Latest news with #HemantTaneja
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
General Catalyst CEO: An AI driven power crisis lurks
You can catch Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The often hard-charging venture capital industry hasn't been immune to the economic uncertainty that has hung over markets this year. There were 79 venture capital transactions surpassing the $100-million mark in the first quarter, down from 90 in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to data from EY. Deal volume also inched lower. Information technology continued to dominate venture capital deals – EY's data shows that IT represented 74% of investment, accounting for seven of the top 10 deals, as investors stayed focused on companies with significant AI opportunities. Brian Sozzi welcomes to the Opening Bid mic General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja. General Catalyst is one of the world's pre-eminent venture capital firms. The company counts itself as an early backer of big names in tech such as Airbnb (ABNB), Circle (CRCL), Stripe ( Canva, Anduril Industries ( and GitLab (GTLB). In May, the company said it invested in 17 growth rounds and 9 seed rounds. Taneja has been with the company for more than 23 years, including nearly five as CEO. He reveals some of his biggest investment themes and takes people inside he is telling the many founders he advises. For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid is produced by Langston Sessoms Welcome to a new episode of Yahoo Finance's opening bid podcast. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sai. Like I always say, this is the podcast that will make you a smarter investor, period. And I want to change it up for this episode. I've spent so much time, uh, over the past few months talking about AI in the enterprise, or in other words, AI spreading throughout corporate America, mostly through agents unlocking all sorts of productivity and and costing jobs. I want to focus on AI for good and a lot of happening in the space and for that I want to welcome in General Catalyst, CEO Haymon Taneja, of course, General Catalyst, preeminent investment firm, and this is a company that has invested in the early stage of Stripe, Gitlab, Snap, Androll Industries, Circle, and I'm sure I'm missing many, many names. Hey Mark, good to see you. Last time I saw you was in Davos in January, so times have definitely changed. Thanks for having me. Yeah, good to see you. Um, look, like I mentioned, I've been focused so much this year onAI and the enterprise, but I know you really are locked in on AI and how it's changing the future of health care so the stage is yours, you know, what are some of the biggest changes you're seeing and then secondarily, how are you investing in some of those changes? Yeah, so first of all, why health care? I mean, if you, if you think about um what happened with uh that, everybody was like healthcare is broken, we need to be fixing it. COVID broke healthcare. I, I mean, you know, the rural systems uh ended up uh going out of business uh in a lot of places. We don't have like a healthcare system in rural uh a lot of the health systems are looking for bailouts because of the misalignment of the business model, workforce is tired, you name it, like all kinds of uh issues. And, and by the way, the urgency around healthcare, beyond just being a societal good is like for the United States, if we're gonna come out of our budget, uh, challenges, we have to make healthcare more affordable. So, so from our perspective, we always think know, if you close your eyes and you said for 20 years, you had a new brand new healthcare system, which should look like, you would say it's proactive. Nobody wants to go to the hospital, people want to stay healthy. You want it to be affordable, you want it to be so the question for us over the last um really over a decade now has been how do we get there? And uh our belief is that the transformation of the healthcare industry is not going to get done by a single need to build a series of companies that chip away at the broader problem, and, uh, you know, we got a little lucky break. Chad GPD happened along the way, which all of a sudden turbochargers or ability to create those building blocks needed to transform healthcare. So that's, that's a lot of what we've been focused on over the last, uh, uh, severalyears, and the changes I'm sure go beyond AI and making it.I guess quicker to check in and out of doctor's offices. I mean, there's take us through some of the foundational things that I think would blow some some uh viewers' minds in the healthcare space on how AI is impacting things. First of all, when Chad GPD happened, we're like, wow, this thing is hitting the zeitgeist, every CEO in every company in every industry in every country out what to do with AI and we're like, well, where, where's the early adoption gonna be? And the initial instinct was it's not gonna be healthcare, it's people's for all the reasons I described and how challenging the system is, the workforce embraces, the health systems embrace it. So I would actually argue healthcare is one of the places where it's the fastest adoption of uh AI happening today, OK? And uh it's a it's happening in a variety of spots. We have many companies, uh, that are providing pieces of AI solutions in healthcare, and here's how they go. One is obviously around can you automate, you know, patients being able to engage and get access to care and whatnot. But the important things the uh clinical teams, can we give them tooling that can address some of the physician and the clinical team burnout issues because the technology has been so poorly designed in this industry broadly, can AI make a difference there? That has spread like wildfire in these other is, you know, the, the workforce in healthcare, in my opinion, has been imbalanced towards more operational stuff and less about taking care of people. We don't have enough people taking care of our elderly or our kids with mental health uh issues, and we have a lot of people handling billing in the what AI is allowed to do is could you actually use artificial intelligence to help automate a lot of the revenue cycle management, how health systems get paid from insurance companies to um to operate. And, uh, on the other side, and then you take that workforce and really go focus on taking care of patients? That's been a huge other thing is, in terms of using AI to diagnose and take care of and understand which patients need what care as early as possible, the algorithmic use case is there. Uh, that's also a place where there's a fast adoption. So every part of the health systems, we're seeing adoption at scale on AI for these different functions. Do you think at some this technology will help lower the cost of care or that's just something that's never gonna happen. Look, it's a great question. It, it's, it's going to happen. We don't have a choice. It's, it's breaking. If you look at many of the states, 50% of the budgets, budgets are Medicare budgets. So at some point you're really, you know, not investing enough in education and, and other sort of core uh services in society, uh, as a nation if, if we don't get this right. So it has to be solved. So it, it, I'm a big believer that we will solve I think the biggest um way to solve it is, is this whole movement around healthcare, no, let's keep people if we can just reduce uh the need for care by being preemptive in our uh in our way of delivering care, taking care of consumers, that is an immediate every patient that did not, every person that did not go to the hospital, that's immediate savings in terms of tax on the system. So, so I think it needs to be really focusing on can technology create operating leverage? Can it be smart about keeping uh populations just healthier in then can we be smart about giving them the care that they need versus it's a bit of a blunt instrument today, you know, you're going to a hospital, they'll test you in every single dimension because who pays and who benefits are different people. So there's no rational behavior there. Can you actually bring in that kind of a value orientation to how care is delivered? I recentlyhad on the podcast, uh, hey, CEO Jonathan Ross, of course they're an upstart competitor to Nvidia, and he was making the point that AI can't yet predict uh or can't come up with certain predictive solutions. Is that the next big unlock in in in healthcare with some of the AI companies that you're seeing or or even seeing that they're able to predict the drug you need before you feel as though you might need it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's a drug or it might just be a nudge on the I think, I think we were actually, uh, it's interesting you ask that we're actively working on, uh, funding some research around this. What are the decisions that can proactively keep people healthy, uh, that is the, the path to transition to what would be a value-based care system and you do, you do need AI, uh, there to be able to understand a person at a deep level, understand, uh, the impact of the different actions on people's health and be able to say, OK, for this particular should go do XYZ to stay healthier. We did a version of this, by the way, uh, when we built Livongo, which was the first applied AI company in healthcare. We had started in 2013 and was focused on consumers with chronic conditions, starting with a lot of what we were doing was, we were uploading real-time data on their A1C, uh, on their blood sugars and seeing if they were trending in a negative spot and encouraging them to go get a glass of orange juice or go take a walk and, and sort of get them back into zone of healthiness versus leading to an episode that could be hypo or hypoglycemic for them. And that, that's a huge ROI. It's patient, you know, consumers love that because no one wants to think about their chronic conditions, they just want to be AI can play a big role in in driving that behavior. I'm listening to you. Hey man, I'm like, I, my new bootstrap seems really outdated. I just got this damn thing like two weeks ago. I mean, I thought, I thought it tracks a lot of great data. It does, but wow, I mean, it's amazing to see what is coming down the pike. I mean, to that end, just given the opportunity in healthcare, is your portfolio General Catalyst more skewed to healthcare opportunities in there? What are two companies that you want to highlight that are really working on some specialthings? Yeah, so healthcare, uh, is about 20% of what we do. It, it sort of consistently has been. And, uh, in healthcare, some of the big platforms that we're building, uh, you know, hospital systems need their own operating system and, uh, and, uh, uh, a set of AI capabilities to do some of the things I mentioned earlier, earlier. We have a company called Camur, we're building to enable uh the uh diagnostics using AI for uh uh taking care of assessing patients more effectively. We're a company called AI Doc doing that. Ro Health is our direct to consumer uh uh platform focused on, uh, keeping people healthy. They're very focused on obesity and, uh, GLP ones as a part of their offering. Uh, we have a company called Transparent, which is bringing a lot of this mindset to keepingUh, employees happy, uh, and healthy in, uh, uh, in the sort of large employer, uh, basis. So we're sort of building, uh, uh, capabilities across the board. We have a company called Hippocratic, which is a, uh, AI model that we built in collaboration with the health systems and it goes to market as a agentic that calls people and essentially simulates being an agentic nurse and takes care of them. So, so we have, we've tried and this was my point earlier, you need all these building blocks and more. We have 150 companies in our portfolio to go do this transformation of uh uh healthcare that we laid out. You'resucking me back into the AI agent debate. I was trying to get rid of it. Let's not, let's not go there. Let's not go there. But it's gonna be here. Well, let me just, let me just, let me just lean into it just a little bit. I can't help myself. Are you a big believer in humanoids playing a role in the care of baby boomers? You know, I've been, uh, reading, I've gotten a lot of slide decks recently, very long slide decks, a lot of really extensive research by, um, I think it was Morgan Stanley, but it's also out the companies that are doing humanoids and a lot of them are, they could have a role uh in perhaps maybe taking care of my parents someday. Uh, yeah, by the way, the first version of that idea I saw was, I kid you not, about 10 years ago. So, you know, these ideas, uh, now the robotics wasn't really ready for it. AI wasn't ready for it, but I, I do uh, using technology to bend the cost curve of taking care of our elderly is a huge lever. It's about 50% of our cost is last 6 months of end of life of care because America is obsessed with fighting death. So we do all these things and I think using technology to actually make uh, uh, cost effective, uh, is, is going to be a high ROI thing. So I do think robotics will play a role. I don't think that'll be one of the first applications where humanoids take hold, given the, the seriousness of it, but, uh, um, you know, we don't have a workforce that takes care of the elderly, you know, having some, uh, robotic uh augmentation of the workforce will be useful. All right, uh, hang with us, uh, hey man, we're gonna go off for a quick break. We'll be right back on opening welcome back to, uh, opening bid here at the Nasdaq in Times Square. Having a great, uh, chat on all things AI and the future, uh, impact on healthcare and various other industries with General Catlet CO Heyman Tadeja, of course, uh, General Catalyst, early investor in Stripe, Gitlab, Snap, and Industries, Circle, and, uh, like I mentioned at the top of the show, I know I'm missing a lot of key companies there, um, but I think you get the point. Now are you, I really, I think this was you, uh, hey man, I came across a LinkedIn post maybe it was you, um, noting that we are headed for a power crisis by 2028, and we're talking a lot about AI and the good it's doing, but can, can the system handle all of this technology and what type of power crisis are we looking at? Um, first of all, the system cannot, and I, and I, I actually think it's a good thing. So I, I spent some time with some of the largest utility CEOs and, you know, this industry was kind of growing with inflation, maybe 1% a year in terms of how much power was being uh hasn't really been growing, but because of AI and some of the emerging needs now, the electricity industry is poised to grow significantly, maybe double digit in the 2030s. Just try to imagine how big that sector is and how much more generation that's gonna be needed, and it's all driven towards, uh, you know, generating productivity with do not have uh the infrastructure, the permitting setups, uh, the supply chains to actually be able to go deploy that at scale when you need new technologies as well. And so I, I actually think, uh, you know, the power sector is gonna be a a super interesting, highly innovative one because of all the new it's an opportunity to do the energy transition to a more sustainable uh world as well, cause I, I do, I do think a lot of new technologies are coming out are fundamentally better uh from uh not only from a cost perspective but also, you know, uh, energy security as well as uh being good for the environment. When you say power crisis to the no, I'll I'll say I'm the noob, I'm the noob. What does that mean? Does that we talk about rolling blackouts here, what does a crisis even look like? Well, uh, I, I think if you think about the technology companies and the hyper scalers needing electricity, they are the most cash rich, uh, and they can afford to actually suck up all the new demand that's being built. So it could create sort of a supply demand imbalance in terms of how much can we take care commercial needs of the development of the AI industry and sort of balancing that with making sure we have reliable infrastructure for broader society as well. It just puts strain on the system. I just think we need to accelerate development of that infrastructure, otherwise we're gonna be, we're gonna have to make those trade-offs. They're either gonna say slow down progress in AI or, uh, you know, uh, slow down dealing with your pick. And so, so, uh, we shouldn't be in that situation. I think we can innovate our way and scale our way through this. It's something we are actively thinking through at the General Catalyst as well, how do we sort of play our part in that. But I think it's exciting. I think it's a, it's a growth market, uh, uh, for the entrepreneurs to focus on. Whatis your role in this, uh, Hama? Do you have to work closer with government officials and and what role should government play in this? Look, we, we describe ourselves as an investment and transformation company. Our focus is know, partner with the world's most ambitious entrepreneurs, build enduring companies and then transform transformation of industries, again, as I said earlier, when I was talking about healthcare, doesn't happen by a single company and doesn't happen by even a set of companies. It really happens by bringing different stakeholders together. That's innovation, that's policy, that's capital, that's existing a lot of the role we're playing is sort of sort of be that convener that can connect to these stakeholders, create collaboration, bring innovation in and drive those industries and for that we have been dealing with, uh, governments all over the world starting with DC, but everywhere we do business, um, we're engaging with them to think about how these systems are gonna transform over the next 20 to 30years. Well, there's certain companies trying to make what they do in AI, I guess more energy efficient. Everybody is, everybody has to because in some ways, the cost of AI is gonna bootstrap to the cost of energy, uh, you know, because compute, compute becomes more and more efficient. If energy, uh, prices are rising, that will actually make the cost of compute um uh more expensive. And so it's very, it's impetus is on us to figure out new technologies. That's why there's so much focus on technologies like fusion, why there's aUh, potential renaissance in the nuclear technology from a fission standpoint, all these technologies are being tried because we uh, uh, you know, uh, efficient solutions to, to scale the adoption of AI, uh, in this world. Is nuclear a way to to fix the problem? I think didn't Google sign a deal for nuclear power? Yeah, look, look, nuclear is going to have a lot of adoption workforce these plants for a huge amount of permitting perceived and real risks on how to do this well. So these are real issues that we have to, we have to get our arms around, but at the end of the day, uh, nuclear is and can be cheap abundant energy, uh, especially if we can also get fusion to work. There's another place we are doing some work, uh, as well. And, uh, and that's what I meant when I said that the power sector is going to have a lot of innovations, which is an exciting part that we'll end up in a better spot over the next 10 to 20 years AI sort of pulling it from a demand perspective and sort of asking for cheaper, faster, better solutions. I was thinking I was reflecting a little bit um back to um the panel I moderated with you at the World Economic Forum in January. It feels like yesterday, but at the same time it feels like years away, yeah, and it was so much optimism. I think the panel is focused on the role of role of founders, uh, in businesses. What have you told the founders of the companies that are in the general Catalyst portfolio inside of a year that started off with so much then it went down a little bit, went down further for liberation Day. Now the stock market's back near, uh, near the highs, but there's a lot of uncertainty. What are you telling this group? Really two things, um, a lot of these changes happening because of geopolitics and AI. Technology is pulling us in in interesting ways and the geopolitics is pulling us in interesting ways. And that's really the underpinnings of how we think about our own investment strategy. So the two things we tell them are, uh, one is this peak just understand that the definition of excellence is going to be constantly trying and moving forward versus thinking you're gonna get the decisions right cause you just, you just sort of know which where the world's gonna go. Second is, I think you have to be very umClear about your values and where you wanna go because when things are very, very ambiguous, the only thing you have to lean on is the long term values that you're building your business with. So have more conviction and courage to follow those and make the hard choices where it's not really clear which direction to go and, and, and that allows you to constantly be moving with urgency in the short term, but be going, uh, you know, where you believe in the long term. Has demand slowed? Have you seen any cautionary signals in in your various businesses? Not really. I mean, I think, I think, uh, some of the stuff around tariffs, for example, I mean, in some ways came and went, and, and companies were preparing for it and they lead to some supply chain shifting, which again is an opportunity from our standpoint. But I think overall, um, it's uh the, the place where we fundamentally about transfer uh transfer of value, right? We look at how's technology shifting value to different businesses that is happening so fast, it's unbelievable. There's a category of businesses where I mean I tell our team regularly that we have to rethink definition of what it means to grow uh fast because some companies are growing so much faster than we ever were used because AI is such an accelerant that, uh, you know, it, it's an incredibly exciting time in terms of what's the, the art of the possible with, uh, with what we do. I recently had a good chat with, um, the co-CEO of Premera of course they invest a lot of early stage companies, and he, he made a good point. Brian Rutter made the good point that companies still want IPO. They view that as a North then they also don't want an IPO because of all the burdensome regulations and having to deal with shareholders. Has that been your sense as well talking with the founders of companies you interact with that they're, they're, they, they, they want to go public, but they're but they're hesitant to do so. So, so I look at our companies of of the companies that become viable businesses, I bucket them into three categories, the very is like the private version of the, uh, you know, uh, the sort of market leaders, the stripes and the SpaceX's and the Andals. They have access to everything they need. They can create shareholder liquidity, they can raise in pretty much the capital, they can get debt, they can do M&A in the private markets. So for them, the threshold is like why go public if you don't have to and take on that tax that you're referring to. Then there's sort of a mid-tier companies uh where they need to establish credibility in the they could use the capital base, they could use the credibility of being a public company, uh, and, and those will think about going public sort of more aggressively. I actually think the, the thing that we spent a lot of time focusing on is like then there's a huge set of companies that even get to 100, 200 million in revenue. They're growing 15, 20% a year. Founders viewed as their life's work. They're excited to do it, they'll keep compounding, but they're too small to be public there is, there is this other uh area where public companies are not even a solution for them. So we need innovation in our industry to get those companies to endure in the private markets just like they do in other industries, and there's lots of private companies that become enduring companies in non-tech. Tech as it matures is also not gonna need uh uh that kind of a set of capital solutions to drive that. As uh, I wanna lock in on one company in particular for our, our, uh, hot take segment here, uh, for the podcast Andro industries. I am genuinely, I've been following that company's, uh, journey. I'm genuinely fascinated by what Palmer Luckey and his team is working on, you know, as an investor in Andro, what is, what's the future of modern warfare look like? Look, you're, you're, um, we've been investors in since the seed stage in 2017 and it's been amazing to watch, uh, their sense of purpose, their true, uh, north, and how they've navigated. Look, you've seen a blueprint for what warfare is gonna look Ukraine, you saw a very small snippet of that in, in uh uh in the Israel conflict you saw that little bit in the India-Pakistan conflict. I think warfare is fundamentally changing, changing, and it is going to, you know, more drones, more technology, more decentralized uh systems, and, um, and so the whole supply chain has to uh I, I think the sector is gonna have to innovate. I don't think it's gonna be about these really expensive monolithic uh uh fighter programs, uh, only. I think a lot of the capital is gonna shift towards these, uh, uh, smaller, more effective solutions that use technology and AI and, uh, are frankly a lot more cost effective from a taxpayer perspective as well. So, so that is changing. It's a very exciting sector. We've invested companies all over the world because every region wants to develop their own primes, uh, and, and these local capabilities on these new technologies. Uh, so, you know, it is, it is, it has gone from there was a unique investment in 2017 by most people uh people standards although we've been investing in defense since 2004 to now defense being a really vibrant sector, uh, all over the world. I think they're seeing great companies getting built to the overall needs for this modern warfare. What do you thinkthe next 5 years for a company like Andro look like? I think they're gonna keep, um, uh, uh, you know, first of all scaling, they're gonna keep building more and more products. They have ambitions to continue to serve, uh, you know, uh, countries that they believe in, from a values perspective and want to do business with. And, uh, I mean, I, uh, you know, these, there hasn't been a large defense for the last 30, 40 years since Andro came about in the US, I mean, the, the runway here is, I mean, this should be as big or maybe bigger than the other, other primes because it's, it's technology first, it's a better business, it's a better business model. It's, it's highly innovative and moves fast and then theoretically should gain uh share over others, you know, continue to do that over the last 5 years. Great to uh spend some time with you again here, General Cao hey Montanaja, uh, don't be a stranger. Talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks Brian. That was fun. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And that's it for the latest episode of Opening Bid. Uh, continue to hit us with all those likes and thumbs up on all the podcast platforms and on YouTube. If you heard something or saw something that really piqued your interest from, uh, Haymont at General Catalyst, uh, please hit me, uh, with some comments in the YouTube sections or on X at Brian Sazi. I will get to all your questions and I'll talk to you soon.
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI's next big breakthrough could be in healthcare: General Catalyst CEO
Listen, like, and subscribe to Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja is looking to shape the future of healthcare through artificial intelligence. "We always think about if you close your eyes and you said in 20 years you had a brand-new healthcare system, what should it look like? You would say it's proactive. Nobody wants to go to the hospital. People want to stay healthy. You want it to be affordable, you want it to be accessible," Taneja said in a new episode of Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (watch above; listen-only below). ChatGPT and AI have helped turbocharge companies' ability to create building blocks that transform healthcare, Taneja added. "With 4.5 billion people currently without access to essential healthcare services and a health worker shortage of 11 million expected by 2030, AI has the potential to help bridge that gap and revolutionize global healthcare," researchers at the World Economic Forum wrote earlier this year. General Catalyst is one of the world's preeminent venture capital firms. The company counts itself as an early backer of buzzy names such as Airbnb (ABNB), Circle (CRCL), Stripe, Canva, Anduril Industries, and Gitlab. In May, the company said it invested in 17 growth rounds and nine seed rounds. Taneja has been with the company for more than 23 years, including nearly five as CEO. The company's focus on healthcare has been receiving its fair share of attention of late. Last October, General Catalyst raised $8 billion in funding and is allocating more than $1 billion of it to healthcare companies. Taneja said about 20% of the company's current portfolio is invested in health. The firm is focusing on companies using AI to make care cheaper and quicker and possibly prevent hospital visits altogether by being more predictive of patient needs. One name in the portfolio is Commure, founded by Taneja in 2017 and launched in 2020. The healthcare services startup company recently struck a partnership with hospital operator HCA Healthcare (HCA) to deploy its AI platform Scribe. The platform provides automatic clinic documentation. Yahoo Finance's Invest conference is coming soon — register here Taneja said it's critical to have technology bring down the cost of care over time. "We don't have a choice [to bring costs down]. It's [the healthcare system] breaking," Taneja explained. "If you look at many of the states, 50% of the budgets are Medicare budgets. So at some point you're really not investing enough in education and other sort of core services in society as a nation if we don't get this [healthcare system] right. So it has to be solved." Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service. Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest health industry news and events impacting stock prices
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI's next big breakthrough could be in healthcare: General Catalyst CEO
Listen, like, and subscribe to Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja is looking to shape the future of healthcare through artificial intelligence. "We always think about if you close your eyes and you said in 20 years you had a brand-new healthcare system, what should it look like? You would say it's proactive. Nobody wants to go to the hospital. People want to stay healthy. You want it to be affordable, you want it to be accessible," Taneja said in a new episode of Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (watch above; listen-only below). ChatGPT and AI have helped turbocharge companies' ability to create building blocks that transform healthcare, Taneja added. "With 4.5 billion people currently without access to essential healthcare services and a health worker shortage of 11 million expected by 2030, AI has the potential to help bridge that gap and revolutionize global healthcare," researchers at the World Economic Forum wrote earlier this year. General Catalyst is one of the world's preeminent venture capital firms. The company counts itself as an early backer of buzzy names such as Airbnb (ABNB), Circle (CRCL), Stripe, Canva, Anduril Industries, and Gitlab. In May, the company said it invested in 17 growth rounds and nine seed rounds. Taneja has been with the company for more than 23 years, including nearly five as CEO. The company's focus on healthcare has been receiving its fair share of attention of late. Last October, General Catalyst raised $8 billion in funding and is allocating more than $1 billion of it to healthcare companies. Taneja said about 20% of the company's current portfolio is invested in health. The firm is focusing on companies using AI to make care cheaper and quicker and possibly prevent hospital visits altogether by being more predictive of patient needs. One name in the portfolio is Commure, founded by Taneja in 2017 and launched in 2020. The healthcare services startup company recently struck a partnership with hospital operator HCA Healthcare (HCA) to deploy its AI platform Scribe. The platform provides automatic clinic documentation. Yahoo Finance's Invest conference is coming soon — register here Taneja said it's critical to have technology bring down the cost of care over time. "We don't have a choice [to bring costs down]. It's [the healthcare system] breaking," Taneja explained. "If you look at many of the states, 50% of the budgets are Medicare budgets. So at some point you're really not investing enough in education and other sort of core services in society as a nation if we don't get this [healthcare system] right. So it has to be solved." Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service. Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest health industry news and events impacting stock prices Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
General Catalyst CEO: An AI driven power crisis lurks
You can catch Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The often hard-charging venture capital industry hasn't been immune to the economic uncertainty that has hung over markets this year. There were 79 venture capital transactions surpassing the $100-million mark in the first quarter, down from 90 in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to data from EY. Deal volume also inched lower. Information technology continued to dominate venture capital deals – EY's data shows that IT represented 74% of investment, accounting for seven of the top 10 deals, as investors stayed focused on companies with significant AI opportunities. Brian Sozzi welcomes to the Opening Bid mic General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja. General Catalyst is one of the world's pre-eminent venture capital firms. The company counts itself as an early backer of big names in tech such as Airbnb (ABNB), Circle (CRCL), Stripe ( Canva, Anduril Industries ( and GitLab (GTLB). In May, the company said it invested in 17 growth rounds and 9 seed rounds. Taneja has been with the company for more than 23 years, including nearly five as CEO. He reveals some of his biggest investment themes and takes people inside he is telling the many founders he advises. For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid is produced by Langston Sessoms Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Times
12-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Meter, a Networking Start-Up, Raises New Funds
As Silicon Valley has obsessed over artificial intelligence, significant attention has been paid to technology underpinning it: advanced computer chips, large language models and so on. Less has been devoted to the pipes that help deliver A.I. — networking equipment. But that has been changing, as companies and investors see the potential of improving relatively prosaic equipment like switches and access points to supercharge A.I. offerings. The latest sign is that Meter, a San Francisco-based start-up that sells packages of networking equipment, plans to announce on Thursday that it has raised $170 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. The round, which was led by the venture capital firm General Catalyst and includes backing from the likes of Microsoft and Sequoia Capital, is further evidence that for many in Silicon Valley, networking is becoming a hotter investment focus. 'Networking is an overlooked, yet crucial, aspect of the world's tech infrastructure,' said Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst's chief executive, who led the firm's investment in Meter. 'Networking spend is expected to grow massively in the next few years because of A.I. needs, and yet current networks are one of the biggest blockers' to growing A.I. computing power. To be fair, networking is already a big business: Cisco, the heavyweight in the field, has a $254 billion market capitalization, while Arista Networks has a $118 billion market cap. Those incumbents haven't been standing still either, with Cisco announcing this week that it was introducing a new generation of switches to keep up with huge data flows from A.I. services. But Meter has drawn significant support — among its early backers were Sam Altman of OpenAI; Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder; and Diane Greene, the former Google Cloud chief executive — with its promise of a new business model for the networking business. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
