Rob Stephens

rising tides lift all boats; the stars lift all eyes | endowment LP, former GP. deep tech rube. recovering chinaholic | views mine, activity ≠ endorsement

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Happy $SPCX day to all who celebrate! Been a long time coming. 🚀🚀

This was also a first for me. Thanks to @DWeisburd for having me on to talk VC, natural resources, and even a little space.

[David Weisburd 🚀 @DWeisburd]

One of the most interesting insights from my conversation with @robstephens_ , Director of Investments at Spider Management ($7B AUM), wasn't about venture capital. It was about power.

For years, venture capital and natural resources were treated as separate worlds.

Today they're increasingly intertwined.

Why?

Because AI's biggest bottleneck may not be chips, talent, or capital.

It may be electricity.

Every frontier model, data center, AI factory, battery facility, and electrification project ultimately depends on access to power. The conversation is shifting from software to infrastructure.

As Rob pointed out, data centers are increasingly discussed not in terms of square footage, but in terms of megawatts. The question is no longer "How big is the building?" It's "How much power can it access?"

This has fascinating second-order implications:
• Venture capital and energy investing are converging
• AI is becoming a natural resources story
• Data centers, nuclear, batteries, and critical minerals are becoming part of the same ecosystem
• Access to power may become as important as access to capital

We're entering a world where understanding AI may require understanding energy markets, grid infrastructure, and resource constraints.

That's a very different investment landscape than the one most of us grew up with.

What second-order effects of the AI-power convergence do you think investors are underestimating?

Thank you @lacostejonathan for the kind intro!

We’d like to thank @AlphaSenseInc for sponsoring this episode!

Full episode below 👇
https://t.co/jfKHhmacwA

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

With today's 20% SpaceX pop, Elon made more money today than Warren Buffett made in his entire career

[X Freeze @XFreeze]

SpaceX just filed an SEC 8-K for its merger agreement to acquire Anysphere, the company behind Cursor

The deal values Cursor at a $60 billion implied equity value and is expected to close in Q3 2026, subject to regulatory approvals

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

American Dynamo

[a16z @a16z]

Against all odds.

Congrats @elonmusk and @SpaceX.

[Katie Roof @Katie_Roof]

Ok that’s it he’s buying Tesla

[Aaron Levie @levie]

The big winner in all of this is going to be open weights models. This is a huge win for the field, as a risk that was entirely theoretical and untested 2 days ago (that a model could be pulled back), now has a new precedent that’s been set.

The game theory the US should highly consider, and the risk with regulating AI at the model layer vs. applied layer, is that other countries now have even more incentive to develop sovereign AI.

If at any moment a model can be become unavailable to your country’s users or businesses, this poses very real risk on relying on technology from a particular country.

As a result, it forces major countries to charter their own path on AI development, which reduces America’s leadership role in this tech stack over time. The most likely solution that other countries will rely on is open weights models, which currently is generally not coming from the US.

America should be considering all of these downstream implications as it decides how and where in the stack to be regulating AI. At the same time, we should be doing a ton more OSS innovation.

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

@IanRountree Unfortunately no, and very bummed

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

What a crew

[REINDUSTRIALIZE SUMMIT @reindsummit]

Thank you to all of this year's sponsors.

See you in Detroit. 🇺🇸

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

@SchramIAm Just us and our closest 500 friends?

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Face made for radio version if you're trying to nap en route to @reindsummit

https://t.co/QUYr1PbSA2

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Happy $SPCX day to all who celebrate! Been a long time coming. 🚀🚀

This was also a first for me. Thanks to @DWeisburd for having me on to talk VC, natural resources, and even a little space.

[David Weisburd 🚀 @DWeisburd]

One of the most interesting insights from my conversation with @robstephens_ , Director of Investments at Spider Management ($7B AUM), wasn't about venture capital. It was about power.

For years, venture capital and natural resources were treated as separate worlds.

Today they're increasingly intertwined.

Why?

Because AI's biggest bottleneck may not be chips, talent, or capital.

It may be electricity.

Every frontier model, data center, AI factory, battery facility, and electrification project ultimately depends on access to power. The conversation is shifting from software to infrastructure.

As Rob pointed out, data centers are increasingly discussed not in terms of square footage, but in terms of megawatts. The question is no longer "How big is the building?" It's "How much power can it access?"

This has fascinating second-order implications:
• Venture capital and energy investing are converging
• AI is becoming a natural resources story
• Data centers, nuclear, batteries, and critical minerals are becoming part of the same ecosystem
• Access to power may become as important as access to capital

We're entering a world where understanding AI may require understanding energy markets, grid infrastructure, and resource constraints.

That's a very different investment landscape than the one most of us grew up with.

What second-order effects of the AI-power convergence do you think investors are underestimating?

Thank you @lacostejonathan for the kind intro!

We’d like to thank @AlphaSenseInc for sponsoring this episode!

Full episode below 👇
https://t.co/jfKHhmacwA

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

@SchramIAm Sadly can't and this fomo hurts

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Big thanks to @lacostejonathan too for the assist!

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Just minutes before its Nasdaq IPO debut, SpaceX launched 29 Starlink satellites into orbit aboard a Falcon 9.

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Invest in people

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

https://t.co/taVE0hnpnh

[delian @zebulgar]

Excited to lead Endurance Energy's $54M Series A

At FF we've seen so many of our companies bottlenecked by energy lately

We'd be looking to make a bet on someone utilizing Earth's thermal engine

Andrew pulled together the right team (ex-SpaceX/Helion) + approach (off-shore)

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

@zebulgar @HillValleyForum Build in some breaks between sessions so networking isn't confined to the lobby

[Varun Gupta @Varungupta]

Combat mass is the driving principle.

[Cowboy Space Corp. @CowboySpaceCorp]

The Orbital Economy is coming.

[Rob Stephens @robstephens_]

Work now, personal soon. The AI models are hungry.

[a16z @a16z]

Most work conversations are now being recorded by default. You should probably assume that everything you say at work is getting recorded from here on out.

What’s emerging is a new category of enterprise software, organized around voice instead of text.

The system of record today is structured data: CRM entries, tickets, docs. But the highest-value context lives in conversation: the nuance on a customer call, the real argument in a product review, the offhand comment in a leadership meeting that quietly changes the roadmap.

LLMs are uniquely good at taking that unstructured voice data and making it structured, searchable, and queryable. That’s a large enterprise opportunity, and we’re still early in understanding what the software layer looks like and who owns it.

a16z GP David Haber on what AI recording means for the future of work: https://t.co/02zEZZWMMr