▶ 50:53 · $HIGGSFIELD · Higgsfield hits $500M ARR in AI video, raising at $5B — Jason and Harry invested

episode briefing

The Rise of Chinese Open Source | Sam Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI | Enterprises Fear Frontier Models

2026-07-09 · 10 company · 7 thematic

sentiment

5 bull1 bear4 neu

speakers

Rory O'Driscoll is a partner at Scale Venture Partners, a late-stage venture firm. He references Scale's portfolio (Linear, DataBricks, HubSpot, Salesforce, Palantir) and fund dynamics. He previously invested in Anthropic (2021) and tracks AI infrastructure closely.

jason lemkin

Founder of SaaStr, a community and media platform for B2B software founders and executives. He is an early-stage investor and a frequent commentator on SaaS growth and go-to-market strategy.

quote

“Higgsfield, where Harry and I are both investors, I was one of the first 10 users or customers. Higgsfield just announced they're at 500 million in revenue... actually doing 2 million a day now just in credit card billings outside of the e…”

—jason lemkin

episode shorts · 1

This week's latest #technews

now playing · $HIGGSFIELD

$LINEARbullish· high· posrory o'driscoll

Linear's capital efficiency (2 rounds only) returns Rory's fund 1 multiple times

Linear founder Karri Saarinen raised only two rounds, refuses VC meetings, extreme capital discipline. Rory (Scale VP): 'It will return my fund one multiple times over and I'm inc…

$PLTR···bullish· mediumjason lemkin

Palantir positioned as trusted enterprise AI layer — stock up 9% on Karp interview

Alex Karp's CNBC interview highlighted two enterprise pain points: (1) ROI uncertainty on AI spend, (2) fear that frontier model providers train on proprietary data. Palantir's go…

$META···bullish· mediumrory o'driscoll

Meta launches AI compute cloud business, stock jumps 10%

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$NVDA···neutral· highrory o'driscoll

Nvidia finances neoclouds with revenue-sharing GPU deals

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$ANTHROPICneutral· mediumrory o'driscoll

Anthropic explores custom AI chips with Samsung — vertical integration debate

Anthropic talking to Samsung to build proprietary chips. Two arguments: (1) must own compute layer to avoid dependency (crypto 'not your keys' logic), (2) custom silicon optimized…

$ANTHROPICbearish· highjason lemkin

Jason Calacanis: Anthropic custom chips make no sense — Nvidia will customize

Building proprietary chips for 'specialized needs' is soft language for margin recapture. In semiconductors, a customer driving 50-80% of a vendor's revenue gets custom tape-outs.…

$HIGGSFIELDbullish· high· posjason lemkin

Higgsfield hits $500M ARR in AI video, raising at $5B — Jason and Harry invested

Higgsfield (AI video generation platform) doing ~$2M/day in credit card billings (~$500M+ ARR), cash-flow positive, raising at $5B valuation. Jason and Harry are early investors.…

$KLINGneutral· mediumjason lemkin

Kling raises at $18B for AI video — Chinese valuation premium?

Kling (Chinese AI video leader) raising $2.8B at $18B valuation on ~$500M ARR. Meanwhile Higgsfield (US, similar revenue) raising at $5B. Jason questions whether a structural Chin…

$MSFT···neutral· mediumrory o'driscoll

Microsoft builds $2.5B services arm to embed engineers in enterprises — IBM playbook

Microsoft launching 6,000-person services org to help enterprises adopt AI (like IBM Global Services did for PC/cloud). Rory: talent shortage means execution will fail — 'not enou…

$ELEVENLABSbullish· mediumjason lemkin

ElevenLabs $22B secondary highlights employee liquidity as recruiting weapon

Regular tender offers (like ElevenLabs at $22B) are becoming table stakes for talent acquisition. Jason: 'As an employee today, why would you join something that you don't believe…

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