Yuliya Chernova

Nous Research, maker of open-source AI assistant Hermes, has raised $90 million in venture funding. Hermes was downloaded more than 22 million times since February. It overtook OpenClaw and other open-source assistants by usage, per OpenRouter. wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

Climate-tech VCs don’t talk much about climate change these days. They are focused on AI and data centers. Who isn't? "Decarb is dead for now," is how @SophiePurdom put it. Is that antithetical to climate-tech's purpose? We discuss! wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

Check out today's WSJ Pro Venture Capital daily newsletter. (Now available with a WSJ.com url). Leading the newsletter is @sarahklearman 's piece on Menlo Ventures' new hire & growth investing strategy wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

John Borthwick’s NYC-based venture firm Betaworks was the first investor to back Hugging Face, writing a $150,000 check in 2016. It now owns a stake that could be worth $650 million. Scoop: wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

Large exits are generating less & less return. Stats on the heels of Airtable acq: The difference between exit value and the company’s last valuation for exits of $500M+ narrowed to just 15.5% this year, down from 60%+ in 2021 (PitchBook.) See my column: venturecapital.cmail20.com/t/d-e-wvjttt-j…

Scoop: Bryan Kim, a former partner at a16z, is launching a new venture firm, Mido Capital, with plans to raise about $100 million for its debut fund, sources say wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

Freestyle had sold part of its stake in Airtable in earlier rounds via secondaries, Samuel said. "We sold at the top." This is a common practice for the firm when a portfolio company reaches unicorn status.

The acquisition of Airtable is a ‘kick in the gut’ for software unicorns and their backers. "I believe Howie was ahead of the curve for what I think many other B2B SaaS companies need to do,” said Freestyle's Dave Samuel, an early Airtable investor wsj.com/pro/venture-ca…

In the age of the acquihire and founder poaching, VCs are asking founders: Will you quit on me? “It’s a feeding frenzy right now. Corp dev is everywhere" @shcallaway wsj.com/pro/venture-ca… via @WSJ

“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

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

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.  

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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…

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

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…