The Dealflow by Founders Capital - Edition 34

Key News and Trends

OpenAI Goes Fully For-Profit

OpenAI has officially completed its for-profit recapitalisation, transforming the lab into a corporation under the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. The Foundation now holds 26%, with Microsoft controlling ~27% (valued at $135B) and investors and employees owning the rest. With SoftBank’s $30B commitment now cleared, OpenAI can raise and acquire freely a shift marking its evolution from mission-led lab to AI industrial powerhouse. Read more here

OpenAI Preps for a $1 Trillion IPO

OpenAI is reportedly preparing for an IPO that could value the company at up to $1 trillion, setting the stage for one of the largest listings in history. Sources indicate the ChatGPT maker may file as early as late 2026, with potential proceeds exceeding $60B. The firm is on track to hit a $20B annualised revenue run rate by year-end, even as it continues to burn capital to expand AI infrastructure. CEO Sam Altman called an IPO the “most likely path” given OpenAI’s colossal funding needs, a sign the once-nonprofit lab is now firmly an AI-industrial powerhouse gearing for Wall Street. Read more here

Nvidia Becomes a $5 Trillion Titan - The New Oil Is Compute

Nvidia just became the world’s first $5 trillion company, propelled by insatiable AI demand and the announcement of a $100B strategic tie-up with OpenAI. CEO Jensen Huang’s Washington keynote positioned Nvidia chips as “the infrastructure layer of intelligence,” spanning data centres, robotics, and self-driving factories. With $26B in quarterly profit and estimates of $4 trillion in AI infrastructure spend by 2030, Nvidia now holds the crown, and the keys, to the next industrial revolution. Read more here

Musk Launches “Grokipedia”

Elon Musk has unveiled “Grokipedia”, an AI-written encyclopedia built by his startup xAI, positioned as an alternative to what he describes as woke Wikipedia. The platform currently hosts around 885,000 AI-generated articles that can’t be edited manually - users instead prompt Grok to make adjustments. Observers quickly noted that many entries appeared to be copied directly from Wikipedia, prompting Musk to promise a fix “by year-end.” The Wikimedia Foundation responded by pointing out that “even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.” Read more here

Founder’s Take: Rewriting the Playbook

OpenAI’s path from nonprofit lab to trillion-dollar IPO candidate signals a profound shift in how frontier companies mature. What began as a research mission is now a capital-intensive industrial enterprise preparing for what could be the largest public raise in history.

If this listing goes ahead, it could reset the tempo of the entire venture landscape. After years of stretched IPO windows and delayed liquidity, a successful OpenAI debut would test investor appetite for scale, speed, and story at once - potentially reopening the path from private to public for the next generation of ambitious startups.

Top Venture Deals

Crusoe: $1.375B Series E (Mubadala Capital, Valor Equity Partners)

• Crusoe, the AI factory company, has raised $1.375B at a $10B valuation to scale its vertically integrated AI infrastructure and Crusoe Cloud platform. The round was co-led by Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners, with participation from NVIDIA, Founders Fund, and Tiger Global. Crusoe operates one of the fastest-growing clean-energy AI data-centre networks, spanning 45GW of power capacity and gigawatt-scale campuses across Texas and Wyoming. With 99.98% uptime and clients including Cursor and Together AI, Crusoe is emerging as the next-generation infrastructure backbone for AI computation. Read more here

Synthesia: $200M Series D (GV, Accel, Kleiner Perkins)

• London-based Synthesia, the AI-video platform for enterprise training and communication, secured $200M at a $4B valuation, led by Alphabet’s GV. Used by companies such as DuPont, Xerox, and Spirit Airlines, Synthesia enables businesses to create multilingual, human-like training videos without cameras or studios. Having rejected a $3B acquisition offer from Adobe earlier this year, Synthesia plans to expand into marketing and advertising automation, positioning itself as the enterprise layer of AI video creation. Read more here

Mercor: $350M Series C (Felicis, Benchmark, General Catalyst, Robinhood Ventures)

• San Francisco-based Mercor, the AI-powered recruitment platform, raised $350M at a $10B valuation. Founded in 2023 by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, the platform uses large language models to streamline talent discovery, evaluation, and onboarding across the global tech sector. CEO Foody describes Mercor’s mission as building AI that understands intent and trade-offs, not just automation, a reflection of how AI is now being embedded directly into human decision-making processes across hiring and workforce intelligence. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Discord

• Discord, the gaming and social communication giant, has officially filed for a U.S. IPO, positioning itself as the largest gaming-sector listing since Roblox (2021). With $890M in annual revenue and a ~$6.8B implied secondary valuation, the firm plans to expand monetisation through ads and in-platform commerce while maintaining its core Nitro subscription model. The move follows Microsoft’s rejected $12B takeover offer and signals Discord’s intent to become a mainstream digital communications platform, blending community, content, and commerce. Read more here

Medline Industries

• Medline Industries has filed for a U.S. IPO that could value the company at up to $50 billion, signalling one of the largest listings of the year. With revenue up about 9.7% in the first half of 2025 and profit rising, the move is being framed as a bellwether for the broader IPO market’s revival. Read more here

See you in the next edition,
The Founders Capital Team

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