Startups, therefore, have a tremendous amount of growing to do to get anywhere near their most recent valuations, or face significant downrounds (or worse, no round at all). Unfortunately, this growth needs to happen in the context of a slower customer demand.
Private equity firms may play an outsized role in this new environment, whether on the buy or sell side.
One could imagine FAANG companies spending several billions to acquire AI companies that may not be high on revenues but have strong asset value, whether AGI focused research labs or horizontal platforms a la Hugging Face
