicorns: 32 in 2019, 159 today. The infrastructure of a generational tech hub is being built in real time. We're still early. The biggest deals haven't happened. The companies that define applied AI haven't been built. The founders who build them will be ambitious. They'll want to be where the problems are. They'll be here. NY @Techweek_ starts today. Come build 🗽

New York venture firms are broadening their geographic reach. Examples: Primary, Work-Bench, and Deviation (formerly Two Sigma) Part of the reason: AI mania in SF is hard to ignore. NY seed investing declined as a share of total in the U.S. last year. wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

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…