The Venture Model Is Broken. What Comes Next?

Dear partners, founders, investors, and creators,

Over the past several months, our team has been deep in the work, writing code, training agents, designing underwriting systems, stress-testing assumptions, and debating what capital needs to look like in this market.

Today, 8alpha.ai is proud to share what that work has led to: founders can now apply directly for funding through our beta underwriting platform, where we’re piloting a new way to deploy capital into real, cash-generating businesses.

This platform has been months in the making. Engineering, underwriting design, data modeling, and constant iteration. More importantly, it reflects where the market actually is, not where the headlines say it is.

The Market Has Changed (Whether We Admit It or Not)

The venture model that defined the last decades no longer works for most companies.

2025 was defined by mega rounds, extreme capital concentration, rising investor caution, and a broad market recalibration driven by the AI rush, all unfolding alongside rapid political, economic, and social change.

Funding is concentrated in a handful of AI outliers.

Most companies will not survive the correction.

Meanwhile, there are thousands of real businesses, profitable, tech-enabled, generating meaningful revenue, stuck in the middle. Too real for venture. Too unconventional for banks. Too early for private equity.

These companies don’t need hype-fueled capital.

They need the right structure, the right partner, and the right tools to unlock their next phase of growth.

That’s the gap we built 8alpha.ai to address.

What We’ve Been Building

8alpha.ai is an AI fintech designed to transform cash-generating businesses into scalable, AI-powered companies. Our model combines:

• Revenue-based financing aligned with real performance

• Hands-on AI transformation to improve margins, efficiency, and scale

• End-to-end financial infrastructure to support disciplined growth

If you’re a founder looking to unlock your next phase of growth, you can now apply directly for funding through our beta underwriting platform.

As part of this launch, we’re actively training LIV, our AI underwriting agent. LIV is designed to help us evaluate companies more rigorously, consistently, and efficiently.

Every application will be carefully reviewed by our team. We’ll be working directly with founders. Feedback, both from founders and from the outcomes of real underwriting decisions, is a critical part of how LIV improves. 

If you’re building something real and thinking seriously about how AI can unlock your next phase of growth, we want to work with you.

This is a beta, by design. We’re building in the open, learning alongside founders, and shaping a new model for how capital and intelligence work together.

We’re just getting started.

👉 Apply for funding here: https://www.8alpha.ai 

Best,

8alpha.ai