GV’s Sangeen Zeb on investing in AI unicorns like Harvey, Thinking Machines, and OpenEvidence

“I knew what investing in stocks was at a comically young age, hilariously young,” said Zeb. “I’m eight, my family has no money, and the local news is on: ‘Warren Buffett’s the richest man in the world, and he lives here.’ How did he make his money? Was it chemicals? Is he an inventor? Is it real estate? No, he bought stocks.”

Zeb, decades later, isn’t buying stocks, but he is an investor: Zeb joined Google Ventures (GV) in 2021 and is a general partner at the firm, investing in AI and enterprise companies. 

“The most humbling thing is that, no matter how good I am at this job, I will never be the most famous investor from my small hometown,” Zeb jokes. “That brings me down a notch.”

His investments include some of the moment’s most sought-after (and hyped) startups, including OpenEvidence (last valued at $3.5 billion), Harvey (last valued at $5 billion), and Thinking Machines (valued at $12 billion after its seed fundraise). Zeb takes a four-pronged approach when looking at AI startups. You can frame them as questions. The first two are simple: Can the company be big and can that founder actually execute? The next two are more existential. He always asks himself: “If this person fails, would I turn around and hand them a check to go do something else the next day?” And, then, in recognition of just how fast-moving AI is at this point: Can these founders keep pace with the rate of technological change?

“I remember someone once asking me [regarding] Harvey: Is it a land grab?” Zeb told Fortune. “And I said: there’s no land. They’re running on lava. They know the models are changing underneath them, the way we’re interacting with software is changing. Soon, software will be talking to other software… [At Harvey], they were always hyper-aware of all this. They were saying: ‘We have to move faster. We have to push the pace.’”

I asked Zeb, who also serves on the board of the vibe coding platform Vercel, how he feels about the stratospheric valuations (some for extremely early-stage companies like Thinking Machines). 

“I do actually understand why valuations are so high—there is scarcity,” he said. “If you look at a few companies, they’re growing like nothing we’ve ever seen. But there are only six of them. So that’s part of the reason we push on these valuations. Even the model companies in the news they’re also growing like nothing we’ve ever seen. We benchmark them against the Mag 7 companies, and we’ve never seen anything like it.”

Term Sheet asked Zeb the seminal question of this series: What’s next?

“The way we think about models will evolve,” said Zeb. “The way that the second generation of model companies are built, I think they’re going to require things beyond scaling and compute. And I do think we’re hitting the limitation on getting the outcomes we want in terms of intelligence… The next set of models is going to advance us beyond large language models.”

Term Sheet Podcast…This week, on the Term Sheet Podcast, we have Supabase’s Paul Copplestone! Paul knows a thing or two about running a fast-growing company: We last connected with Paul when Supabase raised its $200 million Series D, at a $2 billion valuation. Paul stopped by Term Sheet to talk about building an “egoless” company culture, why he likes hiring founders, and how being from New Zealand has impacted his perspective as an entrepreneur. Listen and watch here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X:@agarfinks
Email:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

- CapitalRX, a New York City-based pharmacy benefit management platform, raised $252 million in Series F funding. WellingtonManagement and GeneralCatalyst led the round.

- MorseMicro, a Sydney, Australia-based provider of Wi-Fi HaLow silicon solutions, raised $59 million in Series C funding. MegaChips led the round and was joined by NationalReconstructionFundCorporation, Blackbird, MainSequence, and others.

- Obot.AI, a Cupertino, Calif.-based developer of model context protocol software, raised $35 million in seed funding. MayfieldFund and NexusVenturePartners led the round.

- Greptile, a San Francisco-based AI code review platform, raised $25 million in Series A funding. BenchmarkCapital led the round and was joined by CoryLevy, YC, and InitializedCapital.

- EpicPadel, an Arlington, Va.-based padel tennis owner, operator, and investor, raised $10 million in seed funding. NowaisWorld and StrydeVentures led the round and were joined by 305Ventures, HighWaterVenturePartners, LaneHoldings, OffCourtVentures, and others.

- Genstore, a Westlake Village, Calif.-based AI-powered platform for building online stores, raised $10 million in seed funding. Weimob led the round and was joined by Lighthouse Founders’ Fund.

- Track3D, a Milpitas, Calif.-based AI-powered construction monitoring platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding. IronspringVentures and ZacuaVentures led the round and were joined by ShadowVentures and MontaVistaCapital.

- Testkube, a Wilmington, Del.-based continuous testing platform for Kubernetes, raised $8 million in Series A funding. RatmirTimashev and InsightPartners led the round.

- Belfort, a San Francisco and Leuven, Belgium-based encrypted compute company, raised $6 million in seed funding. VsquaredVentures led the round and was joined by Anagram, ProtocolVC, InoviaCapital, and angel investors.

- Superpanel, a San Francisco-based AI intake system designed for plaintiff law firms, raised $5.3 million in funding. OutlanderVC and FieldVentures led the round and were joined by others.

- DaltonTx, a London, U.K.-based AI platform designed for drug discovery companies, raised £4 million ($5.6 million) in seed funding from redalpine, IQ Capital Partners, Seedcamp, and Oxford University Innovation.

- Ankored, a Boston, Mass.-based youth sports safety and compliance platform, raised $4 million in seed funding. RallyVentures led the round.

Private Equity

- KKR and CPP agreed to acquire a 45% stake in SempraInfrastructurePartners, a San Diego, Calif.-based energy infrastructure platform, for $10 billion in cash.

- Agile Utility Partners, backed by PostCapitalPartners, acquired Ground Haw, an Athens, Ga.-based utility locating platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- BregalMilestone acquired a majority stake in SkySparc, a Stockholm, Sweden-based digital transformation company for treasury and finance companies. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Com Laude, backed by PX3 Partners, acquired MarkMonitor, a Meridian, Idaho-based corporate domain management company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Security Fire Systems, backed by BlackfordCapital, acquired Lakeview Security, Fire & Communications, a North Little Rock, Ark.-based security solutions company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Solifi, backed by TAAssociates, acquired DataScan, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based wholesale finance and inventory risk management company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Funds + Funds of Funds

- Archetype, a New York City-based venture capital fund, raised $100 million for its third fund focused on decentralized infrastructure and onchain applications.