The Perch: November Issue

AI: Unabated Growth

The scale and velocity of AI value creation have been unlike anything we have seen before. Anthropic is on track to go from zero to $9B ARR by December 2025 and is forecasting $70B ARR by 2028, its seventh year. For context, Salesforce, founded 26 years ago, reported $38B in revenue for FY25.

In the U.S., data center expansion has become so significant that the national energy grid is now a bottleneck for additional compute. Data center capacity is expected to more than double by 2030 (see figure below). We take this estimate with some caution — we expect growth to accelerate even further as the utility and strategic importance of AI continue to increase.

Source: Bain & Company

While frontier companies like Anthropic capture headlines, enterprise adoption remains early — and that is where the next wave of value will emerge. Only about a third of high-performing enterprises spend meaningfully (>20% of digital budgets) on AI (see figure below). We expect both variables — the percentage of digital spend and the number of high-performing enterprises — to increase. As known challenges, such as agent performance and the lack of agentic financial infrastructure, are addressed, we expect the category to expand significantly.

Source: McKinsey & Company

In our focus markets, we observed continued tailwinds, alongside several large deals being announced. Below are a few of the tailwinds and corresponding areas of focus within the fund:

New Investment: Blok

We have had a long-standing relationship with co-founder Tom, dating back to his time in England. In fact, Tom introduced us to several portfolio founders even before we committed to investing in his company. This type of reputation flywheel is particularly encouraging for us.

What does Blok do? Imagine launching a new product — whether a mobile app, a credit card, or an insurance bundle — and being able to ask, before building: Will customers like this? Which personas will respond most strongly, and what revenue uplift can we expect?

Blok builds AI personas — synthetic user profiles grounded in cognitive science and event log data — and runs them through thousands of simulations. The result is faster product decisions, reduced waste, and more efficient use of engineering resources. Within weeks of launch, the company reached $1M ARR and signed a Fortune 500 client.

Outside our portfolio, companies like Listen Labs (raised $27M led by Sequoia Capital) and Artificial Societies (backed by Point72 and Y Combinator) are developing complementary approaches to behavior modeling. This investment aligns with the broader infrastructure layer required for the successful deployment of AI agents, robotics, and vision-based applications — an area we are particularly excited about.

Follow-on financing is critical for companies, and we work closely with our founders to position them for success. Mock pitches, refining investment decks, and sharing insights into growth-stage investor evaluation criteria are all part of our support.

Across three portfolio companies, we secured over $50M in follow-on commitments last month.

We would also like to recognize our friend and investor, Jay Madheswaran, for Eve’s $100M+ financing round and for achieving a valuation exceeding $1B in the private market.

Community

Together with Kleiner Perkins, we co-hosted an event with 30 top global engineers building startups. The energy was high; our portfolio companies were actively recruiting, and we were gathering insights across the ecosystem — while also enjoying the experience.

We were also invited to lead a panel at Money 20/20 in Riyadh. On the sidelines, we met with business and government leaders across Riyadh and the UAE. The momentum is translating into tangible action: we observed firsthand how governments are rapidly building AI-centric economies with clearly defined priority areas.

For example, a majority of our portfolio companies align with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 priorities, and we believe meaningful partnership opportunities in the region will emerge. We also attended Future Investment Initiative (FII), with more to share on that in due course.

The next decade of AI will reward clarity, conviction, and speed — and we are building with that in mind.

Thank you, as always, for your continued partnership and trust.

Best,
Team ODDBIRD