🕶️ TikTok hacked attention. Banks followed the money.

Capital One is buying Brex for $5.15B in cash and stock, well below its $12.3B peak and predictably sparking Sand Hill snickers and LP high-fives. Early investors get liquidity; late-stage holders absorb the reality check.

For Capital One, it’s a clean strategic grab: Brex’s enterprise spend stack, about $13B in deposits, and an EU license in one deal—pairing distribution, cheap funding, and software. Expect lower CAC and better cross-sell.

The takeaway: down-round exits can still be wins, and the last private mark isn’t the scoreboard. More fintech consolidation ahead as banks chase AI-native rails and durable deposits. Watch Ramp as the category tightens.

How much should you actually own of your startup? Most founders shed more equity than they realize by the time they hit Seed or Series A — and it could cost them millions down the line. In this video, we break down founder equity benchmarks, cap table traps, and why owning 5% of a unicorn might still beat 50% of a “meh” business.

Davos still had the snow, but the mood had shifted. The familiar language of climate pledges and global poverty gave way to something sharper, more transactional: AI. Along the promenade, Meta and Salesforce branding crowded out NGO pavilions, and conversations that once leaned toward collective responsibility now sounded more like earnings calls. Executives aired frustrations with regulators, fretted about competitive asymmetries, and—between closed-door panels—acknowledged that AI’s externalities may be far messier than its demos suggest. Less kumbaya, more KPIs.

The subtext was hard to miss. The next phase of AI won’t be defined by breakthroughs in code alone, but by who can navigate regulation at scale. Data provenance, model liability, and compliance are moving from afterthoughts to gatekeepers. That tilts the field toward capital-heavy incumbents and the chip and cloud suppliers that underpin them. Startups still have a shot, but only if compliance is baked in from day one and access to secure compute is locked down early. Meanwhile, climate and development slipped down the agenda—at least rhetorically. Whether they rebound may depend on how long AI’s halo effect lasts, and whether its capital and attention spill over into adjacent sectors before the hype cools.