Descriptions:
Bloomberg Technology sits down with Steve Zhang, managing partner and founder of Kindred Ventures, to discuss the firm’s freshly closed $355 million fund raise — its largest to date and focused on deep tech and robotics. Zhang, an early angel investor in Uber and a backer of companies like Perplexity and Cursor, reveals that Kindred’s 2022 vintage fund has grown from $200 million to $1 billion in gross fair market value as of June 2026, placing it in the top 1% of its class.
The conversation covers Zhang’s view of the AI stack as a three-layer competitive battle: frontier model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI), harness and orchestration platforms (including Anthropic’s Claude Code), and productive agent applications — both virtual knowledge-worker agents like Perplexity Computer and embodied agents like robots. He argues that token demand driven by agentic applications is outstripping GPU and data center supply, citing inference platforms like FAL, Base10, and Modal as beneficiaries.
Zhang also addresses exit dynamics, predicting that anticipated IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Databricks will reopen public markets while incumbent public companies pursue acquisitions to catch up to the AI cycle — a dual-path reality Kindred actively helps its portfolio companies navigate. The interview offers a rare ground-level perspective from an early-stage investor who has been deploying into AI since 2022.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Technology · Published June 08, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
