Benchmark

Horizontal vs Vertical Agents: Who Wins? | Model Routing: Commodity or Increasing in Value?

Oct 17, 2026 · 1:03:06

Harry Stebbings hosts Harrison Chase, CEO of LangChain, who argues agents are hard to build because models are non-deterministic, and value accrues to whoever controls context, harness and evals. Chase explains why model routing belongs in the harness for vertical agents but in gateways for horizontal tasks, why agent memory is unsolved after LangChain killed its memory product, and why vertical agents should start at the harness before post-training. He says inference and coding agent demand is far bigger than expected, that LangChain spends ~30% of engineering salary on coding tools — a figure he ties to Anthropic's valuation — and that open models mostly serve simple tasks, not core loops. He closes with his bull case for a $9BN Jev round and how Benchmark and Sequoia help founders.

Menlo’s Venky Ganesan on Going All-In on AI, Anthropic & Why Venture Has Changed Forever

Oct 5, 2026 · 1:11:15

Venky Ganesan, Partner at Menlo Ventures, says venture has fundamentally changed and Menlo is 'going for broke' to back the era's defining AI companies. He recounts a 90% loss on AvenX that taught him to take chips off the table, and calls seed an option bet where Menlo is 'somewhat indifferent' to price to win a seat. He warns measured metrics get gamed, cycles crack through debt defaults, and calls passing a $50,000 Facebook check via Sean Parker his costliest miss. Ownership still matters — Menlo owns under 2% of Anthropic yet put 20% of a fund in it — and he assumes 60% dilution, saying IRR must beat the Mag Seven by 1,000 basis points. He backs partial sells to stay long, prefers capital allocation to product vision at scale, and tells LPs to judge the windshield, not the rearview mirror.

How LPs Allocate to Venture in 2026: What They Want, What They Don’t | Baylor University CIO

Sep 14, 2026 · 1:16:29

David Morehead, Chief Investment Officer of Baylor University's $2.6 billion endowment, argues that velocity of capital matters more than fund multiples — a 3x growth fund compounding every six years beats a 15x venture fund held 18 years. He explains why Baylor holds about 2.5% of its endowment in Anthropic, why it bought the software crash down 50-60% by betting on human behavior, and why growth equity is its largest private allocation. Morehead details his rule that returns cannot be discussed without time, position sizing of $3 million per underlying company, and why managers must stick to the strategy they raised on. He names permitting as the data center bottleneck, is bearish on Europe, calls private credit overhyped, and argues biotech could be the next major opportunity.