Rebecca Kaden

BREAKING: USV Raises $900M in New Funds

$500M dedicated for early-stage, & a $400M opportunity fund

The largest fund cycle in the firm's history.

FULL INTERVIEW + HQ TOUR

For more than 20 years, Union Square Ventures deliberately kept its funds small.

I sat down with General Partners Fred Wilson (@fredwilson ), Rebecca Kaden (@rebeccakaden ) & Mike (@mignano), to break down why the firm is getting bigger now, what it's betting on, & where VC goes next.

Nick Grossman (@nickgrossman ), also a General Partner, was out of town for the recording.

@usv was early to Twitter, Etsy, Twilio, MongoDB, Coinbase, Duolingo & Abridge.

Their new thesis is that AI could obliterate entire markets.

"I was a little surprised how many of them said, 'Are you sure you shouldn't raise more?'" -- Rebecca Kaden

We cover
› Why USV raised $900M & why some LPs wanted it to raise more
› Series A checks now running $10M to $30M
› Supertake, USV's first incubation, & a seed strategy built around incubations + proprietary seeds
› The "Rebel Alliance" & the case for open AI infrastructure
› Why energy is 20% to 30% of the portfolio & one of the cleanest bets on AI

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Fred, Rebecca & Michael, GPs at USV
(01:12) USV's biggest fund ever: $900M
(02:13) TOUR: Inside USV's New York office
(07:19) An AI agent that runs your portfolio
(12:38) AI Agents won't watch Netflix for you
(14:00) USV's new strategy for the AI era
(16:54) The real cost of building in AI
(21:03) The fight over monetizing Twitter
(23:54) Why Amazon is shutting out agents
(31:02) Why smaller funds pick better
(33:40) What Series A looks like now
(40:17) Is ARR a fake metric?
(46:00) 20 years of USV's biggest wins
(51:10) Why great founders still fail
(57:46) Will Anthropic compete with its customers?
(59:54) Why Coinbase moved off Claude
(1:01:44) An AI doctor that writes prescriptions
(1:04:09) Your AI lawyer is the worst it'll ever be
(1:08:29) Who protects you from your own AI agent?
(1:11:58) Fred Wilson's been hacked 4 times
(1:13:31) Coinbase: a security company in disguise
(1:16:28) Betting on markets that don't exist yet
(1:21:16) From first-time founder to Suno

Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.

When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.

With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.

Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.

They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.

0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?

Today, @Experian announced Experian Cashflow Attributes for commercial lenders. 💸

Experian Cashflow Attributes for commercial lenders leverages technology from @slopepay to help accelerate the delivery of commercial cash flow capabilities to clients.

We raised $97M in Series B funding round, led by TQ Ventures with Eclipse, Union Square Ventures, Giant Ventures, and seven other investors joining. Total funding to date: $173M. Full story below.

efficient.computer/resources/anno…

#ElectronE1 #EnergyEfficiency

Introducing @Supertake, a new platform that transforms your unique takes on the world into real, shareable investment portfolios using frontier AI and trading agents.

Supertake makes it easy for anyone to invest in their ideas, even if they know nothing about investing.

1/

Introducing @Supertake, a new platform that transforms your unique takes on the world into real, shareable investment portfolios using frontier AI and trading agents.

Supertake makes it easy for anyone to invest in their ideas, even if they know nothing about investing.

1/

I'm excited to share Tutor's next generation of robots, pushing the frontier of robot capabilities in real customer deployment.

Meet Sonny, a human-inspired mobile robot running our Ti-series VLA built for the real world.

I took on a new role as an Investment Partner at @usv earlier this year. Shared some thoughts on why and what's ahead: x.com/i/article/2099…

Today @IsembardGroup is launching the largest factory to open in London since WW2. (1/n)

Consumer agents have tipped from cool in theory to addictively essential to how I live and work. It's awesome. Now the 2 biggest things I crave (in order of importance):
1/ multiplayer functionality: Can my Instinct or Townie coordinate directly with my husband and friends' Instincts or Townies? Absolutely game changing (and wonder why more haven't prioritized multiplayer mode upfront.)
2/ figure out making phone calls. It's somewhat bizarre how much of the world still runs on phone calls but there are probably 3-5 times a week this comes up and I'm itchy for the agents just to integrate a way to do it.

My conversation with @rebeccakaden

Rebecca Kaden is a General Partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the world's leading venture capital firms and an early investor in companies like Twitter, Etsy, Coinbase, and Twilio. She focuses on identifying the next generation of technology platforms shaping the future of AI, energy, and software.

We discuss why AI is still dramatically underhyped, how the next wave of billion-dollar companies will be built, the future of open versus closed AI ecosystems, why venture capital operates on decade-long cycles, and the frameworks Rebecca uses to evaluate world-changing technologies before the rest of the market.

We also discuss:

- Why USV open-sources its investment thesis
- The four possible futures of AI
- How AI agents are changing venture capital
- Why USV is investing in programmable energy
- Why the best VCs think in decades, not years
- Why founders should optimize for bigger outcomes, not safer bets

Enjoy!

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
5:28 - Market Cycles vs. Fund Cycles
8:28 - The Rebel Alliance & Open Ecosystems
11:18 - The Four Quadrants & Future Of AI
12:51 - Programmable Energy Bets
14:02 - Renewed Application Layer Conviction
18:11 - Public Thinking as Alpha
21:39 - Developing and Testing a Thesis
27:16 - Changing Market Structures From The Outside In
33:26 - Flexibility in Small Fund Sizes
35:59 - Selling on the way up
39:58 - Building Internal AI Agents
47:00 - Data at the Edge Thesis
51:46 - Trailblazer Trade-offs

The name behind the plane: Lewis.

First flown in 1985, Scooper 282 began its career as a CL-215, serving Ontario and later Minnesota before being converted into a CL-415EAF and joining Bridger Aerospace in 2020.

Today, it carries the name “Lewis” in honor of Lewis Kaden, a respected New York businessman and former staffer to Senator Robert F. Kennedy. His legacy of service and leadership now lives on through an aircraft with a long history of service of its own.

Missions flown: 307
Gallons Dropped: 9.8 Million

#superscooper #lewis #aerialfirefighting #bridgeraerospace #aviation