Will Cursor Kill Figma? Lightspeed Raises $9B & OpenAI’s $1B from Disney & #1 App in App Store

Quick Overview

Lightspeed's massive $9 billion fundraising highlights a trend where mega-funds dominate venture capital by focusing on late-stage, high-growth companies, which experts argue negatively impacts seed-stage economics while simultaneously benefiting venture capital by keeping highly valuable companies like OpenAI and Anthropic out of public markets, creating a "super cycle bet."

Key Points: Lightspeed raised $9 billion across six funds, approximately $2 billion allocated to venture/early stage, with the rest mostly for growth, prompting the question: "if you're not playing the big game do you really matter?" The continued lack of IPOs for leaders like DataBricks and SpaceX is described as "the greatest gift of venture in our lifetimes," as it allows VCs to capture all the value privately, exemplified by Tesla IPOing at $1.7 billion versus SpaceX staying private. Disney invested $1 billion into OpenAI, which the speakers analyze as a cross-licensing deal allowing OpenAI's image generator to use Disney content, potentially setting a template for IP licensing in the age of AI, described as the "revenge of IP." The rapid convergence of software categories due to AI is a major theme, exemplified by marketing, sales, and support merging into single agents, and the potential for design and production tools like Figma and coding environments like Cursor to converge into a single agent. Oracle's stock plunged 45% from September highs following disappointing earnings and high capex spending ($12 billion quarterly) dedicated to data centers for OpenAI, suggesting the market is scrutinizing capital-intensive infrastructure plays. The growth of OpenAI's mobile app has slowed to single digits, leading to speculation on whether it can transition into a 'meta app' like Meta or stagnate around 800 million users, contrasting with Anthropic, which might benefit from focusing on enterprise without consumer adoption headwinds. Apollo predicted zero public equity returns over the next 10 years based on high entry P/E ratios, echoing historical patterns where buying at peaks, like in 1999, resulted in decade-long stagnation, as seen with Cisco stock only recently returning to its 1999 price.