Week of November 10th, 2025

Welcome to AlphaInsights, 8alpha.ai’s weekly newsletter, your ultimate source for curated insights and key updates from the dynamic world of venture capital!

From billion-dollar rounds to market-defining shifts, we deliver the intelligence powering the global investment landscape, moving investors and innovators forward. At 8alpha.ai, we’re not waiting for the future of capital, we’re building it. Stay sharp, stay curious, and stay ahead.

STARTUPS

ROUNDS AND UNICORNS

The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: A Varied Lineup, Led By Crypto And Parking (Crunchbase, 5 min read)

1. Ripple (Cryptocurrency): San Francisco-based Ripple, a crypto payments company, raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation. The round was led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities

2. Metropolis (AI-powered Parking): Los Angeles-based Metropolis, an AI-powered checkout-free parking platform, secured $1.6 billion in debt and equity, including a $500 million Series D at a $5 billion valuation

3. Armis (Cybersecurity): San Francisco-based Armis, which provides tools for monitoring cyber risk exposure, raised $435 million in a pre-IPO round at a $6.1 billion valuation. The financing was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity

4. Synchron (Neurotech): New York-based Synchron, a developer of nonsurgical brain-computer interface technology to restore communication and mobility for people with paralysis, raised $200 million in Series D funding

5. Hippocratic AI (Healthcare AI): Palo Alto-based Hippocratic AI, which builds generative AI healthcare agents, raised $126 million in Series C financing at a $3.4 billion valuation. The round was led by Avenir

VCs pull back from China AI investment (PitchBook, 3 min read)

Chinese AI is booming in public markets but stalling in venture funding: while core Chinese AI conglomerates like Alibaba are up 113% year-to-date, VC investment in the country’s AI sector has dropped to just $6 billion across 574 deals in 2025, far below 2024 levels. By contrast, AI deal value has surged to $174.6 billion in the US (up 61.5% vs. 2024) and $21.9 billion in Europe (up 19%). The pullback reflects structural headwinds: a weaker domestic economy, Chinese VC funds raising less than a quarter of last year’s capital, and a sharp decline in foreign participation (only 112 cross-border deals totaling $2.1 billion in H1)

• This is exacerbated by geopolitical tensions and U.S. scrutiny of China-focused AI investments

• At the same time, export controls are cutting Chinese startups off from top-tier U.S. chips like Nvidia’s, even as Beijing tries to plug the gap with a 1 trillion yuan (~$140B) state-backed tech fund

• Despite the funding slowdown, China’s AI ecosystem remains active on the R&D front, leading the world in AI publications and patents

The mind-boggling valuations of AI companies (The Guardian, 4 min read)

The AI boom is generating numbers so huge they’re hard to wrap your head around. Nvidia just hit a $5T valuation, while Microsoft and Apple touched $4T, and Alphabet logged its first $100B quarter as Big Tech collectively jacks up AI-related capex into the tens of billions, Alphabet alone now plans up to $93B this year. OpenAI, freshly restructured as a for-profit and eyeing a potential $1T IPO, has signed a web of giant deals, committing about $588B in future spend across Nvidia, Microsoft (Azure), Oracle, and Amazon Web Services

• Critics worry these circular, multihundred-billion partnerships are inflating valuations and creating systemic risk

• Yet the physical and digital scale keeps exploding: trillion-parameter models and vast complexes like Nevada’s Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, packed with hyperscale data centers from Google, Microsoft, Tesla, and others, are turning AI into a full-blown infrastructure build-out

ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT

US stocks slide as investors fret over high valuations for AI companies (Financial Times, 4 min read)

US stocks fell sharply last Tuesday as mounting anxiety over stretched AI-driven valuations and warnings from top Wall Street CEOs triggered a broad risk-off move. The S&P 500 dropped 1.2% and the Nasdaq 2%, even as defensive sectors like healthcare and consumer staples eked out gains. AI and high-multiple tech names were in focus: the Nasdaq now trades around 30x forward earnings, with some stars like Tesla and CrowdStrike at triple-digit PE ratios

• Executives from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley cautioned that markets are vulnerable to 10–15% pullbacks after a huge run fueled by AI optimism

• Palantir, the most expensive stock in the S&P 500 on a profits basis, sank intraday after news of a nearly $1 billion short position from Michael Burry, while Uber also slipped despite solid revenue growth

• The sell-off spilled into other risk assets: bitcoin briefly broke below $100,000 and travel and energy names such as Marathon Petroleum tumbled after disappointing results

S&P 500 rises as plan to end shutdown starts moving through Congress (CNBC, 3 min read)

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and the Nasdaq 1.4% today, while the Dow was roughly flat, as investors reacted to Senate progress on ending the record U.S. government shutdown. AI leaders led the rebound: Nvidia and Broadcom climbed, and Microsoft gained nearly 1%, after last week’s pullback that saw the Nasdaq drop about 3% and the S&P 500 and Dow each lose more than 1% amid AI bubble worries. A key procedural vote cleared the 60-vote threshold after 8 Democrats broke with party leadership, advancing a funding bill that would reopen the government into January, reverse some recent federal layoffs, and add worker protections, while deferring a decision on ACA subsidy extensions to a separate December vote

• The shutdown has already pushed consumer sentiment to its lowest level in more than three years and halted releases of major economic data like CPI and PPI

• Some investors, however, see a potential reopening plus roughly 13% expected year-on-year earnings growth as reasons to stay optimistic on risk assets into year-end

A critical part of the economy isn’t hiring. Bosses explain why (Washington Post, 4 min read)

Small businesses, which employ over 40% of the U.S. workforce, are pulling back on hiring and spending as they face a mix of inflation, tariffs, the weeks-long government shutdown, and collapsing consumer confidence. Surveys and data show clear stress: a Bank of America small-business hiring index fell 7% in September vs. the 2024 average, and ADP reports small and midsize firms (<500 employees) shed 31,000 jobs in October while larger companies added 73,000

• Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked 153,000 job cuts in a single month and about 1.1 million layoffs so far this year, underscoring broad labor-market pressure

• Many small firms are freezing hiring, cutting hours, or quietly trimming staff, especially in discretionary sectors like apparel and outdoor retail, as anxious consumers reduce nonessential spending and returns tick up

• While some businesses serving affluent customers are still seeing solid demand and modestly growing their teams, the overall picture is one of “do more with less”

Miran says half-point cut ‘appropriate’ for December, but Fed should at least reduce by a quarter point (CNBC, 3 min read)

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran is pushing for larger rate cuts, arguing the Fed should reduce interest rates by 50 basis points (0.5 percentage point) at the next meeting, or at least 25 bps, on top of the two 0.25-point cuts already delivered in September and October, which brought the policy rate down to about 3.75%–4%. He dissented at both meetings (and was joined in October only by Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, who wanted no cut), warning that policy must be set based on where the economy will be 12–18 months from now, not just current data

• Miran points to signs of cooling inflation still above the Fed’s 2% target and a softening labor market as reasons to be more dovish than the Fed’s current projection of three cuts this year

• While Chair Jerome Powell has said a December cut isn’t a “foregone conclusion”, markets are still pricing in roughly a 63% chance of another reduction, even as the ongoing shutdown limits access to official economic data

IPOs & EXITS

M&A leveraged loan activity picks up, with more big-ticket deals on the horizon (PitchBook, 5 min read)

M&A in leveraged finance finally looks like it’s turning the corner: after a sluggish 2024 with just $130B in U.S. LBO/M&A loans (second-lowest since 2012), 2025 issuance has already matched last year’s total by Nov. 4 and is up 11% year over year, though pure LBO (leveraged buyout, when a company is acquired mostly using borrowed money—debt—rather than cash or equity) volume is roughly flat at $56.7B. A strong Q1 (LBO/M&A $47.1B & LBO $22.5B) plus healthy loan secondary performance, lower Fed rates, and tight new-issue spreads are boosting confidence, with Barclays forecasting a 20–30% rise in M&A

• Private credit players like Blackstone and Ares are also reporting a surge in new deal flow, with Ares’ Q3 net commitments more than doubling QoQ and 60% going to new borrowers

• Broadly, North American M&A is already reflecting this pickup: Q3 2025 deal value hit a record $762B (up 23% QoQ) across 5,066 deals, the highest count since early 2022

LP secondaries soar with influx of first-time sellers (PitchBook, 4 min read)

LP-led secondary deals are surging as liquidity-hungry investors increasingly sell fund stakes, many for the first time. LP-led volume hit $56B in H1 2025, up 40% year over year and now 54% of all secondaries, with an estimated 40% of sellers new to the market. The drivers: a weak exit environment (only 5,306 exits so far vs 6,896 in 2024) limiting distributions, and LPs using secondaries to rebalance portfolios as PE fund lives stretch well beyond the classic 10–12 years and return timelines slip

• Unlike the post-Global Financial Crisis snapback, today’s exit shortfall is expected to take years to resolve

• On the demand side, sovereign wealth funds, dedicated secondary funds, and opportunistic buyers are all ramping up, helping push global secondaries fundraising to a record $115.3B and average pricing to ~90% of Net Asset Value

• Still, deal flow is growing faster than fresh capital, and the dry-powder-to-deal-volume ratio is falling, leaving what many see as an attractive but still undercapitalized LP secondaries market

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

US VC female founders dashboard (PitchBook, 5 min read)

Venture capital funding for female-founded startups in the U.S. has stabilized after a steep decline from the 2021 peak. While women-led companies now represent a smaller share of total VC deals, they continue to capture a growing portion of total capital raised, signaling stronger deal quality and investor confidence. So far in Q4 2025, women co-led companies secured $4 billion across 235 deals, down from $17.7 billion and 816 deals in Q4 2024

• So far in 2025, female-only-founded companies have captured 5.9% of total deal count, while female-and-male co-led teams account for 17.6%

• In terms of capital, female-only teams received 1.2% of total VC investment, compared to 39.3% going to mixed-gender founding teams

• According to PitchBook data, the 16-year trend shows steady progress across states, industries, and stages, highlighting a sustained shift toward greater inclusion and visibility for women founders in the U.S. venture ecosystem

AI8 VENTURES HIGHLIGHT

State of VC Report: The AI Power Law

The stock market is at all-time highs, but inflation remains sticky and the job market is weakening. Ask around and you’ll hear the same refrain: the labor market feels tougher than ever. At the same time, the first wave of AI agents is “joining the workforce”. Imagine a software engineering agent capable of performing most tasks of a mid-level developer. Now imagine thousands. Extend that across every knowledge field, and the implications for productivity, and potential displacement, are profound.

What happens when the next round of layoffs hits? Add tariffs on top, and ask what happens if consumption weakens. Even the Federal Reserve admits it is unsure of what comes next.

Against this backdrop, venture capital in 2025 is not in recovery but in recalibration. The illusion of recovery is powered almost entirely by AI. Capital is flowing, but to fewer companies than ever. Outside AI, down rounds are rising, and nearly half the unicorn population hasn’t raised since 2022.

We are living in an AI bubble. Just four megacaps, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and Broadcom, accounted for 60% of the S&P 500’s gains, with Nvidia alone responsible for more than a quarter. It’s a paradox. Yes, we’re in a bubble, but it’s also the future. We are witnessing what may be the most important technological shift in a generation. It’s hype layered on top of something undeniably real.

Uncertainty is the name of the game; not one single path forward, but divergent scenarios. Alpha will be earned through selectivity, by navigating volatility rather than avoiding it.

8alpha.ai is an AI fintech transforming cash-generating businesses into scalable, AI-powered companies. We provide revenue-based financing and hands-on AI transformation, delivering no zeros with unlimited upside. We’re the architects building financial infrastructure for the next generation of investors and startups.

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Happy reading,

8alpha.ai’s Research & Investment Team