Good day. WSJ Pro reporter Yuliya Chernova wrote this week about new data from venture firm SignalFire showing founders typically have about a dozen years of experience—or more—before they launch startups that clinch billion-dollar valuations. The finding contrasts with the popular perception of tech startups. “Many of the most hyped startups have young founders,” Asher Bantock, head of research at SignalFire, said. They do exist, Bantock said, but they aren’t representative.

We would like to hear from you. In your experience, what demographic brought the most disruptive tech to market? Have you had a puppy-faced founder whose idea took off? Or have your more seasoned founders steered their ideas more effectively? Please email responses to vcnews@wsj.com.

Last week, we asked what technology is helping smaller markets attract more venture dollars, and whether the AI talent wars make it harder for startups outside the Bay Area to compete. Here are edited excerpts from the responses:

• Jennifer Abele, general partner of VC 414 in Milwaukee: “Frontline industries like manufacturing, energy, power and controls in Wisconsin are just as in need of innovation capital as the AI infrastructure and application companies on the coasts. Maybe more so. We see a missed opportunity as it relates to investing in how these legacy markets are shifting their processes and workforces to the capabilities offered by AI today. We are keeping a close eye on how these spaces and places are being overlooked and believe it will create outsize opportunities for firms like ours.”
   
• Stephanie Sher, founder and general partner of Integral Ventures: “At the frontier-model layer, yes—elite research talent remains highly concentrated and increasingly expensive. But most durable AI companies won’t be built by competing head-on for that talent. They’ll be built by teams applying AI to specific domains, where deep industry knowledge, engineering rigor and customer proximity matter more than cutting-edge research.”
   
• John Fogelsong, founding partner at Friends & Family Capital: “Small markets that lead to big markets attract venture dollars. Small markets that stay small are a recipe for small returns.”
   
• Steve Brotman, founder and managing partner at Alpha Partners: “Yes, the AI talent wars do make it harder for startups outside the Bay Area to compete, but with an important distinction. The infrastructure to build AI products has become far more accessible. Open-source models, cheaper inference and mature cloud and MLOps tooling mean startups no longer need massive upfront capital or a Bay Area address to get real products into market.”

And now on to the news...

Listings spur optimism. Biotechnology companies going public this week are signaling a resurgence for initial public offerings and venture-capital investment in the sector this year. Biotechs Eikon Therapeutics and Veradermics staged initial public offerings this week, while SpyGlass Pharma and AgomAb Therapeutics priced their IPOs on Thursday and are expected to begin trading today. Biotech IPOs started strong in 2025, but tariffs and cutbacks at the Food and Drug Administration later sidelined investors and startups.

• Last year’s stalled IPO market produced a backlog of companies awaiting their shot.
   
• Now, biotechs with drugs in mid- to late-stage clinical trials, including this latest batch, are cracking the market.

OpenAI on Thursday announced Frontier, a new artificial-intelligence platform that helps companies build, deploy and oversee AI agents. Frontier works with OpenAI’s previously announced AI agent-building tools and makes it easier for businesses to combine sources of data that agents need to perform tasks, the AI company said. The agents will be able to process information from various sources and complete tasks like working with files and running code, OpenAI said.

Google-backed carbon-removal startup Terradot is acquiring Eion, a similar but smaller venture, in a sign the market for companies that focus on technical solutions to decarbonization is consolidating. Both companies are developers of what is known as enhanced rock weathering, where rock is crushed into dust and spread over farmland, capturing the carbon in rainwater and trapping it in the soil and eventually the sea. Terradot’s move to acquire Eion, with both based in the U.S., comes as worries over the growth of the carbon-capture market rise.

Fundamental, a San Francisco-based structured data prediction startup, emerged from stealth with $255 million in funding, including a $225 million Series A round led by Oak HC/FT. Investors including Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Hetz Ventures were also Series A participants.

Resolve AI, a San Francisco-based developer of an AI system designed to run and maintain software in production, scored $125 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, which included contributions from Greylock Partners, Unusual Ventures, Artisanal Ventures and A*.

Osmo, a New York-based digital scent design startup, completed a $70 million Series B round. Two Sigma Ventures led the investment, which included participation from Collab Fund and several others.

Our briefs on funding news are designed to be bare-bones blurbs for busy people. But some deals leave us wanting to hear more. So we're launching an occasional feature that goes beyond the basics.

For our first installment, we asked Founderful partner Lukas Weder about Sparkli, a Switzerland-based startup building a multimodal learning engine for children. The startup emerged from stealth in January with $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Founderful. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

WSJ Pro: Give us a one-sentence summary of the deal.

Weder: Great founder profiles (ex-Google and repeat founders), huge opportunity and AI for good!

WSJ Pro: The pitch deck had you at __.

Weder: The moment they paused the slides for a live demo. We challenged them with: “Pretty slides, but what if dinosaurs lived in modern cities, can that be visualized?” The platform instantly generated a gamified expedition combining simulations, video, audio and quizzes. It felt like an advanced version of Duolingo, but created instantly for any topic.

WSJ Pro: Any fun stories from meetings with founders?

Weder: We met in an empty office; the founders got the keys on the same day. The founders introduced themselves as: “We are Lax, Lucie and Myn—in short ‘LLM’—building the first truly multimodal AI learning engine for kids.”

WSJ Pro: If there was a skeptic in the firm, how were they won over?

Weder: For the first time, our investment team members included their children in a company due diligence. The kids’ sheer excitement and natural curiosity immediately put to bed any initial skepticism.

WSJ Pro: If you were to compare this startup to a movie or TV show, what would it be?

Weder: “Dead Poets Society” mirrors Sparkli because it rejects rigid teaching methods like rote memorization and “walls of text” in favor of genuine curiosity and empowers kids to think for themselves.

WSJ Pro: What’s a suggestion from the VCs that the founders ignored?

Weder: VCs wanted to build for the classroom of today (math, English, science). Sparkli ignored this and started to build for the economy of tomorrow (critical thinking, creativity, innovation, design thinking, AI and financial literacy). They correctly identified that “future-readiness” is about adaptability, not just memorization.

• Long-Running AI Agents Are Here

• The Week Anthropic Tanked the Market and Pulled Ahead of Its Rivals

• Startup Pitches X-Rays and AI to Catch Fraudulent Returns

• Riverwood Capital Acquires Urban SDK in A.I.-Powered ‘Smart City’ Push

• SpaceX Seeks Early Index Entry as It Prepares Massive IPO

• Google Leans Hard Into Its AI-Winner Status

• Meet the Non-Tech Firms Betting Big on the AI Boom

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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