Managing general partner at NEA, NEA
NEA Exec Chairman Scott Sandell at All In Talks Evolving State of VC Space
NEA Exec Chairman Scott Sandell joins NYSE Live to discuss the sate of VC space.
About Scott Sandell
Scott Sandell, executive chairman and CIO of NEA, appeared at the All-In podcast liquidity summit in Napa Valley in July 2026 and at a separate All-In summit in East Palo Alto in June 2026. He discussed the state of the venture capital industry, noting that the average time from company inception to IPO has tripled from 3 to 12 years over the last 30 years and that half of current unicorns were founded before 2016. Sandell said he expects a wave of new IPOs but also observed that many companies wish to remain private, creating a need for a broader capital market to provide liquidity for entrepreneurs, employees, VCs, and LPs. Sandell described artificial intelligence as being at an inflection point, citing the rapid revenue growth of companies like Anthropic and the consumer adoption of ChatGPT. He said AI is a long-term trend that will include periods of exuberance and potential resets, but he distinguished the current environment from the dot-com implosion, stating that the companies involved are creating real value. He also mentioned that NEA is involved in stealth-mode companies focused on AI safety and solving difficult problems.
Transcript (14 segments)
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Reporter0:00
The NYC recently sponsored the All-In podcast liquidity summit in Napa Valley, which brought together not only some of the biggest names across the investment landscape, but key decision makers as well. Our Christian Scher was on the ground and spoke with notable attendees such as Scott Sandell, the executive chairman and CIO of NEA. He shared some recurring themes from his discussions with leaders. Check it out.
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Scott Sandell0:27
They fall in a couple different categories, right? I mean, we're a large venture capital firm, 50 years old next year, $35 billion under management. So, some people want to talk to us about investing in our funds, but other people — and then there's of course the other side, the entrepreneurs who would love for us to fund them. And then there's a lot of stuff just around the edges. You know, I just talked to a guy who runs Butterfly Networks. We sat down next to each other at breakfast. And one thing he said which I thought was really interesting — Butterfly, by the way, public company makes infrared chips for infrared use in medical applications. Really cool. But he said something to me I thought was interesting. He said at this conference, people want to say hello. They want to meet you. They want to find out what you're doing. And he thought that was unique and I would agree with him.
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Christian Scher1:17
Mhm. Yeah, it does seem to have great access, right, to some of the biggest investors and certainly capital allocators out there. When you look at the VC space right now, how would you describe it?
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Scott Sandell1:28
I think it's evolving. I mean, I've been at NEA for 30 years, so I've seen lots of cycles and NEA was always one of the biggest firms. Now, there are firms actually bigger than NEA. And there are firms that specialize in a stage of the entrepreneurial journey which I didn't even imagine 10 years ago. That's — you know, we typically don't invest beyond maybe 10 or 20 billion dollar market cap. That would be a big growth round for us. Now there are companies like Anthropic raised at 900 billion. And there are people who specialize on that leg of the journey, you know. So I think it's evolving. I think another big way it's evolving, and we can talk about this, is liquidity. I mean, this is the liquidity summit, and I think we're on the cusp of a really big wave of liquidity, but it's been a dry spell for our industry for a long time. So that dynamic I think also affects investors.
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Christian Scher2:15
What's driving that liquidity? And I do want to ask because it does seem that the sentiment here is strong. To your last point there...
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Scott Sandell2:24
Well, it's really simple. In the last 30 years, the average time from inception of a company to IPO has tripled from 3 years to 12 years. And half the companies in the unicorn status today were born before 2016. So there's just an awful lot of companies that are still growing. They still require capital. Some of them don't want to go public, as we heard a few hours ago. This team here thinks going public is a great idea. And so I think we're going to see a wave of new IPOs as everybody knows. But there's still a lot of companies that want to stay private, and those companies also have liquidity needs. So there's a whole capital market forming for all the participants in the innovation ecosystem. It's not just the entrepreneurs that need liquidity, their employees need liquidity, the VCs need liquidity, the LPs need liquidity, because if they don't get money back, they don't reinvest it in venture funds.
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Christian Scher3:18
Yeah. You know, I will say the biggest theme here does seem to be artificial intelligence and that of course —
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Scott Sandell3:23
I've heard of that, Chris.
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Christian Scher3:24
Yes, I know, right? We have heard of AI. Such a hot topic. What's your take on the state of AI?
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Scott Sandell3:32
I mean I think we're at an inflection point and you can see it most recently just in the revenues of Anthropic. You know, first there was ChatGPT — fastest time in history to 100 million consumers. Right now we have Anthropic; I think it's going to do $55 billion or something in revenue, up from single-digit billions last year in the enterprise. So we have both legs of the stool inflecting in an incredible way. What the general public doesn't see is there are a thousand companies coming behind them pursuing both of those ambitions, both of those markets.
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Christian Scher4:08
How is NEA positioned in the AI space?
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Scott Sandell4:09
Well, we have the good fortune of having for almost 50 years invested in medical technology and information technology. For the first time in my career, those things have come together, right? So we have digital health. That's everything from using AI for drug discovery. We have a company — Sierra, I think it's — not sure how to pronounce it, but X I A R A — founded by the former president of Stanford. They're using AI to develop new molecules. So you have stuff like that. You have Radiology Partners, the largest imaging business in the world, started in our office 10 years ago. That company started out with just regular radiologist physician-owned clinics that they put together when imaging was digitized. And then a few years later, one of our partners said, 'What about using AI?' You know, that was one of the early places AI really developed — was imaging. So just a few weeks ago, they FDA approved them as the first AI use in the medical imaging space. So now for breast cancer, the agent looks at the screens first. Of course, there's a doctor who looks too, but think about the life of that doctor, right? That radiologist for all these years before that — Kristen — has been wondering at the end of the day, 'Did I catch all the cancer?'
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Christian Scher5:22
Can you imagine living with that? Now they have a companion —
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Scott Sandell5:26
— who looks at who looks at it.