‘We’ve never had a fundraising deck’: Here’s where venture capital stands now and where it’s going next

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If you want a pulse check on where the venture capital industry is at, consider the software supply chain security startup Chainguard, which has raised $500 million across two rounds in less than a year. “We’ve never had a fundraising deck,” Ryan Carlson, president of Chainguard, said yesterday on the Future of Venture Capital insight exchange at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah. He added later: “We’re not going to create a deck next time either.”For some companies, deals can’t get done fast enough. OpenAI is reportedly worth some $500 billion these days and raised $40 billion in funding earlier this year. Autonomous weapons startup Anduril notched a $30.5 billion valuation earlier this year, less than a year after its last multi-billion funding round. If you are looking at companies in the cybersecurity, generative AI, and defense tech space, deals are hot. But it’s not everyone. “Some companies, no matter what you’re doing, you’re not getting any term sheets,” says Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures. “And the ones that are getting interest are getting, like, 12, 15—I mean, they’re double digits. And I’ve been in this business for 20 years, and I’m trying to remember the last time when there were double-digit term sheets for the hot companies.”Investors disagreed about whether we have entered an AI bubble, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested at a small dinner with reporters last month—or even an era akin to the dot-com boom, in which investors poured capital into any company related to the internet only for many of those companies to end up going under. The economics for AI companies, in particular, are different. As Sapphire Ventures’ Cathy Gao pointed out, companies are growing to $100 million in ARR faster than ever—and with fewer people. But they are also not as efficient as software companies once were, as they have to spend exorbitant fees on things like compute.“People are betting on the fact that compute costs will continue to decline, and over time, it’ll be a much more profitable company. So we’ll see if that plays out,” Gao said.Where will things play out? Adam Zeplain of mark vc had some thoughts on that one. “Here’s what I know—that none of us know shit,” he said. “Two years from now, we’ll all be sitting here, and the competition will be very different, and there’s a lot of humility, and there’s a lot of excitement in that.”More from Brainstorm Tech… We are out here in Park City, Utah, chatting about self-driving cars, fertility benefits, and ŌURA rings. This week, DoorDash Tony Xu talked about how the path to autonomous deliveries has been filled with “lots of pain and suffering.” Lyft CEO David Risher said that the company would save some $200 million from reduced insurance costs after the union deal it struck with California lawmakers. Jeffrey Katzenberg said legislation to protect children from online harm is unlikely. The Walmart U.S. CEO says staffing levels will remain steady even as A.I. becomes a bigger part of work.See you tomorrow,Jessica MathewsX: @jessicakmathewsEmail: jessica.mathews@fortune.comSubmit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.This story was originally featured on Fortune.com