After missing early AI, Lightspeed remade itself and is poised to score with Anthropic
According to Newcomer, on a Monday morning in April 2023, Lightspeed Venture Partners co-leaders Ravi Mhatre and Bejul Somaia told partners worldwide to clear their calendars for the day, even board meetings, because months after ChatGPT's release they did not believe the firm was primed to meet the moment. Lightspeed had missed breakout AI companies including OpenAI — where rival Khosla Ventures held an early stake — as well as ElevenLabs and Hugging Face. The meeting Somaia led ran seven hours, with partners breaking into subgroups and reconvening, colleagues in Europe and Israel staying on past midnight, centered on the question of what it would mean to act as though AI would change everything. The article says Lightspeed is now poised to score with Anthropic.
It is a case study of how an established VC firm repositioned after missing generative AI's first wave, and hints at how much an Anthropic stake matters to its investors.