Скачать или смотреть This Month In Venture With Gavin Appel + Tobi Skovron

This month on In Venture, Gavin and Tobi step into 2026 like it’s Game 7.

From December through mid-February, the scoreboard is flashing.

💰Funding Is Back. But Smarter.
Cut Through Venture’s latest report shows $5.1 billion raised in 2025 - up $1 billion on 2024. Fewer deals, bigger conviction.

👀390 investments, down from 470
61% of capital - $3.1 billion - flowing into AI-led businesses
Checkbox $100m
Operata $100m
Splose $46m
Fluency $30m

Translation? Less spray-and-pray. More sniper fire.

🦄New Unicorns Enter The Arena
Gilmour Space blasted past a $1B valuation after raising $200m+
Neara raised $90m using AI to digitise power infrastructure
Space and energy. Not exactly side hustles.

🤑VCs Sitting On Dry Powder
EVP - $100m new fund
Square Peg - $650m first close
Second Quarter Ventures - Fund III chasing a $2.6B opportunity
Capital is loaded. Now it’s about discipline.

🚀IPO Watch. Still Warming Up.
ROKT - no IPO in 2026
Airwallex - regulatory headwinds
Canva - quiet, but now bigger than Atlassian in local tech pecking order
HotDoc - sold to Potentia Capital for $200m+
Not a flood of exits. But smart ones.

And Then… Elon 🧞
Tesla invests $2B into xAI
xAI merges into SpaceX
Combined valuation - $1.25 trillion
Focus - self-growing city on the Moon, then Mars
Meanwhile Starlink runs its first Super Bowl ad.

🏃People Moves + Local Shake-Ups
Michael Batko steps down from Startmate after 8 years
Robyn Denholm departs Tech Council of Australia
Culture Amp appoints Caroline Rawlinson as CEO, Didier Elzinga to Executive Chairman

And then the harder headlines:
Sendle shuts down
LaunchVic winds down
SXSW Sydney gone
Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxis globally
Anthropic drops Claude updates that rattle markets

It’s messy. It’s fast. It’s opportunity.

This episode isn’t just news. It’s pattern recognition. Funding is up. AI dominates. Fewer but bigger bets. IPOs cautious. Exits selective.

The game has changed. The serious players stayed on court.

Tune in 🎯