💸LPs Pile Into OpenAI and Anthropic as Fund Cycles Shrink to 18 Months

Your fundraising runway just got a lot shorter

Limited partners are happy right now, and it's mostly because of two companies. OpenAI and Anthropic valuations have climbed so fast that nearly every fund ended up holding a piece of both. Venture has always been a power law business, so this concentration is not shocking. The speed is. Why should you care? Because the money moving through your startup's funding round is moving faster too. Funds that used to invest on four-year cycles have compressed to three, then two, then 18 months. Seed round sizes have nearly doubled, so leading a round now means writing a check roughly 2x bigger. If you're fundraising, expect investors to ask about your AI exposure and your path to $100 million in revenue, because that's the new benchmark. The numbers matter here. Historically, funds deployed over about two to two and a half years. Some are now cutting that in half, and a few are raising bigger funds mid-cycle, which is rare. Liquidity is also back, with SpaceX, Cerebras, and other IPOs and M&A exits flowing back to LPs. Secondaries have grown more sophisticated too, with stakes in GPs and portfolio strips changing hands. Watch the 2021 vintages. They're only five years in, but early returns already argue against one-year funds. The catch? Backing a winner in one year is a lot harder than it looks.