Benchmark’s AI Pressure Test: High Prices, Smaller Stakes—and a Poached StarBenchmark’s AI Pressure Test: High Prices, Smaller Stakes—and a Poached StarArt by Clark Miller; images via YouTube
The Big Read

Benchmark’s AI Pressure Test: High Prices, Smaller Stakes—and a Poached Star

The storied firm is grappling with the AI era and has pinned fresh hopes on a new general partner.

By
Natasha Mascarenhas

Last year, Benchmark, the storied venture capital firm, embarked on a lavish courtship of Brendan Foody, founder and CEO of Mercor, a startup that fills a lucrative niche in AI by hiring workers to train AI programs.

First, General Partner Victor Lazarte chatted with Foody over Zoom. Then Peter Fenton, the firm’s longest-tenured active GP, took Foody out on his helicopter for a tour around San Francisco. And finally, Benchmark’s most famous investor—Bill Gurley, who hasn’t regularly invested in startups for the firm in years—made a rare appearance and met with Foody to help win him over.

A few weeks later, Lazarte, Fenton and the firm’s two other general partners—Eric Vishria and Chetan Puttagunta—gathered at the firm’s San Francisco office to talk deal terms with Foody.