O'Driscoll: Late-stage VC has bifurcated into sub-$400M and mega-private tiers
Rory O'Driscoll · Groq’s $20BN NVIDIA Deal | Why Sam Altman Doesn’t Care About Dilution & Invisible Unemployment 2026 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jan 8, 2026 · at 1:09:49
Rory O'Driscoll (General Partner at Scale Venture Partners) describes a structural shift in how late-stage software companies operate in modern private markets.
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“There really are two different late stage businesses now. It used to be late stage was, I remember Meritech would say, beyond 10 Million is late stage, and you'd think 10 to a hundred million was quote late stage. Now, late stage is 10 to four hundred million, because below that, you just can't realistically get public. But then there's this entirely separate asset class, I would argue, which is beyond four hundred million, you know, right? Which is when you could go public, but you're actively choosing not to, right? And that's just a different category, like Stripes and that, Databricks is in that.”
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