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Former General Atlantic executive Anton Levy is launching his own $1bn-plus venture capital firm to chase what the star investor views as a new AI-driven generation of fast-growing technology companies.
Levy, who stepped down a year ago from the private equity firm where he helped lead investments in Facebook, Slack, Klarna and Snapchat, is teaming up with a small group of investors to back companies via his new firm, Layer Global.
Levy said the firm will focus on backing “the most disruptive, most innovative, fastest growing companies in the world”, in an interview with the FT. Layer Global will target what he calls “hypergrowth companies” expanding “50, 100 to 300 per cent a year”.
For the best of them, he added, that pace signals “that they can become generational companies”.
The push comes as tech investors grapple with market swings and uncertainty over which business models will endure.
Levy acknowledged that “short-term markets move up and down, and there’s volatility”, with “a bit of a risk-off moment at the moment, and a little bit of a pullback”. But he said he was less focused on near-term pricing than on the underlying trajectory of the businesses: “Great companies over time will compound”.
Levy, who is also a board director for Warner Bros Discovery, said that his core bet was that AI would compress the time it took for winners to emerge and make operating decisions more consequential earlier.
In what he called the “next super cycle”, he said “companies are getting bigger faster”, helped by rapid global adoption, and argued that “300 per cent is the new 100 per cent growth rate in a lot of ways”.
The valuations of AI start-ups have surged in ways that were unthinkable for a previous generation of new companies, helping to spur fears among investors that there is a risk of a large market bubble. The AI group Anthropic is raising funds at a $350bn valuation, doubling that figure in less than a year, while smaller start-ups watch their valuations surge several times within the span of months.
Levy said his firm would back about eight to 10 companies per fund with large investments and “be very concentrated”, not just with capital but with “energy and focus . . . to work with those entrepreneurs and change outcomes”.
Layer Global might first make smaller investments in promising companies in order to develop a relationship before further building up a larger position at later stages, he said.
Despite leaving to found Layer Global, Levy stressed that he expected to keep ties with his former employer, where he remains a large investor. He said that companies backed by his new firm could eventually receive investment from General Atlantic as they mature.
“This is a natural next step in my career. I’ve backed founders for my whole career and I wanted to be a founder,” he said.
AI usage was “still very, very early”, he said. “You’re about to have an explosion of usage. That’s a really special moment.”