Delian Asparouhov on venture's K-shaped funding curve, SPVs replacing traditional VC, and the upcoming IPO wave

story that gets told about that era before we go into you know whatever we're doing next. Uh anyway [clears throat] we have Delian as Bruhoff from Founders Fund and Varta in the Reream waiting room. Let's bring him into the TVP and Ultradom. Delian, how are you doing?

Hello brothers.

Welcome back.

Good to see you.

First first appearance you did 18 last year. We're hoping to 10x this year. We got to keep on a venture trajectory. So, 180 hits this year.

Welcome to the show. Uh, I hope your 2026 is off to a good start. Uh, any New Year's resolutions? Do you like New Year's resolutions? Do you have any meta commentary about New Year's resolutions?

My, uh, you know, goal is to just wear only quarter zips for the entire year and, you know, just lean into my new stylist, you know, sort of recommendations on, uh, you know, just looking like a wise venture capitalist that is, you know, ready to uh, go ring a bunch of, uh, NASDAQ bells this year since.

There you go. or New York City rain, baby.

Yeah.

Uh yeah, that TB Green is looking fantastic. Good. Uh props to your stylist.

Okay. Uh first question. We were reading in the Wall Street Journal today that you're cooked that venture capital is cooked. Venture capital fundraising declined 35% in 2025. Are you cooked? Is it over? Are you going to be uh leaving the industry after uh disaster has struck according to the journal? What's your reaction? you know, you're getting this um like, you know, sort of K-shaped um you know, nature to venture, you know, sort of right now, which has been happening for, you know, sort of a couple years, but it's happening both doing ketamine.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Um we we're just kholing and we [laughter] like, you know, really focus in on one company just like

we just told Vanity Fair we don't promote drugs.

We don't promote drugs. Sorry. We take ketamine and we give it to horses. That's for all the horses that we own. But the this bifurcation that's been happening. Do you have the riding jacket on? Oh, that's a good one. This is this is good merch. Rare rare founders fund merch.

Uh

anyways, we only, you know, use that stuff for our horses.

The horses,

but yes. Oh, so so so where did the K-shaped split come from? Is this interest rate driven or just LPS are realizing that it's better to pile into the big winners? Give me more on the dynamics. Look at FF. You have uh a big fund raised in 2025, but it could have been way bigger. Uh overs subscribe. Part of the issue is PT's hogging all hoging the whole fund. Uh but uh but but there's instances where there's like way more demand for a specific fund than there is actual, you know, allocations available. And then other cases more on the the emerging manager side where they just can't even get going.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. What are you seeing, Dian?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think you know there's a couple different like forces at play here. A part of it is like if you actually even just study the like old days of like you know sort of PE for example when you go from like the you know barbarians at the gate days to today PE kind of went through like a similar dynamic at super cycle where you had like you know cottage industry to start then got super you know sort of scaled and there were a ton of different players and then steadily there was you know a bunch of aggregation basically over time um that you know led to you know some you know sort of mega mega funds like the KKRs etc of the world um I think you're basically seeing you know basically venture go through the same thing And I think you started to see basically like that K-shape really accelerate in 2021 and then has only basically continued since then. And I think you're seeing it first on the company side of things, right? I think we've talked about this before, but like um you know, if you look at it on like a deal count basis, we're basically just on a strict linear decline since the peak of 2021 in terms of total deals done by all VCs across the globe that I think basically like north of $5 million. it's like just strictly going, you know, sort of down in terms of number of companies basically, you know, sort of per per year that are looking like that. Um, so company formation is down, deal count is down, and so by default, you basically have obviously, you know, sort of fewer logos that you can chase. Um, and so you're getting more aggregation into a much smaller set of logos on the company, you know, basically side of things. At the same time, you're seeing, you know, um, you know, companies stay private for much longer. And so like the liquidity in the public markets is getting vacuumed up by an even smaller set of companies because like there's just a small set that are the mega ones that are raising these like you know sort of huge huge rounds right I think it was something like if you basically added up SpaceX OpenAI um anthropic and XAI basically I think if you added up basically those four companies it was something on the order of like 60% of like the total like you know dollars deployed by VCs in that year were scooped up basically by those like you know sort of four or five companies

and so I think that's like the dynamic that's then flowing through on like the VC you know, basically side of things where [clears throat] if you're one of those companies and you need to now raise like, you know, $10 billion, are you really trying to go out and do that with like a bunch of $10 million checks? It's like no, like you prefer to like, you know, find capital providers that can actually give you, you know, billion dollar checks at a time. So, you just like have fewer, you know, sort of mouths around the table you need to manage. Some of this is regulatory, right? Like I think you can't have more than like I think it's like 6,500 like, you know, institutions on your cap table before you're public. And so, you literally like have to make sure that these, you know, sort of things, you know, aggregate. Um, and then there's a part of it that is like, yeah, just the like power law of venture and tech only continues to be like more and more true. Like, you know, you're dominated by the big. It's IKEA. There's this like um I'm probably gonna butcher it a little bit like you know Peter had this you know sort of like you know thing that he said for sure privately I'm pretty sure publicly too so I don't think he'll mind me you know sort of saying it but he like his like biggest error you know that he says of like his 20 you know sort of tens was you know his impression was just like you know there's not going to be that many like you know you know hundred billion let alone like trillion dollar companies. But it turns out basically like each individual 10x is actually like easier than the last one. basically like once you're you sort of you know trillion dollar you know once you're a hundred billion dollar company it's actually much easier to go to a trillion than it was to go from like 10 to 100 and it's actually much easier to go to 10 to 100 than it is from one to 10 and it's much easier to go from like 1 billion to 10 billion than it is to go from 100 million to 1 billion etc. And so um you know that's you know in some ways that like momentum but getting momentum is just like making it so that these like you know companies get bigger faster they're scooping up capital faster and the venture firms are getting bigger faster. I think the thing where the stuff starts to break is like I don't think that um the current default fee structure is going to be like where the industry is at you know sort of you know 10 years from today. I won't like name names but like there is definitely a decent number of uh these multi-stage mega funds that um you know are doing you know some of their super late stage investing through both like feeless and carryless you know basically SPVS and so at some point if you're doing like a feeless and carryless SPV where you're investing into a late stage startup

you basically just work as IR at the startup right like you know you're like you're not making

me walk me through I mean SPVS are just notoriously uh like they're They're incredible when they hit because it's deal by deal and if you have one true banger it's you're the the GPS that are a part of that are retired. So like in theory they're amazing. In practice like actually trying to go and convince a lot of people and you're basically staking your reputation on that deal because you don't have the aggregate deals that typically go in a fund. you're saying like if you know you you kind of have to say like this is going to work and do my other SPVS so at least like you're you're you're diversified to some degree but it's a ton of work there's a ton of pressure you have to promise the company that you're going to or promise or or imply that you can achieve uh some of investment amount and then you have to go do all this heavy lifting so why is a why is a multi-stage fund incentivized to do that is it just to gain favor with the company like what's the what's the incentive

yeah I mean You know, I think the probably like hidden secret of Silicon Valley is like that there's just like a much higher percentage of capital that is deployed via like SPVS and co-invest vehicles than is probably like publicly acknowledged or discussed. Like there are very top tier tier one, you know, sort of companies including some of the ones that I listed in those like top five that have had rounds come together based off of a significant chunk of the round basically being done by an SPV. Um why do you do it as a company? Well, at the end of the day, if you're like the CEO of a company, you're

No, I'm not saying I'm not saying why do it as a company. I'm saying why do a feeless carryless SPV as

Oh, as a, you know, sort of venture investor, it's

just pure love pure love of the game. I just love deploying capital. I don't need I don't need to make money from it. It's it's volunteer work.

Yeah. I mean I think it's you know a lot of funds the way that they end up like you know sort of growing in AUM is you know they start off with an initial like fixed fund structure and then like you know for their best performing companies do co-invest vehicles you know or like opportunity funds to build that up and then eventually become you know sort of you know multi-stage and can actually like handle basically a growth fund when so they've shown that some of those growth SPVS work. So in some ways,

so I guess in some ways part of it is is maybe they promise LPs like if you back my fund in a big way, I will give you direct access, right?

Or it's value ad. Like if you have you have a stake in a company and you just want that company to succeed, you're like, look, it's value ad. I'm just going to go work get them more money on their balance sheet. Yeah, I'm not making more money off of that piece of the investment by but my original investment is getting marked up and the company's more likely to succeed.

Makes sense.

Yeah. I'll pretend like this is you know hypothetical even if it's not hypothetical but like imagine you're a company like open eye you need to go raise like you know sort of billions of dollars right um uh

you as the CEO have a lot of things on your plate right you need to like manage the government you have customers you have your internal team etc like can you really afford to like literally fully fully fully only be focused on fundraising like no it's like really hard to do that basically as a CEO when you're operating a company yeah

versus if somebody comes to you and is like hey let me do like a like you know basically like fearless carryless you know basically SPV that you know let's be gotten and raise it's effectively like in some ways like outsourced you know IR it's somebody that's working you know on this basically entirely full-time and there's sort of a win-win on both sides as the CEO you don't need to like you know you know do all the you know sort of fundraising with the longtail of like sovereign wealth funds this that and the other they can go do the first sets of like you know meetings then bring you in basically for the final close for like the venture investor it basically ends up being a way where like you now have a really great reputation you know basically with this company because you're basically like you know helping them you know sort of pull together like a mega fund raise for your sets of like you know LPS and for future fixed fund vehicles that you're doing. You now get this reputation of like hey I'm close to this like you know sort of super hot you know sort of company.

Um yeah the optics too non-equity partner in the ex chat says a lot of GPS want to lead around but don't have the AUM. So just getting the optics of being like I'm a size Chad you know leading leading this massive round. It's like and maybe they wouldn't have been able to put it together with a with a more aggressive fee structure. It's just interesting because you on the other side you see some of these, you know, really really uh some of the bad actors in the SPV space are like, you know, layered SPV 10% up front.

Not beer, by the way. Not beer.

There you go.

Fine.

Uh were you surprised uh about the Manis acquisition? Did that trigger you? Uh or are you kind of licking your

They're American. It's so good that that a company like Manis got acquired by a former founders fund portfolio company. Let's give it up for Founders Fund for making it happen. Facebook, you know, seeded by Founders Fund and now going around and acquiring great companies like Manis, right?

You [laughter] know, it's funny. I had like probably like 30 people text me being like, "When are you going to tweet about it? What are you going to say about it?" I just like sitting there and I was just like, "I don't even know what I'm supposed to say." It's just like I'm like,

you know, I'm like a disappointed father. You know what I mean? where it's just like, you know, I just can't believe that this is like, you know, what the world has come to. How has this happened?

I, you know, my favorite meme about it was like, um, you know, there was somebody that like had like a fake text chat between Zuckerberg and, you know, Alex Wang and Zuckerberg going like, "Hey, can you go buy Mattis for me?" And then Alex is like, "Sure, yes, sir." And Zuckerberg goes, "Okay, cool. Thank you. Did you get me like, you know, the like premium or like the premium one?" And Alex's like, "No, I bought Manis.

I bought the whole company." Yeah. [laughter] Uh what what do you think about uh the the the mega I don't even know mega corns going out at a trillion? Is that going to result in more recycling of LP dollars? Is it possible that SpaceX, OpenAI, Enthropic, couple other names get out and LPs feel like I'm going to go back and reallocate venture and this time around I'm going to try, you know, smaller managers again or do you think it'll have a different dynamic? How how does that play out in a in a post successful IPO year?

Uh, you know, my sort of oneliner, I forget if we joked about this in person when we were in LA or if I've done this on TV live before, but it's like it would be incredible if like the thing that props up the 2026, you know, equity market is the spite IPO. And it's just like, [laughter] you know, Elon's just like, "Oh, like um Sam needs liquidity." Like, you know, what if I

not not needs liquidity, he needs like a couple hundred billion.

He needs a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. He needs like a lot of liquidity. like what if I just go IPO and I scoop up all the liquidity in the market and make sure that I do it like faster than he does. But that's the thing that like props up the public markets because all of a sudden like the S&P 500 has like a you know trillion and a half added to it by like a single entity.

Yeah.

Um so yeah, I mean like these you know you know there's you know kind of my joke at the beginning of the show but it's like you know I do think that this you know upcoming year is poised to be at least right now and it feels like there's like the perfect market conditions for it where it's like relatively stable economy inflation's you know sort of relatively under control. Well, you know, it doesn't seem like China's going to be invading Taiwan over the course of the next year. Like, yes, things are like, you know, sort of geopolitically heated, but like it doesn't seem like, you know, I mean, you know, look, we just captured the president of Venezuela and, you know, nobody seems to, you sort of blink and, you know, if anything, the markets are up on the news. And so, it feels like you have this, you know, sort of stable and growing economy that is poised to now basically absorb, you know, probably the largest, you know, sets of entry points in like the, you know, public market and IPO market than it's like ever seen before. And then then obviously you know sort of feeding into like you know sort of liquidity into like the entire Silicon Valley you know sort of ecosystem. Um what is that going to do? I think it's only going to amplify some of these trends where it's like I think that you know it's going to be now more typical for companies you know right now it feels odd that there's a handful of companies that stay private past 100 billion. I think now it's going to be the default that you know companies stay private basically past 100 billion and like the size of these funds is going to like you know increase significantly because yeah your ability to deploy a $10 billion fund much more viable when like you know your average entry point is at like 200 billion post

um and you're you know expected to still be able to make like a three to 5x basically on you know top that because there's more you know regular you know sort of paths like that.

Yeah. Um

do you think there's any do you think there's any uh risk or potential for regulation as as people realize that the returns you know from the private you know as as these companies are staying private longer if you're like excited about anthropic and you can't invest until it's worth you know who knows what it goes out at like at some point I could imagine someone on the left saying like we need to ban companies from staying private this long because you're just letting the the wealthy kind of like suck up all the returns. And uh I even saw Vlad from from Robin Hood posting earlier saying like

we can't you know basically coming out in defense of uh retail and saying like we can't you know these companies can't just stay private forever. And obviously he has very very incent all the incentives to like get these companies out so people can start uh yeah

you know uh doing whatever they want to do. But uh but I I could see something like that happening especially given that um

it will be very interesting as like a chapter just uh I I I know someone who who runs like a pure play AI fund but they're not in XAI open AI or anthropic and so they're in some great names. They're they they they they they got the trend right early, but they didn't like brand themselves. And even some funds that don't have like major positions in one of them, at least they've aligned with one of them built a position, played the game, and like participated in that. And I think once they all go out, everyone will see sort of the S1's and sort of know a little bit more about, you know, where the really elite firms landed in the AI boom. I don't know. part of part of the space SpaceX S1 potentially going out before some of these other names then also having you know if you if there's a world where XAI gets rolled in and then it's like you have a a lab that that uh and a space company and a data center company that you know historically has been profitable maybe obviously not on the XAI side but it's it's going to you know maybe get people to even be more aggressive in tearing apart some of these other S1s

we should do uh we we should do Jared Isaacman and uh and and the space update. But first, I want your advice for Patrick Collison. He's interested in Miami. What does it take for Patrick to have a great experience in Miami?

There is something a little surreal about like the sets of people right now tweeting about Miami were like the people probably like most strongly critiquing it in 2021. And so there's just something about being like, huh, like maybe I was like, you know, like right idea, slightly wrong time, just needed to wait for like California not just to get hit with COVID, but become like, you know, communistic basically and start seizing property. And that's going to be the thing that convinces people.

Um,

on the Miami thing, what do you think about this idea of not moving Silicon Valley to Miami, but moving Sand Hill Road to Miami? Like all the big GPS will be doiciled there. And yes, if you're raising a big round, you'll probably go to Miami, go to someone's house, meet them in person. But a lot of the investors who are not subject to that tax will be operating out of San Francisco. A lot of the labs, a lot of the uh individual contributors, the academic institutions, like the you're not trying to move the entire network, but you're still embracing Miami as a important tech hub.

Yeah. I think if there's like something to be proud of in the time period where I feel like I contributed to Miami the most, you know, call it 21 through 24. Yeah. I do think that um it you know established itself as like a fundraising destination. Absolutely. Between like everybody from like you know Dan Senheim at D1, Ken Griffin from Citadel you know Peter spending a decent chunk of the time there etc. like you know has now very much so become a destination where yeah if you're raising a later stage round or you're even like a you know um not Peter level GP but like you know up and coming

also also you have you have Keith Katherine uh Sachs like there were there were it wasn't just FF that like there was a nice network emerging where you could go and take meetings with five different funds pretty quickly you know obviously that evolved but

yeah I think it's just like it built a base that is now much easier to build on top of where like now you have this like you know sort of second wave that's happening because it's like California, you know, sort of regulation. I think it's like clearly um you know, sort of cementing itself in and I think it's probably what Miami is best suited for anyways, right? Like you know, you know, Francis Suarez would always say like look ultimately what we're best at is like the capital of capital and I think that is like you know you know

that's one of our taglines we refer to as the capital but he can use it. It's fine. Uh give us the update on Jared Jared Isaacman. uh take us through how you process the news and what you're excited for in 2026.

Yeah, I mean he's obviously, you know, early in I think it's been like, you know, two weeks since, you know, confirmation. Um uh there hasn't been any like super broad uh policy announcement yet yet. Um but uh the place where he started to drop some news actually just been like via his Twitter profile, which has been a fun place to, you know, sort of follow along. Um

yeah, or X profile. Uh probably my favorite one is um there's a program called Dragonfly um that NASA has been working on for a while, which is basically this um uh uh so the first time that we ever flew a helicopter on a um you know uh non Earth planet was on Mars um with Ingenuity I believe it was called um which is this helicopter that we got on Mars um sort of related to that. It's you know different program but it's a program called Dragonfly where it's roughly like a small carsized vehicle that is meant to fly on Titan. Um, Titan is one of the Oh god, and I should not mess it up, but it's one of the uh what's it called? Um, moons of Saturn. Either Saturn or Jupiter. You know, I'm a big enough space that I should know. But what's cool about it um is Titan both has four times the density of atmosphere as Earth does, but also basically seven times less gravity. Um, and so with the combination of the two, you basically make it like 30 times easier to fly. Um, and so you and I could literally just like be on the surface of Titan and literally basically just like wear some wings and like if you just ran like relatively quickly, like you don't have to be Usain Bolt, like even at our level of fitness, basically just go and flap our wings and like we would basically start flying and with like a little bit of like exoskeleton or anything like that, you could 100% like fly as much as you want.

Um, and so Dragonfly is this like small car- sized like flying car basically with like a nuclear battery on board. Uh, the program had been like, you know, definitely a little bit behind schedule, behind budget, etc. But like, you know, Jared basically came out very publicly on Twitter being like, "This is one of my favorite programs. This is the type of like bleeding edge science that like NASA should be doing." And so, I do love that he's kind of leaning into like, you know, I don't know, you know, my dream job would absolutely like the one thing that would make me like upend my entire life and quit everything would be like if I was offered NASA administrator, I think I would do that immediately. And um if that was, you know, if I was in the job right now, like yeah, I think the thing that we should be doing is like NASA should be doing just like the crazy bleeding edge like stuff that just like no private company's going to do. Like a [ __ ] like flying car on Titan is just like

objectively like insane. But like there's a world where they're going to be able to basically like live stream, you know, or like stream basically like video of this like car going around Titan and like, you know, flying through dunes and stuff like that. It's like so so, you know, sort of cool. Um, and then on the flip side, you know, you know, they've like figured out how to just like, you know, really focus on the commercial private market for like the things that are much more near-term and what the commercial industry is capable of. Um, so I don't know if you guys saw, but I tweeted this that, you know, basically this year we're going to have four separate totally net new commercial lunar landers, basically uh land on the moon this year. It's um Intuitive Machines has one. Um Astrobotic has one. Uh Blue Origin um has one. And SpaceX, it's not SpaceX. They don't actually have a plan um for [snorts] um this year.

Firefly. Duh. Firefly. Firefly.

Um uh and you know, for it's worth the like Blue Origin, you know, Mark One lander is like the size of like it's like a two-story house. It's like it's going to be the biggest man-made object that we've like ever landed on the moon. And I will say like um you know until a quarter ago I was probably a little more skeptical that like you know Blue Origin was actually going to like land this thing. Now it's like you know you see that New Glenn is actually like launching landing. It's like man they maybe have like really turned a corner on like you know their engineering and systems you design

but the the cool thing is like even if Blue Origin eps it up there's also like three other companies that are aggressively pursuing it are getting like paid basically like commercial revenues to go do this. And to me it's just like this like breakout year that I still think is like I don't know underpaid attention to and under discussed like you know this is the analogy that I tried to provide is like this kind of feels like 1968 where it's just like you have like the you know basically year before where it's like I don't know if you know but in February uh we're going to be sending uh humans basically back to the moon for the first time not on the surface but to like orbit the moon. So like that's going to the moon four different landers basically on the moon. It's like all in preparation for if that all goes well,

there's like a really, you know, decent likelihood that like next year we both have like boots on the moon and like 10 landers landing per year on the moon and dropping off robots and supplies and [ __ ] like that, which is just like, I don't know, 15-year-old Delian would just be like, so

yeah, so excited.

We got to sponsor the biggest moonlanding conspiracy theorist for a trip. They got to go up there. We got to just put him on the moon. Uh, settle it once and for all. Jord's getting the tin foil hat on. He thinks that it's not.

What uh what kind of evidence would would you need to see from these missions to kind of finally

finally believe it? [laughter]

I'm kidding. Uh I put on the

I put on the I put on the tinfoil hat for another thing. Uh uh uh Trump's been going pretty hard on fentinel trying to stop it from coming into the country. At the same time, you've seen an explosion of Chinese peptides. Do you have any concern that this is a this is all just a big scop and we're trying to get a generation of people in the United States to just inject themselves tinfoil in the peptides chemicals. People don't realize you were saying you've lost a bunch of weight just by being a Chad. No peptides needed. I get a little concerned because every it feels like in the last two weeks you have everybody's like I guess I got to be doing peptides and it's like this like the the source and the purity of these things matters so much. You're injecting these things into your blood. This is not something that you just want to mess around and find some random Chinese website and just hope that they're the test results that they have on the site are are actually real.

Yeah.

Yeah. I will say um you know I uh you know regret taking the you know sort of uh you know co vaccine and not sure that like you know for my um you know age and health um it was the you know right risk reward. I am definitely you know not yet ready to start injecting my body into a bunch of peptides. who knows, you know, they've got some nanomarkers on there where the Chinese release a virus that's like specific to those peptides and they've designed it the um I'll provide kind of like an example of this about how paranoid the Chinese are. So the tin foil for like Xiinping,

he had this meeting in uh 2023 with Biden in San Francisco. If you guys remember when like they came and like cleaned everything up for the Xin visit and there's a bunch of like memes around that.

Yeah. um after a like sit down meeting that they had like I think it was like down in like Monterey or something like that, a like Chinese official after the meeting came by and sprayed basically um everything that like Xi Jinping had touched um everything that like you know he put his lips on to like you know sort of drink um and uh the like you know US official basically asked him like hey like you know what is the thing that you just used or sprayed reasonable question to ask and it was a basically like a DNA degrader because they were so worried about the idea of like somebody in America having Xi Jinping's DNA and then potentially optimizing a virus that is like super specific and optimized for him. And so the Chinese are thinking about like you know DNA specific viruses

makes you think like you know they might be designing DNA or like peptides basically you know viruses that are targeting you know sort of individuals or groups. That is Yeah, that's crazy. I was thinking I was thinking he was worried about us cloning Cinping and then he's fighting himself, a younger version of himself. He's Oh no, the new US president. I hate him, but he's my own.

They go to negotiation. It's just she Trump and the younger [laughter] hund of them. Hundreds of seed pings just storming the

How how did you process uh the the the true social post about the military salary cap and uh and the budgets?

Just you know incredible to have him as the you know sort of commander-in-chief, somebody that's like actually willing to like you know crack the whip on this stuff where it's just like yeah like why should these companies be optimized for like shareholder returns and like executive salaries rather than like making sure that they're delivering for the war fighter. And it's crazy to me that it's not like you know he like did the broad industry thing and then like I don't know if you saw but he like specifically then started calling out Rathon where he's just like they are not like responding to feedback they're not delivering enough and like you know went down to the individual logo and so um yeah I think it's like you know sort of you know yeah incredible piece of you know sort of policy and like you know bold commanderin-chief and like um you know obviously

I think right now it's an incredible post

get into policy right

yeah but but that's the nature of these things like we saw this with Intel policy it could just be like you know you know subtle acquisition policy where it's just like I mean you know secretary headed can go implement you know who he wants to buy from without asking congress for permission. So

oh that's a good point. Yeah. Okay. So even if it's just directional it doesn't need to be new law. It doesn't need to be an executive order to have an effect to have an effect on the stock price. But of course the defense tech stocks actually mooned because the because the defense budget is potentially going up by 50%. Do do you have a read on this how big this will be for the industry? Is this a boon for startups in defense tech or do you think that you know the the the big primes of the world will just like quickly get their act together and then go hoover up a lot of that new budget? Yeah, I mean I think there are going to be a set you know that are like leaning in like um you know one of the examples I think uh I think it's like BAE has like you know done a whole set of like startup collaborations where like I think they have like a collaboration with like applied intuition on one of their ground vehicles like you know they have like a something with Merlin I want to say on like one of their like you know basically like airplanes that they build I have to go back and look but I remember like reading through one of their like you know quarterly earnings calls or like you know maybe there's like a tectonic like the you know defense newsletter articulating like all the various partnerships they had and it's like yeah they clearly recognizing like they have things that they're good They're make they're good at like making the ground vehicle and the frame around that and the wheels etc. They just like have a whole manufacturing line etc. They're not as good at like like the avionics, the software, the automation, etc. And so like they're leaning in on startups. There's clearly primes like that that I think are like really leaning in and varied forward. And then you have ones that like clearly seem to think like oh this is just like a total fad like you know the like you know Trump administration isn't going to really push on this. And so yeah, I think it's like a huge opportunity for both the primes that are leaning in and appreciating that they need to like actually be much more aggressive, you know, invest more in R&D, partner more with startups. I think it's great for like obviously like the neopimes.

And it's just there's a huge opportunity where it's like I think if you add up basically like SpaceX, Andreal, everybody, all the neopimes we found in the last, you know, basically like, you know, 15 years, they still represent basically like less than like 1% of the total, you know, basically D budget. And so there's still a ton of upside from some of the big guys basically stumbling. Um, so yeah. Yeah, I think uh yeah, the Rathons of the World are definitely not reacting as well, but it's not to say that like every prime is getting taught caught totally flatfooted. Like some are definitely, you know, reacting to this new environment.

Yeah. Well, it's 1 p.m. Jordy. Anything else?

This was great.

Thank you so much for taking the time as always.

Only 179 more appearances to go. [laughter]

179 more to go, baby. 99 beers on the wall.

Let's go. Have a great rest of your day. Happy voice. See you. [screaming] Up next, we have Arun Gupta, the founder and CEO at Stickerbox. Happy Co. Uh the