The Information just named 15 VCs who are winning the AI deal wars, and the list tells you more about where venture capital is heading than any fundraising announcement will.
The Summary
- The Information surveyed dozens of founders and investors to identify 15 venture capitalists positioned to become general partners at top firms based on their ability to secure stakes in competitive AI startups
- These rising dealmakers are winning in AI apps, developer tools, cloud services, and defense tech at firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, and Bain Capital Ventures
- The selection criteria reveals what matters now in venture: access to oversubscribed rounds in AI infrastructure and the ability to expand into adjacent categories like defense
The Signal
Venture capital is having an access crisis, and this list is the casualty report. When The Information surveys founders and investors about who's "best positioned" to make GP, they're not asking who has the best founder support or the deepest pattern recognition. They're asking who can get into the room when everyone else is locked out.
The AI boom has created more investable companies than any previous cycle, but the cap table spots in the ones that matter have never been more scarce. OpenAI, Anthropic, and the infrastructure layer below them run auctions disguised as funding rounds. The partners who can secure allocations in these companies are worth their weight in management fees because they're the only ones bringing home outlier returns.
Notice what made the list: AI apps, developer tools, cloud services, defense tech. That's the entire stack of Web4 infrastructure being built right now. The agent economy needs all of it. The rising partners aren't specialists in narrow verticals anymore. They're generalists who can move from agent orchestration platforms to military autonomy companies to applied AI consumer apps. The skill isn't thesis development. It's relationship arbitrage across the emerging Web4 stack.
Defense tech showing up here is the quiet tell. Three years ago, that category barely registered in venture. Now it's a must-have expansion area because AI defense spending is where government budgets meet venture-scale outcomes. The partners who spotted that early and built those relationships are getting promoted.
The Implication
If you're building in the agent economy or trying to raise from top-tier firms, understand this: the people writing the checks are being selected for their ability to win competitive deals, not their ability to pick contrarian bets. That means two things. First, if you're a hot company, you have more leverage than ever. Second, if you're not obviously hot, your path to top-tier capital just got harder. The rising GP class isn't hunting for hidden gems. They're hunting for proof that lets them fight their way into rooms that are already full.
Source: The Information