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Welcome back! It’s Katie and Julia. Earlier this morning we published exclusive returns on some of the biggest investors in AI chip designer Cerebras, whose shares surged in their first day of trading. The offering represents welcome cash for investors after they’ve seen initial public offerings get delayed year after year. Tiger Global Management, for instance, bought shares in September 2025 and earlier this year, when it led a $1 billion investment priced at $89 a share. Its investments returned $1 billion based on the company’s IPO price, according to someone close to the firm; the actual number will depend on where Cerebras stock is trading when Tiger sells. The stock popped in its first day of trading, closing at $311 a share. Our reporting also gave a glimpse into how the venture capital playbook has changed since the last wave of IPOs in 2020 and 2021. Benchmark, famed for sticking to early-stage investments even while its peers raised bigger and bigger funds, bought $250 million in shares in late 2025 and early 2026—representing 93% of its total cost. Those late-stage rounds increased its cash returns by just above $300 million but lowered its multiple. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story. To invest in Cerebras’ early 2026 round led by Tiger, Benchmark raised a $225 million special purpose vehicle, according to a person with knowledge of the investment. These funds, which typically invest in one or two stocks, have been a popular way for VC firms to invest in the megarounds characterizing the AI area. They allow firms with smaller stakes to maintain ownership stakes when round sizes balloon while giving limited partners more direct exposure to particular stocks. By using an SPV, Benchmark was able to pick up more shares and show support for Cerebras at a pivotal time. In late 2025, it had yanked its earlier IPO filing after the prospectus raised red flags with U.S. regulators and potential investors for its reliance on United Arab Emirates tech conglomerate G42 as a customer. But in December 2025, Cerebras quietly inked a transformational deal with OpenAI, which has committed to spend $20 billion. For Benchmark, raising an SPV for late-stage investments was out of the ordinary. The firm normally invests in early stage businesses out of its main fund. But to double down on Cerebras, it created a vehicle funded by Benchmark general partners and their limited partners. The result was a bigger payoff for Benchmark, whose general partner Eric Vishria said he first invested in 2016 because the founders had “deep hardware expertise and a very ambitious vision.” Hardware is normally a tough category because the incumbents are too strong, he told me. Cerebras was able to do something “dramatically different.” Benchmark wasn’t the only early-stage firm to use SPVs to increase its stake. Eclipse Capital, for example, put a $6.5 million check into Cerebras’ Series A in 2016, according to the firm. But by investing in later rounds, in part through several SPVs, Eclipse was able to amass a 6% stake worth $2.5 billion at the IPO price. That’s more than 17 times its $146.5 million total investment. Either way, it seems both firms’ limited partners will be giddy with the outcome. The IPO, which priced above its expected range, surged nearly 70% on its first day of trading. In other news… Notable acquisitions of Israeli software startups have stirred fresh investing interest in the region. A new fund aims to back the rising startups—as well as their backers. SkyBeam Venture Partners, a VC firm focused on investing in Israeli startups and VC fund managers, closed a $250 million fund, its first, it told The Information. SkyBeam partners and co-founders Daniel Benel and Gabby Czertok will invest half the fund in emerging VC managers backing pre-seed and seed-stage Israel-based startups. They’ll invest the remaining half of the fund in early-stage companies—particularly infrastructure, defense tech and cyberstartups—largely for follow-on rounds that will let them co-invest alongside their managers. Benel and Czertok, who is based in Israel, think backing small fund managers will help them get into the best Israeli deals as early as possible, giving them “access to know and track the companies and they grow—before anyone else sees them,” Czertok said in an interview. Before they co-founded SkyBeam, Benel founded Tenere Capital, a New York–based crossover investment fund, and Czertok built a consulting business that helped large companies partner with Israeli startups. Czertok also served in Unit 8200, an intelligence unit within the Israeli military.
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