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Rory O'Driscoll

Partner, Scale Venture Partners

Search every verified Rory O'Driscoll interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Rory O'Driscoll, a general partner at Scale Venture Partners, appeared on multiple episodes of the 20VC podcast in recent months, where he discussed topics including venture capital dynamics, AI market conditions, and the software sector. On the podcast, he said that large funds require billion-dollar positions to generate meaningful returns, and he described the current period as one of "epic creativity" in venture capital. He commented on the state of the software market, saying the "SaaS apocalypse" of early 2026 remains a concern, and he argued that coding is "the mother lode" of AI value creation. He also expressed skepticism about open-source AI models' market share, saying he expects it to decline. O'Driscoll shared his views on specific companies and investments. He said ElevenLabs' widening lead made it a candidate for up to 10% of his fund at a $22 billion valuation. Regarding the CoreWeave sell-off, he described such "neoclouds" as inherently risky due to their combination of high growth and debt. On the Anthropic IPO, he said he would not buy at a $2 trillion valuation, though he noted his index funds would likely hold it after its listing. He also commented on the Valar Atomics lawsuit against Day One Ventures, saying both parties mishandled the dispute. He stated that he believes the AI investment cycle is less than a third complete.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think Kore had a tough week last week. I think down 15 20% kind of bond prices went up implying lower default but zooming out but the way I think of it is you all when you think of the whole AI trade these kind of neoclouds they're always going to be more risky than anything else in the system because they have you know they're underwriting high growth with large capex and lots of debt right so you try to thread th”

“Look, over time in a rational capital world, the return multiple from early stage investing should be higher than growth, right? Logically over extended period of time because otherwise why would you do it? I totally agree. I think the last 5 years are going to be clearly inverted. Someone said it. It was a very good line. He said the aggregate market cap of SpaceX Anthropic and Open AI went from around $400 billion ”

“I think the SAS apocalypse is still here. I think about this a lot. What I mean is the SAS apocalypse of when we were earlier this year was in part a short-driven thesis that we would vibe code our way out of all these applications. The market became feared that growth for many leaders slowed at the same time which seemed to self-reinforce the fact we'd vibe code the own app and we reached all-time lows in like March”

“I think everyone's wrong here. I think it went too far. I think the CEO handled it poorly and said he wished they'd never been an investor when they clearly bailed him out multiple times. That's not cool, right? And hiring Quinn Emanuel for a very aggressive investor is a step too far. They both did the wrong thing.”

“I think at 22 billion we should consider doing up to 10% of the fund. Um time is short. Um we're at we're at an 18-month deployment cycle. Um one of our most esteemed partners is going back to run a public company. So we're losing some of the folks on the team. The way I see it, 11 Labs has done something quite diff with with with actually a fair amount of intense competition. It's it's lead keeps widening. Um it is ”

“I think open source has reached its maximum as a market share. I think it's going to keep going down. Two reasons. One is at the end of the day, Anthropic and Open AI are just deciding what they want to price their non-Max frontier models and they have many ways to compete directly. They have many there's no reason they can't be as cost competitive as they want to be. Now, they're you know, you need Anthropic's got i”

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