As a transformative year draws to a close, venture capitalists Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, and Rory O’Driscoll gathered for a special year-end episode of 20VC x SaaStr. In this "Big Fat Quiz of the Year," the trio broke down the founders, funds, and companies that defined 2025, while also making bold predictions for what lies ahead in 2026, including major tech IPOs and the potential for a significant "tech lash" driven by AI's economic impact.
From Dario Amodei being crowned "Founder of the Year" to the surprising prediction that SpaceX will IPO before OpenAI, and from unprecedented talent wars to the looming threat of AI-induced unemployment, this discussion offers a definitive look at the current state of the tech industry and its future trajectory. A key takeaway for B2B SaaS companies: those that failed to reaccelerate with AI in 2025 were deemed to have received an "F minus." Furthermore, the panel warned that if unemployment rises by even 2-3 points next year, "society will be terrified of AI."
Top Takeaways from the 20VC x SaaStr Discussion
Founder of the Year: Dario Amodei and Anthropic's "Sensible Play"
The panel's unanimous choice for Founder of the Year was Dario Amodei of Anthropic. Their decision wasn't based on fears of mass unemployment, which the panel largely dismissed, but rather on exceptional execution. The release of Claude 3.5 and 4 was seen as a game-changer, enabling innovations like "vibe coding" and powering platforms such as Cursor, Lovable, and Replit. Jason Lemkin emphasized, "Without this, we have no vibe coding. Many of these products existed for years. They did not work until Claude."
Rory O'Driscoll also highlighted Anthropic's impressive business execution, noting a growth rate faster than OpenAI and valuation convergence, even amidst OpenAI's potential new round at $800 billion. He praised Amodei's focus on profitability and sensible growth, making Anthropic a top stock pick for investors at the start of the year.
Honorable mentions included Gwyn Shotwell at SpaceX for navigating geopolitical challenges, Alex Wang at Scale AI for strategic execution, and Vlad Tenev at Robinhood for achieving over $100 million in revenue across nine products.
Fund of the Year: Index, Neo, and the Power of Sticking to Your Knitting
Index Ventures secured the win for pure execution, with notable investments in Wiz ($32B announced this year), Figma (seed), and Revolut ($75B). Rory O'Driscoll underscored the importance of exits, stating, "Exits are the coin of the realm."
Jason Lemkin, however, championed Neo for its "aesthetics and hustle," citing early investments in Cursor and Cognition. He described Neo's founder as actively engaging with the ecosystem, even giving programming tests himself.
- At the seed stage, Hummingbird received a nod for its $100 million fund returning $800 million on a single deal, including being the first investor in Lovable.
- For Series A, Benchmark was praised for a "killer fund" with investments in Manus, Sierra, Firework, Lora, Cerebrus, and LangChain.
- Thrive Capital was recognized in the growth category for its central position in OpenAI, along with investments in Cursor, Databricks, Carvana, and Revolut.
The wildcard for corporate investor of the year was Google, holding significant double-digit ownerships in SpaceX (~10%), Anthropic (~14%), and the majority of Waymo.
The Biggest Surprise: Talent Wars Threw Out Every Convention
The panel agreed that 2025's biggest surprise was the complete upheaval of traditional talent acquisition and compensation norms. Examples included Meta paying $100 million for individual researchers, a $14 billion deal to acquire a company's team while investors retained the remaining assets, and even venture funds being acquired. Rory O'Driscoll remarked, "The entire convention on why people buy companies, how employees get treated, how much a human can be paid to do a job got thrown out of the window in the space of 6 months. Blew me away."
This aggressive talent acquisition was rationalized by the massive capital expenditures in AI. "If you're spending $73 billion on capex, spending $5 billion to make sure the people using the capex know what they're doing probably makes sense," the panel noted.
Another massive surprise was the disappearance of any perceived ceiling on venture outcomes. Companies like Lovable saw their valuation jump from $2 billion to $8 billion in weeks, and Anthropic's early $100 million valuation was deemed "the deal of the century from a risk-reward outcome." This "no ceiling on venture" phenomenon, they concluded, "changes all the math and calculations."
Breakout Company: Databricks Rode the AI Wave Like Nobody Else
Jason Lemkin articulated the industry's mandate: "Every founder, every VC—our job was to ride this torrent of AI. If you're not an LLM, your job this year was to ride the greatest wave of our lifetimes."
Databricks exemplified this perfectly. In 2021, their focus was on cloud compute and data management, with no mention of AI. Now, they boast $5 billion in revenue, growing at 55% and accelerating, while competitors like Snowflake have seen comparatively small AI revenue. "If we had to have canon of the year for who rode the AI wave and utterly changed the trajectory of the company, it would be Databricks," the panel asserted.
Other breakout companies included Eleven Labs, which scaled to $400 million ARR while fending off OpenAI competition, and Open Evidence, which captured 500,000 of the 1 million US doctors in a year by perfectly targeting medical search.
2026 IPO Predictions: SpaceX First, OpenAI Last
Jason Lemkin offered his predicted order for major tech IPOs in 2026:
- SpaceX: Likely in the summer, citing its maturity and clear path.
- Canva: Second, despite a less-than-perfect AI story, its strong numbers suggest a "do it now before looking obsolete" strategy.
- Databricks: In the latter half of the year, described as "just the Series M" due to its continuous funding rounds.
- Anthropic: By year-end, as a "simpler way to solve their capital needs."
OpenAI, surprisingly, was predicted to go public much later, possibly mid-2027, due to its high burn rate. The panel also highlighted the unprecedented challenge of taking a company public at a $1 trillion valuation, an "unsolved banking problem" given the long-term ownership stakes of many early investors.
Best Performing Tech Stock 2026: The AI Tailwinds Will Accelerate
The top B2B public stocks—Palantir, Cloudflare, Monday, Shopify, CrowdStrike, Snowflake—have all successfully integrated AI tailwinds. Jason Lemkin predicted that at least three of these would remain in the top six next year, stating, "the trends aren't going to change much."
The contrarian bet for 2026 was Salesforce. Trading at all-time low revenue multiples (5-5.5x), its "Agent Force" product, once scaled, is expected to be highly coveted by every Salesforce customer. "Would you like this agent to automatically go after all the customers your team didn't follow up with? Sign me the f*** up," Lemkin quipped.
A warning was issued regarding Adobe, labeled "the worst offender" for claiming $5 billion in "AI-influenced revenue" without corresponding net new bookings. The panel criticized companies that merely attribute existing growth to AI without demonstrating genuine new value creation.
The Co-Pilot Failed. Here's What Actually Works.
Jason Lemkin declared "2025's biggest failure was the co-pilot." He described the cynical approach of many B2B companies: "We're not going to put it in our base product. We're not going to make the core product better. But we're not going to provide so much value that you want to pay for it. That was the cynical whiteboard of January 2025 that failed up and down the B2B board."
Notion was presented as a counterexample. If Notion truly achieved 50% growth at $600 million, the only explanation, according to the panel, is customers paying $20/month instead of $10 for its AI offering. Lemkin, a 10-year Notion customer, stated, "I can't use Notion without AI... It's worth the 2x." Very few B2B companies, they noted, have earned that premium.
Buy One, Short One: Nvidia vs. Amazon
Rory O'Driscoll's pick was to buy Google and short Nvidia. He argued that while Nvidia would do fine if the capex cycle continued, Google has upside if the "capex tide goes out."
Jason Lemkin strongly disagreed with shorting Nvidia for 2026, asserting, "You're a fool to invest against Nvidia for 2026. There's not enough time for competing GPUs and TPUs to get into data centers that don't exist." He conceded that 2027 might be different, but "2026—the bet's still on."
Amazon was identified as an underperformer candidate, up only 2% this year, with insufficient time for its AI strategy to fully materialize.
The Coming Tech Lash: "Society Will Be Terrified"
The most worrying prediction from the panel was the impending "tech lash." If unemployment rises by 2-3 points next year for any reason—tariffs, business cycles, or bank events—AI will inevitably take the blame. Rory O'Driscoll noted that AI executives already acknowledge a potential impact on unemployment. He warned, "Politics doesn't work by looking at BLS data by subgroup. All they'll know is: unemployment's ticked up, and those guys building AI are admitting the crime. They're like, 'We did it. We put you all out of a job.'"
Jason Lemkin concurred, predicting that "When there's hard numbers at the top of the New York Times... it will become every dinner table conversation. Society will be terrified of AI." The dark humor of the situation was summarized by Lemkin: "If the robots are going to take over society, I want to be sure that I own the robots."
Quotable Moments
Harry Stebbings
"What was the biggest surprise of 2025? The three days when Windsurf was being bought by Cognition and I interviewed Varun the day before—are they being bought? Are they not? OpenAI was buying them and then they're not—that was a bizarre moment."
"Nvidia investing $100 billion into OpenAI and the start of the circular deals... all of us giving up on caring about things like circular deals. We've all stopped caring. If it marks up my fund, great. It's just the way it is now."
"Which companies go public in 2026? SpaceX, Canva, Databricks, Anthropic—four IPOs backloaded next year. OpenAI probably should have gone first, but it's burning too much."
Jason Lemkin
"The product of the year is Claude 3.5 or 3.7. Without this, we have no vibe coding. Without this, we have no Lovable, no Replit, no Cursor that really works. Many of these products existed for years. They did not work until Claude."
"What agents can do—we just started. Outside of parts of coding, we just started. We haven't missed the boat as investors. We haven't missed the boat."
"If the robots are going to take over society, I want to be sure that I own the robots."
Rory O'Driscoll
"The entire convention on why people buy companies, how employees get treated, how much a human can be paid to do a job got thrown out of the window in the space of 6 months. Blew me away."
"Exits are the coin of the realm. The only fair way to measure things is: did you end up owning a lot and having big ownership in big exits?"
"If the AI kind of lift starts to recede, they'll all come down because they're way over their long-term valuation. Pennies in front of steam wheels. Someone's going to look up and say, 'Oh my god, 70x... I should panic.'"
This post is part of the ongoing 20VC x SaaStr collaboration. Happy holidays from the team—see you in 2026.
