Jenny Fielding on AI Volatility and Venture Discipline in The Wall Street Journal
Investors are reassessing assumptions, moats, and emotional resilience as volatility reshapes the venture landscape.
Venture capital investors are navigating one of the most unsettled periods in recent memory. A sharp selloff in cloud software stocks, combined with rapid advances in artificial intelligence models, has forced many to reconsider how they evaluate risk, capital intensity, and defensibility.
Earlier this month, sentiment shifted quickly as public software stocks declined. “It’s total panic mode,” said Jenny Fielding, co-founder and general partner at Everywhere Ventures. She described the environment as quicksand, where each step requires careful footing. While her firm maintains conviction in vertical AI, she noted that more time is now spent assessing moats and long term durability.
The pace of AI development has compounded the uncertainty. Speaking at a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Hemant Taneja, chief executive of General Catalyst, called this the hardest time to invest in AI, citing both the scale of capital required and the speed of model progress.
Beyond strategy, investors acknowledge the emotional toll. Saper described the period as taxing, prompting him to lean into routines such as spending time outdoors and at the gym to stay grounded. Meanwhile, Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures, said that Menlo’s early investment in Anthropic offers perspective on where AI labs are heading. Personally, he credits his daily writing habit with helping him adjust to shifting technological assumptions.
Taken together, the comments reflect a venture ecosystem recalibrating in real time. Public markets are volatile. AI capabilities are accelerating. Capital deployment requires sharper scrutiny.
For now, steadiness may be the most valuable asset of all.
Read the full article from The Wall Street Journal