Yuliya Chernova

Reporter @WSJ @WSJVC. Startups, VC, tech. Living it up in Brooklyn, the immigrant parts. [email protected]

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Payments startup Forage raised a $40 million Series B to help retailers accept SNAP food assistance benefits https://t.co/eFbv6kjX0R via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

NY City Council Speaker Julie Menin & a16z’s @dhaber kicked off NY Tech Week at City Hall today. The Speaker proposed a local Y Combinator, praised Cornell Tech & said NY officials shouldn’t use rhetoric that pushes businesses away. Background: the mayor’s spat w/ Ken Griffin

[David Haber @dhaber]

The best founders don't end up in New York by accident. They come because this is where the hardest problems, the biggest customers, and the highest stakes are. The city demands you build something real.

I've always believed the best opportunities live between fields of expertise — not inside any single industry, but at the intersections. No city in the world has more intersections than New York. Finance and media. Healthcare and technology. The customers who need AI to actually work — banks, hospitals, newsrooms, asset managers — are all here, within a few miles of each other.

AI adoption is accelerating faster than any cycle I've seen. Per @PitchBook, AI is now 65% of NYC venture deal value, up from 16% six years ago. Early-stage funding hit $8.9B in 2025, up 50% in a year. Active unicorns: 32 in 2019, 159 today.

The infrastructure of a generational tech hub is being built in real time.

We're still early. The biggest deals haven't happened. The companies that define applied AI haven't been built.

The founders who build them will be ambitious. They'll want to be where the problems are.

They'll be here.

NY @Techweek_ starts today. Come build 🗽

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

New York venture firms are broadening their geographic reach. Examples: Primary, Work-Bench, and Deviation (formerly Two Sigma) Part of the reason: AI mania in SF is hard to ignore. NY seed investing declined as a share of total in the U.S. last year. https://t.co/C5m9YPyByV

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Cerebras IPO is a fund returner for early VCs several times over. Benchmark’s $3.26 billion stake at offering price cost $268 million; Foundation got $2.83 billion on $36.8 million invested, Eclipse turned $145.4 million into $2.49 billion.  

https://t.co/O2CoM1NUFX

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

@pitdesi @iamjakestream Journalists?

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Scoop: Arif Janmohamed (Lightspeed) and Trevor Oelschig (GC) are raising $375 million for their new firm Duration Ventures to invest in early-stage enterprise AI startups https://t.co/rfukmnokWG

[Alex Konrad @alexrkonrad]

A sign of the times: two of crypto's most prominent VC firms have moved into AI investing, too

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Two Sigma Ventures has spun out of the hedge fund and is now operating as Deviation Capital. It's raising a $300 million fund, per a source https://t.co/evDIQzTCcb via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

@JJColao @keachhagey @sama @laureltouby Great event, as always, thanks!

[mmurph @mmurph]

Growth more interesting than ever given the magnitude of the outliers in the AI wave. You don’t have to look far….👀 @AnthropicAI @Lovable @suno @WeAreLegora @OpenRouter @WisprFlow @EvidenceOpen (all basically $0 to 100m ramps or > in 1 year)

[Techmeme @Techmeme]

PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom (@ychernova / Wall Street Journal)

https://t.co/S2pMVrWkLt
https://t.co/S83FMPJ2fn

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

LPs love late-stage venture funds nowadays. I noticed this trend going into the new year. Q1 really confirmed it. Late-stage vc funds raised $23.6B, an annual record just through April 13. https://t.co/s3oFGl8qKr

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Scoop on fund returns for @apartovi's Neo. Neo's 2018 Fund 1 is at 7.5X, its 2021 Fund 2 is at 6.5X net. There's a widening gap between high performers and everyone else in VC now. More on how Neo did it: https://t.co/wqQaGBx8ne

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Space startup Aetherflux, led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, is raising a new round at a $2 billion valuation, sources say https://t.co/UTIbGUjWi4 with @EmilyGlazer via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

New York tech founders and investors mobilize to fight proposed capital-gains tax hike on startup exits https://t.co/c8UZC2fPKF via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Scoop out: Prediction-market platform Kalshi is raising about $1 billion in a funding round that values the startup at $22 billion, according to people familiar with the information https://t.co/kJzjczD0Hr via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Scoop on Kalshi’s $22 billion valuation on Dow Jones Newswires. More coming

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Fundrise Innovation Fund is putting its public listing on hold due to the volatility caused by the Iran war, CEO Ben Miller says. “I’m watching the Strait of Hormuz like everyone else" https://t.co/Ra6Ps00N84 via @WSJ

[Yuliya Chernova @ychernova]

Friday night scoop: Crypto firm Paradigm expands mandate to invest in AI and other frontier tech, sources say. The firm is raising up to $1.5 billion for its next fund, sources say. https://t.co/hgtxqa7Rtb