Good day. Startup investor Niko Bonatsos has left his role as managing director at the investment firm General Catalyst and might launch an early-stage fund.

Bonatsos spent 15 years at General Catalyst and previously co-led the firm’s early-stage practice. “The industry is changing. The firm is much bigger,” Bonatsos said. “I’m very grateful to the team at GC,” he added. He said the decision to part ways with GC was mutual.

Bonatsos said that his plans for the new fund are preliminary. “I haven’t formalized it, haven’t talked to LPs,” he said, referring to potential investors. Bonatsos said he expects someone else to join him at the potential fund but declined to say who.

Bonatsos made early bets on companies including Mercor, which hires experts to train AI models and was recently valued at $10 billion; General Intuition, an artificial-intelligence research lab focused on spatial-reasoning models; customer-support software startup Pylon; and communications app Discord.

General Catalyst has seen team changes over the past couple of years as the firm has undergone significant expansion in both the capital it manages and its strategy.

It is one of several firms that have been raising very large funds and expanding outside traditional early-stage venture to make growth, secondary, crypto, private-equity or other types of deals.

Read the full article.

And now on to the news...

Nvidia unveils faster AI chips. As the artificial-intelligence race intensifies, the speed with which the world’s biggest chip companies roll out each successive generation of computing products is quickening. On Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang unveiled the company’s newest AI server systems, known as Vera Rubin, which go on sale in the second half of this year. Usually, Nvidia details the specs and capabilities of its latest chips at its spring developer conference in Silicon Valley. This year, Huang said, the complexity of computing required by AI and the immense demand for advanced processors to train and operate models has prompted the semiconductor industry to move faster.

Dell Technologies is broadening its personal computer portfolio to target a wider range of price points after the unit underperformed in 2025. Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke, who temporarily inherited oversight of the PC business unit about four months ago, said that by focusing too much on high-end, premium PCs for commercial customers, Dell lost out on a huge part of the market. At CES this week Dell announced plans to play in some of those lower tiers with new product releases set to hit the market in 2026. It also plans to revive a popular line of PCs.

Less than five hours before nighttime explosions rocked the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, an unknown trader doubled down on bets that Nicolás Maduro would soon be out as the country’s leader. The wagers on Polymarket, a popular crypto-based betting platform, netted the trader more than $400,000, a 12-fold return on investment—and fueled suspicions that someone used inside knowledge of the closely held U.S. operation to make a quick profit.

Tariffs and inflation. The highest tariffs in almost a century haven’t caused the massive surge in inflation many economists feared. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, according to two new studies.

• Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco combed through data from 1886 to 2017 and found that previous tariff increases usually didn’t lead to higher inflation. On the contrary: They slowed down price growth.
   
• A separate recent paper by economists at Northwestern University found that inflation picked up following tariff increases, but only a little.
   
• That’s the good news. The bad news: Both papers conclude that tariffs tend to hurt the economy and that a blow to consumer and business demand likely explains why the impact on inflation is so limited.

People

Menlo Ventures promoted Deborah Carrillo to partner. Before joining the firm in 2020, she was a corporate attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

Lassen Peak, a startup developing a handheld radar system for concealed weapon detection, landed over $10 million in equity and debt financing. Structural Capital led the investment, which included participation from Madrona Ventures and others.

Unusual, a San Francisco-based startup that helps brands understand and change how AI talks about them, secured $3.6 million in funding from investors including BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator and Phosphor Capital.

• Why Equinox Leaned on AI Slop in Its New Year’s Ad Campaign

• As Supply-Chain Cyber Risks Mount, Can AI Help?

• Billionaire Larry Ellison Sells $45 Million Home on San Francisco’s Gold Coast

• What’s next for AI in 2026 (MIT Technology Review)
   
• The U.S. is losing its battle to break up Big Tech (Financial Times)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

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

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