Prime Highlights:
- Sangeen Zeb, general partner at Google Ventures, is gaining recognition for investing in some of today’s most talked-about startups.
- Zeb evaluates startups by looking at their growth potential and the founder’s ability to execute successfully.
Key Facts:
- His notable investments include OpenEvidence ($3.5 billion), Harvey ($5 billion), and Thinking Machines ($12 billion valuation after a recent seed round).
- Zeb joined Google Ventures in 2021 and focuses on backing high-growth enterprise startups.
Key Background:
Sangeen Zeb, a general partner of Google Ventures (GV), is gaining fame as the investor in some of the startups that have gained popularity today. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, he was inspired by Warren Buffett and became interested in investing at a very young age.
Since coming to GV in 2021, Zeb has been specializing in rising enterprise startups. The most significant investments that he has made are OpenEvidence (3.5 billion dollars), Harvey (5 billion dollars), and Thinking Machines, which just raised a seed round worth 12 billion dollars.
Zeb employs the four-step methodology when making decisions to support startups. The first one is whether or not the company can become large and whether the founder can lead it successfully, the second one is whether or not he would support the founder even should he or she trip up, and the third one is whether the team can keep up with the high rate of technology change in AI.
Reflecting on his investment in Harvey, Zeb said, “There’s no land. They’re running on lava. They know the models are changing underneath them, and the way we interact with software is evolving. They’ve always pushed the pace.”
He also addressed the high valuations in the AI space. “There is scarcity. Some of these companies are growing faster than anything we’ve seen before, and there are only a few of them. That drives valuations,” he explained.
Looking ahead, Zeb believes the next generation of AI models will go beyond scaling and compute, potentially advancing intelligence beyond current large language models. His insights highlight both the great opportunities and the careful risks that shape the fast-growing startup world.
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