Good day. Early this year, investors had hoped for a rebound in initial public offerings, with OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX the three “whales” expected to splash onto the public markets. But recent market turbulence has dampened IPO plans generally. For this week’s question, we want to know: What is your outlook for IPOs for the rest of this year? Please email responses to vcnews@wsj.com.

Last week, we asked where you think the next opportunities in artificial intelligence and frontier tech are. Here are some of your responses.

• Conrad Burke, managing partner at MetaVC Partners: “Advanced materials. We will see an acceleration of once unimaginable advanced materials innovation. Breakthroughs in the blending of chemistry and physics have been the foundation of new product breakthroughs every 20 years—like the laser, Kevlar, carbon-fiber, liquid crystal and the semiconductor. Leapfrog advances are coming in a much shorter timeframe that will usher in the likes of noiseless motors, desktop photonic computing power, robot hands that can ‘feel’ and so much more.”
   
• Larry Aschebrook, managing partner at G Squared: “AI’s next wave won’t be won by better models, but by the infrastructure that makes them work at scale. As enterprises move from experimentation to deployment, the biggest opportunities we see are in AI platforms, cybersecurity and data infrastructure—the systems that make AI reliable, secure and usable in real business workflows. The winners will be those with structural data advantages and clear, measurable ROI.”
   
• Israel Ruiz, president and general partner of Engine Ventures: “The biggest opportunities in AI will come from systems that can reason reliably about the physical world. For AI to scale into industries like semiconductors, energy and advanced manufacturing, it needs to operate within the constraints of physics and engineering, not just generate plausible outputs. The shift from probabilistic prediction to verified reasoning will unlock AI’s real impact in critical infrastructure.”

And now on to the news...

Megaround. Investment firm Coatue Management is leading a new funding round for prediction-market operator Kalshi at a $22 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the situation. Kalshi is raising about $1 billion in the new financing, the people said. The deal will double the startup’s valuation in just a few months.

• The company’s representative declined to comment on the funding. New York-based Kalshi allows users to make bets on future events, from the price of oil to whether the existence of aliens would be confirmed. The company is the first regulated exchange of this kind in the U.S. Kalshi’s revenue run rate is about $1.5 billion, according to another person.
   
• Kalshi’s customer base includes consumers, institutional market-makers and businesses that use the platform to hedge against certain outcomes. The growth on the institutional side of Kalshi’s business is one of the reasons the current round is generating investor interest, one of the people said.
   
• One of Kalshi’s competitors is Polymarket. Both companies have been raising funding rounds valuing them at roughly $20 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal’s earlier reporting. Kalshi’s fast growth has been accompanied by legal challenges.

OpenAI is planning to unify its ChatGPT app, coding platform Codex and browser into a desktop “superapp,” a step to simplify the user experience and continue with efforts to focus on engineering and business customers. OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who currently leads the company’s computing efforts, will temporarily oversee the product revamp and related organizational changes. Chief of Applications Fidji Simo will lead the company’s sales team as it markets the new product, according to an OpenAI spokeswoman.

A public venture fund, whose top holdings include Anthropic, Databricks and OpenAI, saw shares surge on its first day of trading. Fundrise Innovation Fund listed its shares under the ticker VCX on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company’s shares opened at $31.25, reached an intraday high of $128 and closed at $76.16 a share. The trading price compares to a net asset value of the fund of $18.97 a share. Fundrise had initially postponed a public listing because of market volatility related to the war in Iran. “It seems the market was excited about VCX and our mission to democratize access to the best private tech companies,” said Benjamin Miller, chief executive of Fundrise.                      —Yuliya Chernova

Jeff Bezos is in early talks to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation.The Amazon.com founder is meeting with some of the world’s largest asset managers to raise funding for the project. A few months ago, he traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign-wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore to raise funding for the effort as well, according to people familiar with the matter. The fund, described in investor documents as a “manufacturing transformation vehicle,” is aiming to buy companies in major industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace. It would dwarf the size of some of the world’s largest buyout funds and rival SoftBank’s $100 billion, tech-focused Vision Fund.

As more women rise through the industry ranks, they shape not only the cultures of their own firms, but also the industry itself. Join us for a conversation with some of our past and present Women to Watch honorees, as we discuss issues female professionals face building their careers, as well as some of the emerging themes that stand to shape dealmaking as the year unfolds. Register here to join the webinar at 1 p.m. ET March 26.

People

Carl Eschenbach is rejoining Sequoia Capital as a partner. Most recently, Eschenbach was the chief executive of publicly traded software company Workday. He had also previously served as president and chief operating officer at VMware in the past.

Type One Ventures, which invests in space, artificial intelligence and deep technology, promoted Gustav Spangberg to principal from senior associate and Jacob Flores to head of research from senior analyst.

Lantern, a specialty-care platform, said it raised a $30 million investment led by Morgan Health—a division of JPMorganChase—and Echo Health Ventures. The growth investment will support Lantern's expansion across public and private employers and health plans, the company said.

Bioliberty, a healthtech startup involved in the delivery of physical and occupational therapy, said it raised $10.2 million. The company said the funds will enable it to continue the development and U.S. commercialization of its Lifehub Clinic platform. The funds will also enable the commercialization of Lifehub Home to facilitate ongoing physical therapy and progress tracking in patient homes after in-person therapy ends. Investors in the financing include Scottish National Investment Bank.

Health Universe, an enterprise artificial-intelligence platform that automates healthcare workflows, said it raised $6 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $9.5 million to date. The company said the new capital will accelerate adoption across academic medical centers, health systems and life sciences organizations.

Carecubes, which is involved in infectious disease response through its Food and Drug Administration 510(k)-cleared isolation unit, which is built for rapid deployment where care is needed, said it closed its $6.5 million Series A round.

• Why You Should Let AI Write Your Next Customer Complaint
   
• Suddenly Everyone in San Francisco Is a ‘Builder,’ Whatever That Means
   
• Apple Is Way Behind in AI—and Still Making a Fortune From It
   
• Australian GPS-Alternative Unicorn Raises $110 Million for Expansion
   
• The Unexpected Risk of Letting ChatGPT Fact-Check Your Financial Adviser

• The long farewell to Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse (New York Times) 
   
• The fight to hold AI companies accountable for children’s deaths (Wired)
   
• Can quantum computers now solve healthcare problems? We’ll soon find out. (MIT Technology Review)
   
• The rise of vertical AI agents—and the startups racing to build them (GeekWire)

This newsletter was compiled by Brian Gormley. 

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

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

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