The Dealflow by Founders Capital - Edition 32

Key News and Trends

Anthropic’s Revenue Rocket: Tripling to $26B by 2026

Anthropic is projecting $9B in ARR by end-2025, with internal forecasts targeting up to $26B in 2026. Enterprise demand now drives 80% of revenue, led by Claude Code’s billion-dollar run rate. With 300K+ business clients and a fresh $183B valuation, Anthropic’s enterprise-first model is quietly catching up to OpenAI’s scale while emphasising safety and governance. Read more here

OpenAI’s $13B to $1T Equation

OpenAI is reportedly generating $13B in annual revenue, but it’s planning to spend $1T over the next decade to secure 26 gigawatts of compute from Oracle, Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. Only 5% of its 800M users pay, yet those $20/month subscriptions are printing billions. The goal? Turn ChatGPT into the backbone of AI infrastructure via projects like Stargate, effectively becoming both the software and the silicon. Read more here

Goldman Goes Secondary: $965M Buyout of Industry Ventures

Goldman Sachs is acquiring Industry Ventures for up to $965M, reinforcing the bank’s $540B alternatives platform. The 25-year-old firm, with $7B AUM and a 18% IRR across 1,000+ investments, is a cornerstone of the venture secondary market. As IPOs stall, liquidity engineering is becoming its own asset class, and Goldman just bought the playbook. Read more here

SoftBank Reloads: $5B Arm-Backed Margin Loan

Masayoshi Son is raising $5B against Arm stock to double down on OpenAI, robotics, and Stargate infrastructure. The new facility lifts SoftBank’s Arm-backed margin loans to $18.5B, funding Son’s bid to cement SoftBank as the financial spine of the global AI build-out. With $1.2T in AI-linked debt now in circulation, the line between venture and leverage has officially blurred. Read more here

Founder’s Take: Goldman Sachs Bought The Playbook for Liquidity Engineering

Goldman Sachs’ $965M acquisition of Industry Ventures is less about expansion and more about their strategic position. The world’s most famous investment bank is buying the architecture of venture liquidity itself.

Industry Ventures, with $7B AUM and a 25-year record in secondaries, has quietly been the market’s pressure valve, manufacturing exits when IPOs vanished and LP patience wore thin. As founder Hans Swildens put it, “Just waiting for IPOs doesn’t work anymore.” Goldman agrees. By integrating Industry’s secondary, continuation, and buyout capabilities, it’s effectively turning private markets into a perpetual motion machine, recycling capital at scale.

This marks the institutionalisation of venture’s back end: secondary liquidity as an asset class. In an era where liquidity equals power, Goldman’s move cements its dominance not by leading the next IPO wave, but by owning the infrastructure that underwrites it.

Top Venture Deals

Poolside - $2B Raise at $14B Valuation (NVIDIA, CoreWeave, BlackRock, xAI)

• AI coding startup Poolside is finalising a $2B raise valuing it at $14B, alongside unveiling Project Horizon, a 568-acre self-powered data centre in West Texas developed with CoreWeave. Equipped with 40,000+ NVIDIA GPUs and eight planned 250MW build phases, Horizon will integrate on-site gas power from Occidental Petroleum infrastructure - tackling compute and energy bottlenecks head-on. Read more here

Oura - $900M Series E (Fidelity, Temasek, Elysian Park Ventures, Forerunner Ventures)

• Finnish wearable tech company Oura has raised $900 million at an $11 billion valuation, more than doubling from its $5B mark less than a year ago. The Series E, led by Fidelity Management & Research, cements Oura’s position as the leading independent player in health wearables, with over 5.5 million rings sold and profitability achieved. The company expects to surpass $1B in annual sales by year-end, driven by enterprise contracts, its largest client is the U.S. Department of Defense, which uses Oura’s rings for physiological monitoring. Read more here

Dexory - $165M Series C (Eurazeo, LTS Growth, Endeavor Catalyst)

• UK logistics intelligence startup Dexory raised $165 million to scale its AI-powered warehouse automation platform, DexoryView. The $100M Series C was led by Eurazeo, with participation from LTS Growth and Endeavor Catalyst, alongside existing backers Atomico, Lakestar, and DTCP. Operating across Europe, North America, and APAC, Dexory’s autonomous robots now process over 500 million warehouse scans, providing live, structured visibility for global clients including DHL, Maersk, and GE Appliances. With profitability approaching and a growing U.S. footprint, Dexory is positioning itself as the operating system for the physical supply chain. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Nscale

• London-based Nscale, an AI infrastructure provider, confirmed plans to go public in late 2026, following a $14B cloud compute deal with Microsoft that cements it as a key supplier of 200,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPU.. Founded in 2018, Nscale has raised $1.5B+ to date, including Europe’s largest Series B, with investors such as Dell, Nokia, NVIDIA, and Blue Owl. The firm’s growth trajectory mirrors the surge in AI infrastructure demand, positioning it as Europe’s closest public proxy for hyperscale compute. Read more here

Strava

• San Francisco–based fitness social network Strava is gearing up to go public as Gen Z trades dating apps for running clubs. With 50M MAUs and downloads up 80% YoY, Strava’s gamified fitness community has become a cultural mainstay, driving over $180M in annual consumer spend via subscriptions and partnerships. CEO Michael Martin said IPO proceeds will fund acquisitions, with the company last valued at $2.2B. As wellness shifts toward community-driven tech, Strava’s float could redefine the social fitness economy. Read more here

See you in the next edition,
The Founders Capital Team

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