Good day. Politicians are zeroing in on the high costs of home buying. So are venture investors.

Tech focused on affordability is top of mind for investors, said Dan Wenhold, a partner at Fifth Wall Ventures, in part because of political shifts.

“I want to lean more into that in the very near term,” he said. “Those companies are well-positioned.” Fifth Wall has invested in about 150 real-estate tech startups and has $3 billion in assets under management.

Venture investors are more likely to look favorably at rent-to-own and shared-equity business models, for example, said Ashkan Zandieh, managing director at Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation, or Creti, a research and educational organization.

Last week, President Trump called to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. And a few months ago, the administration floated another idea: 50-year mortgages.

Few details are available on whether these statements result in actual policy changes, said Wenhold. Still, he said the driving force is clear and real.

“All of this goes back to affordability,” he said, adding he expects more political activity around this issue. “I don’t think it’s the last thing they say.”

Fifth Wall has backed companies including Ridley, which allows homeowners and buyers to transact without traditional commission fees, as well as Pathway Homes, which operates a rent-to-own model to help renters transition to homeownership. Another portfolio company, Belong, helps individual owners of homes for rent manage their properties through AI tools.

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And now on to the news...

Alphabet becomes newest $4 trillion company. Google parent Alphabet’s value topped $4 trillion, making it the latest tech company to cross that threshold as investors reward the internet-search leader for its artificial-intelligence gains. Shares in Alphabet rose 1% to a record $331.86 on Monday, putting its market capitalization just above $4 trillion. Its shares rose 65% last year.

• Four technology companies have traded at market capitalizations of $4 trillion, and only Nvidia is still above that mark. Apple and Microsoft, both of which crossed the $4 trillion threshold last year, now have market capitalizations of $3.8 trillion and $3.6 trillion, respectively.
   
• Google pulled well ahead in the race to develop AI with the recent launch of its Gemini 3 model, which earned praise for its speed, intelligence and creative capabilities.

Francisco Partners is selling laboratory informatics company Starlims to fellow private-equity firm Turn/River, the latest in a stream of exits that the firm has generated over the past year. People familiar with the deal pegged the transaction at around $200 million. Francisco acquired Starlims in 2021 in a corporate carve-out from publicly traded pharmaceuticals company Abbott Laboratories. Hollywood, Fla.-based Starlims offers software and technology that helps laboratories with tasks such as data automation, workflow management and regulatory controls.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest fabricator of advanced artificial-intelligence chips, is planning a significant expansion in Arizona as part of a potential trade agreement between the U.S. and Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. officials have been negotiating with Taiwan for months, as the Trump administration works to reshore more high-tech manufacturing and Taiwan seeks to lower U.S. import duties. TSMC is by far the island nation’s biggest company and the sixth-largest publicly-listed company in the world, with a market value of about $1.7 trillion.

People

CRV added Anja Zehfuss and Nadine Fattah as new investors. Zehfuss was previously at Longitude Capital. Fattah formerly worked at Alpine Investors and G9 Ventures.

Partnership

Booz Allen announced a new partnership with Andreessen Horowitz in which the McLean, Va.-headquartered consulting firm will work with a16z portfolio companies to build and deliver technologies for U.S. missions across sectors including national security and civilian services.

Torq, a New York-based agentic AI security operations provider, closed a $140 million Series D round, giving the company a $1.2 billion valuation. Merlin Ventures led the investment, which included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Ventures Partners and others.

Parambil, a New York-based developer of an AI platform for litigation involving complex medical records, was seeded with a $6 million investment. Bling Capital led the funding, which included additional support from NVP Capital.

Fencer, a San Francisco-based security platform for software startups, emerged from stealth with $5.5 million in seed funding.  MHS Capital led the round, which saw participation from Goldcrest Capital.

• Meta Creates High-Powered Team to Oversee AI Infrastructure Buildout
   
• OpenAI Set to Run Another Super Bowl Ad as Chatbot Competition Heats Up
   
• The Chinese Company Taking On the World’s Memory-Chip Giants
   
• Paramount Plans Proxy Fight to Push Hostile Warner Bid
   
• The Men Who Are Super Competitive About Sleep—and the Gear They Swear By

• OpenAI agrees to buy AI healthcare app for about $100 million (The Information)
   
• Anthropic announces Claude for Healthcare following OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health reveal (TechCrunch)
   
• China’s ‘Are You Dead?’ app checks in on growing cohort of people living alone (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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