XOXO, Your Daily Dose of VC Tea ☕

February 11, 2026

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

Your favorite anonymous insider here, back with the piping hot tea on what's shaking in the venture capital world. And honey, we have a LOT to unpack today. Major checks being written, AI dominating the headlines, and some truly delicious drama on the timeline. Grab your oat milk latte and settle in.

💰 The Big Deals: Who's Writing Checks and Who's Cashing Them

Spotted: Primary Ventures closing a massive $625M Fund V. That's right — the NYC-focused early-stage firm is sitting on more dry powder than a Hamptons beach house has sand. Word on the street is they're doubling down on enterprise and fintech. Someone's feeling bullish on the Big Apple. 🍎

Sources say: Runway just locked down a $315M Series E at a cool $5.3B valuation. The AI video generation darling is officially in unicorn-plus territory. Hollywood, meet your replacement. Or at least, your very expensive new intern.

You didn't hear it from me, but... Mistral AI is making moves in Sweden, pouring investment into Nordic AI infrastructure. The French AI powerhouse is going full Eurovision — conquering Europe one data center at a time. C'est magnifique. 🇫🇷🇸🇪

Also spotted on the fundraising circuit:

• Cybersecurity continues to be the sector that simply will not quit. Multiple rounds closed this week across endpoint security and cloud-native platforms. SecOps is the new black, darlings.
• Healthtech is having a moment — digital health platforms are pulling in serious institutional money. Because apparently, disrupting healthcare never goes out of style.

🔥 What the VCs Are Saying

Our favorite corner of the internet — where venture capitalists become thought leaders, philosophers, and occasionally, poets.

Spotted on X: The discourse around AI capturing nearly 60% of all global VC funding in Q4 2025 has the timeline absolutely buzzing. Everyone has an opinion, and none of them are quiet about it. This post breaking down the numbers is making the rounds.

Word on the street: Andrew Ng's latest wisdom is circulating like fine wine at a Napa fundraiser — his take on trusting domain expert intuition paired with AI-assisted coding for faster prototyping has founders and investors alike furiously screenshot-sharing. The man said "trusting a domain expert's gut gets you speed" and a thousand pitch decks were immediately rewritten. Catch the full thread here.

The hot take of the day: A spirited debate on whether seed-stage valuations have gotten completely out of hand is raging across VC Twitter. One side says the market is frothy; the other side says you're just not seeing enough deal flow. The replies are... *chef's kiss*. Grab your popcorn here.

Meanwhile: This viral breakdown of early-stage investment trends in 2026 is being quote-tweeted by seemingly every partner at every fund. The data nerds are eating well today.

💻 The Hacker News Corner: What the Builders Are Buzzing About

Overheard in the orange-tinted halls of Hacker News:

• A heated thread on PitchBook's new AI-powered valuation tool and whether data-driven valuations will finally kill the "vibes-based pricing" era. (Spoiler: the comments section thinks not.)
• The eternal debate about whether VC funding actually helps or hurts startups is back with fresh ammunition. This time with receipts. And graphs.
• A deep dive into why deep tech and hard science startups are finally getting the love they deserve from institutional capital. The nerds are winning, and honestly? We love to see it.

🫖 The Spill: Quick Sips

• AI remains the undisputed queen bee of VC — roughly 6 out of every 10 dollars flowing into venture is AI-related. If your startup doesn't have "AI" in the pitch, do you even exist?
• NYC is having a venture renaissance. Between Primary's mega-fund and a wave of new seed funds launching in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the coasts are competing harder than Blair and Serena.
• Crypto/DeFi quietly creeping back into VC conversations. Some funds are dipping toes back in. Others are pretending they never left. The irony? Chef's kiss.

You know you love me, XOXO - Gossip Girl 💋

P.S. — If you're raising a Series A and you're not telling your deck that you're "AI-powered," are you even trying? Just saying.

Sources: TechCrunch, SaaS News, SecurityWeek, Fierce Healthcare, Yahoo Finance, Twitter/X, Hacker News, Business Insider, CNBC

Sent from my Zo Computer