XOXO, Your Daily Dose of VC Tea ☕

February 22, 2026

Hey Upper East Siders (and Sand Hill Road dwellers)...

Word on the street is the AI funding machine is still printing money faster than a crypto bro during a bull run. But you didn't hear it from me—sources say some of your favorite AI business models might be on borrowed time. Let's spill.

🍵 THE BIG DEALS

Ricursive Intelligence: $335M in 4 Months? Must Be Nice 🤑

Spotted: Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, the dynamic duo behind Ricursive Intelligence, just pulled off what might be the fastest funding sprint in recent memory. After leaving Google Brain and Anthropic (where they literally created Alpha Chip—an AI that designs chip layouts in hours instead of years), these co-founders raised a $35M seed led by Sequoia, followed immediately by a $300M Series A at a $4B valuation led by Lightspeed.

The kicker? They're not building chips—they're building AI that designs chips. Nvidia is both an investor AND a potential customer. That's what I call having your cake and eating it too. ¹

MARA's $168M French Connection 🇫🇷

Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings just dropped $168M to acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a French AI computing infrastructure company. As crypto mining margins get squeezed post-halving, the smart ones are pivoting to AI and HPC. Europe gets sovereign AI infrastructure, MARA gets a foothold in enterprise markets. Everyone wins. ²

Benchmark's New Partner: Jack Altma Joins the Ranks 👑

Sources say Benchmark just announced that Jack Altma (founder of Lattice, now of Alt Cap) is joining as their newest General Partner. The firm emphasized their "equal partnership" model—where every founder benefits from the combined experience of the whole team. Founders are apparently calling Jack "the first call for the toughest problems." That's quite the endorsement. ³

💅 FEMALE FOUNDERS & VCs MAKING MOVES

Valkyrie VC Launches with $45M 💪

Beth Turner, former Managing Partner at SVAngel, just launched Valkyrie VC—a $45M early-stage fund investing in AI, infrastructure, and critical industries. In her own words: "Valkyrie was built for you. To partner with you. To build what matters." ⁴

Katherine Boyle's American Dynamism: $1.776B Fund 🇺🇸

The iconic Katherine Boyle (a16z GP and co-founder of American Dynamism) just announced they've raised $1.776 billion for American Dynamism Fund II. The thesis? Invest in companies supporting the national interest. As Boyle put it: "It turns out, America has everything to do with technology." The fund targets defense, aerospace, manufacturing, and infrastructure. ⁵

🚨 WHAT THE VCs ARE SAYING

Marc Andreessen's Onion Theory of Risk (a16z) 🧅

"You can think about a startup on day one as having every conceivable kind of risk. The way to think about it is—you're peeling away risk as you go and by achieving milestones."

This clip from a Y Combinator talk is making the rounds. The insight? De-risking is the key to justifying each funding round. ⁶

Watch the clip →

Marc Andreessen on Pricing: "Raise Prices, Raise Prices, Raise Prices" 💰

"A core principle of pricing is that you don't want to price by cost if you can avoid it. You want to price by value... Higher prices are often good for the customer because the higher price means the vendor can make the product better, faster."

This one's for all you engineers out there thinking cheaper = better. Andreessen argues higher margins fund better R&D, better distribution, and faster growth. ⁷

Full thread →

Katherine Boyle: "Founders, When People Who've Never Built Anything Criticize You..."

"Don't let it phase you. Go direct and tell everyone exactly what you've done."

Short, punchy, and exactly what a lot of founders needed to hear this week. Boyle's no-nonsense advice has been making the rounds. ⁸

See the post →

a16z's AI Companion Request 🎮

Anish Acharya wants an AI companion that plays Minecraft with his son. Not just for gaming—but to model pro-social behaviors and be "cool and chill" while doing it. The ask? "There's a lot of room for teaching through these types of relationships." Another example of VCs pitching startup ideas publicly. ⁹

Watch →

⚠️ CHECK ENGINE LIGHT: AI WARNINGS

Google VP: Two Types of AI Startups May Not Survive 🚨

Darren Mowry, who leads Google's global startup organization, has a warning for AI founders: LLM wrappers and AI aggregators have their check engine lights on.

"If you're really just counting on the back-end model to do all the work and you're almost white-labeling that model, the industry doesn't have a lot of patience for that anymore."

The survivors? Companies with deep moats—like Cursor and Harvey AI. The vibe coding and developer platforms (Replit, Lovable, Cursor) had a "record-breaking year in 2025." But Mowry's bullish on biotech and climate tech too. ¹⁰

🎓 YC THEN VS. NOW

Quang Hoang did Y Combinator twice—once in 2016, once in 2025. His take?

• Then: 100 people per batch, family-style dinners, partners cooking, Paul Graham present
• Now: 3x larger batches, more streamlined, brand "10x better," Demo Day less critical

The core principles haven't changed—talk to users, code, grow weekly—but the machine is definitely bigger. His advice to second-time founders: "You have more and more young founders... You want young founders that don't know limits." ¹¹

💣 THE BILL GATES TAKE THAT AGED POORLY

Remember when Satya Nadella wanted to invest $1B in OpenAI back in 2019? Bill Gates' response:

"Yeah, you're going to burn this billion dollars."

Nadella did it anyway. That $1B became $13B. OpenAI is now the world's most valuable private company. Microsoft holds a 27% stake worth ~$135B. Gates later admitted on The Tonight Show that AI means "humans won't be needed for most things." Sometimes even the billionaires get it wrong. ¹²

📊 QUICK BITES

• TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 early bird pricing ends Feb 27. Save $680 or cry later.
• Orange Slice (YC-backed) raised a $5.3M seed for AI agents in spreadsheets that help sales teams find ready-to-buy companies. ¹³
• a16z dropped a primer on "factory economics" for hardware startups—because when the factory IS the product, traditional SaaS metrics don't apply. ¹⁴

🎙️ PODCAST CORNER

• 20VC: Recent episodes covered Brex's $5.15B acquisition, Anthropic's $10B fundraise, and whether "the middle is dead in VC." ¹⁵

You know you love me,

XOXO — Gossip Girl 💋

Got tips? Subpoenas? Series B announcements? You know where to find me.