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Back in October, my worldview was flipped upside down by my experience building with Claude Code + Opus 4.5. I wrote a couple essays about how vibecoding will rewrite finance job descriptions and company-building blueprints. Then, as tends to happen, the magic wore off and Claude Code became just another tool in my toolkit, running in the background while I work on other tasks. So it has been fun to see the entire tech world have their own "down the rabbit hole" moments with Claude Code over the last few weeks. Anthropic's release of Claude Cowork helped non-technical folks see that agents are going to become useful in domains outside of coding in 2026. And finance's time is coming; I fully expect that forward-thinking individuals will start onboarding production-grade assistants before the calendar turns to 2027. It's going to be a wild year, and we're super excited here at airCFO. |
| 💡 (Fund) Size Matters |
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The big news in fundraising to start 2026 is that a16z raised $15B across 5 funds. The scale of a16z's operation is staggering: they're investors in 10 of the top 15 private companies by valuation and accounted for 18% of all US VC funds raised in 2025. But that's just a symptom of a bigger shift. The venture capital ecosystem has split into two camps: megafund platforms and specialized boutiques. They operate by completely different rules. A $500M exit can return an entire boutique fund. For a16z, that same exit represents 0.15% progress toward returning their capital. The discourse around whether these mega-raises are good for the ecosystem got me thinking about what all this means for founders raising capital in 2026. I break it down in my most recent Substack article. |
| 🫀 The Ecosystem Pulse |
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a16z: The Power Brokers I mention this one in my essay this week - Packy wrote a monster deep dive on the institution that is a16z. They raised $15B by betting that tech outcomes are getting massive enough to support their scale, have built platform teams that can help portfolio companies punch above their weight, and they're in DC actively shaping policy. Whether you're a fan or not, they're making bold bets & reshaping the venture capital landscape in the process. What Does It Take to IPO? Most founders think they're 2 years away from an IPO but the reality is that only about 5% of unicorns actually have what it takes to go public. This article breaks down the real requirements and infrastructure you need to get there. It's a good gut check on the gap between what founders tell themselves vs. what the market is actually demanding. Momentum != Moat Thoughtful pushback against the current obsession with hypergrowth. Kyle makes the case that when VCs only chase momentum, they're actually funding a generation of companies with broken unit economics that won't be able to survive long-term. In the process, the 'middle class' of solid but not spectacular outcomes effectively gets killed off. |
| 🔦 Tool & Resource Spotlight | ||
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| 🤝 airCFO Content Connection | ||
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That's all for this edition of The AI CFO - we'll be back in your inbox every other week with more musings on the future of AI-powered finance & operations. Please reply to this email directly with any feedback/suggestions/just to say hi! Cheers, Alex Wittenberg, CEO @ airCFO |
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