Daily Musings

Evening all

I am readying myself to visit Helsinki in November. Some may consider it Cryonic shock therapy.

Despite the suspected risk tolerance in Venture Capital I refrain from taking on risks with stakes as high as sunburning in November. And so while I am packing SPF 50+ I share today’s musings.

Cheers
Philip

Today’s Stories

Venture Capital

• Take me to the moon gets a remake as The Exploration Company - the French developer of reusable cargo spacecrafts — is getting USD 160m in Series B funding. Balderton and Plural in the lead. Participants in the cap table include Bessemer, NGP Capital, French Tech Souverainete and DeepTech & Climate Fonds, EQT Ventures, cherry and others. In other space context: SpaceX is earmarked to be prepping stock tender offer north of USD 250bn

• Juna.ai gets USD 7.5m in fresh seed funding from Kleiner Perkins, Norrsken and John Doerr. The Berlin based AI company supports industrial and manufacturing clients in optimising their factory line efficiency. Based on customer date the company then produces fine tunes AI agents - designed to monitor and optimise on specific metrics and production KPIs. The founder team caught my attention. Ex Deliver Hero CTO and ex-founder of AiSight, which was acquired by Sensirion.

• ServiceTitan — the tradesperson software player — last valued @ USD 9.5bn (2021), is expected to for an IPO this week. Investors with perhaps glowing smiles as they’re getting ready to share news of liquidity events with their LPs include TPG (6.4%), Battery (7.5%), IQONIC (24%) and Bessemer (14%). Some additional context you can casually drop when discussing this deal:

  • Goldman, MS, Wells Fargo and Citi mandated as lead underwriters

  • Ticket symbol to be: NASDAQ:TTAN

  • For the six-month period ending July 31, it pulled in USD 348m in revenue (+26% vs. same period in 2023). Net loss for that period clocked in at USD 92m in 2024 (down 12% from a year ago)

Chart Art

(AI)ssistants

The cost of large language models with MMLU scores over 42 has dropped by an average of 10x—though, naturally, the rate of cost optimization is starting to slow. We're now looking at 0.15 cents per million tokens. For context, the average American, interacting with their phone about 144 times a day, would use around half a million tokens monthly in four quick back-and-forths with an AI assistant. At today’s costs, that translates to USD 0.78 per month—about a tenth of a Netflix subscription. And considering the latest additions to the streaming catalog lean toward influencer boxing, it’s reasonable to think an AI assistant might offer 10x the value, too.

The thesis is clear: at this cost, having an AI assistant woven into daily life is on track to becoming ubiquitous.

Valuation

Valuations are stretched across almost every metric, but the S&P 500 is still on a tear, marking one of the strongest years since 1928 with gains pushing it well into the top decile. MS expects a 10.5% base-case rise to 6,500 by Q4 2025. Despite some eye-watering metrics—EV/Sales and Price/Book at 100% historical percentiles—the market’s risk appetite remains high. Even with yields presenting a more attractive alternative (yield gap vs. real 10Y UST at 240 bps), the bullish momentum isn’t slowing, underscoring a clear thesis: high valuations aren’t scaring off investors just yet.