Paul Bonnet (@PaulBonnet)

Salesforce acquires Listen Labs for ~$2b. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdown below 👇 The company was founded in Sep-23 and had raised less than $100m. Investors will share ~$850m of profits on $96m invested, a ~10x blended. From a huge pivot to a unicorn valuation term sheet they refused, this is truly a wild story ✍️. In the end an incredible outcome for all involved. So let's dive in! 1) The boldest move: walking away from $1.5b 🎲 Listen Labs had a signed $125m Series C term sheet from Menlo at a $1.5b valuation... and walked away from it to sell to Salesforce at ~$2b. This takes a huge amount of courage: few founders turn down a signed unicorn-plus round. @itsalfredw and @florian_jue did it 2.5 years after founding. Huge congratulations are in order for the discipline and execution of the founders here. 2) Founders and team: a life-changing outcome in under 3 years 🥳 By my best estimates, founders and team still own over half the company. At $2b, that's ~$1.1b for them to share. Specifically, assuming a 15% option pool, that is ~$300m for the team and ~$750m for the two co-founders. And, as was the case with Hugging Face, this is all from a pivot. They originally built an AI customer-interview tool to understand why their viral app BeFake was growing, then realised the tool was the business! 3) Sequoia's Bryan Schreier did it again 👑 What few people know is that Bryan was an early backer of Qualtrics... the category Listen Labs is disrupting. Now he led both the seed and the Series A here. By my estimates, those two rounds will return ~$670m combined, or ~25x on ~$27m invested, in under three years. Pattern recognition and industry knowledge have their perks, it would seem! 4) Ribbit: 4x in 8 months ⚡ Ribbit led the $69m Series B in Jan-26 at ~$500m. At $2b, that's ~4x in 8 months. Unbelievable IRR and a great return on a meaningful cheque. 5) Neo does it again, congrats @apartovi 🎯 Listen Labs went through the Neo accelerator early on, which came with a $600k SAFE. On my estimates, that cheque is worth ~$25m+ today. This comes just three months after Cursor's acquisition (a cool >1,000x for Neo). What a hit rate! This one is very straightforward: it is a massive win for everyone. And so congratulations to all involved: Sequoia, Ribbit, Conviction, Pear, Neo and the team!

Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for ~$12.9bn. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdown below 👇 *Investors are sharing ~$7.3bn of profits on <$400m invested. A cool ~20x blended.* *1) The single biggest winner here? Lux Capital.* 👑 Lux is taking the crown for the most $ returned in this transaction. The two rounds they led (Series A & Series C) generated ~$2.6bn combined. They also participated in the Series B. Congrats to @wolfejosh and team. The $15.0m Series A alone will return ~132.5x the capital invested, or ~$2.0bn. The most lucrative round in absolute $ returned. *2) Backing an exceptional team paid off with a >1,000x return for Betaworks and the angels* 📈 The story few people know: Hugging Face started life as a chatbot for lonely teenagers... You sent it a selfie and a sad emoji, it told you it understood. Quite far from where it landed! That is why backing an exceptional team in @ClementDelangue, @Thom_Wolf and @julien_c is always the right thing to do. It paid over 1,000x for Betaworks, Kevin Durant and Thibaud Elziere. *3) Founders and team are crushing it: not taking too much dilution along the way paid off* 👏 I estimate they will share ~$5bn in proceeds, assuming no secondary was taken along the way. A life changing outcome for them and many employees. Taking a 15% attributed option pool at exit, this would mean ~$2bn for the team and >$3bn to share for the three co-founders. Legendary! *4) Salesforce Ventures is cementing its reputation as one of the very best corporate VCs.* 🥇 Salesforce is adding Hugging Face to its long list of successful exits: Snowflake, Zoom, DocuSign, nCino, Auth0... Very few investors can claim as many successes, let alone corporates. The $235m round they led returned $675m in just three short years. Meanwhile, Salesforce's own stock has been flat for the period. Capital well invested! *5) This is a little bit of a heartbreak: but I wanted to congratulate @joinstationf here:* Hugging Face walked into StationF as a 4-person team on day one, June 2017. Back when it was a chatbot for teenagers. They went through multiple corporate programs (Microsoft, Ubisoft, then Naver). Unfortunately they were not investing or taking equity at the time - but they contributed to making it possible. And so for that: hats off. And of course, congratulations to all others involved: Addition, Sequoia, Coatue and many others. No one will be left out!

About $30 *BILLION* of proceeds 💵... and >1,000x returns for the earliest investors 📈. Let's break down the winners and losers of the Cursor Acquisition by SpaceX 👇: *1) We have to start with the only loser:* Alameda, or rather the nutcases who sold its stake for 1.0x. They handed over a >1,000x return to the buyers of that stake, less than 3.5 years later. A gloriously stupid move. I would love to know if anyone managing that estate still has a job? *2) The largest winners in $ terms: a16z and Thrive:* The three consecutive rounds which they led / participated in (Series A / B / C) created ~$14bn of proceeds. A job well done. The lesson here: when venture growth works, nothing else truly compare in the sheer $ returns in generates. Put a lot of $'s in, get a mega amount of $ out. *3) Early investors: hitting a total home run:* NEO (Ali Partovi), OpenAI Startup Fund, and many angels (Nat Friedman, Patrick Collison, Jeff Dean, BoxGroup, Arash Ferdowsi and many more...) are sitting on hundreds of times their money. While I'm sure it was not on Elon's bingo cards to wire a few billions to OpenAI, this is an angel's wet dream come true for the individual investors involved. NEO & Ali Partovi at >1,000x notably on a decent check is likely pocketing ~$1.5bn in the transaction. *4) Nearly ~$30bn of total proceeds to investors, a blended 8x+ return on ~$3.3bn invested* The magnitude of this exit dwarfs many large tech IPOs. For Funds involved, LPs, and early angels, this is a transformational outcome - and it will have positive repercussions on the whole ecosystem. Congrats to @martin_casado, @JoshuaKushner, @apartovi and all involved. This is what venture is all about!