Stephanie Palazzolo is an AI reporter at The Information and author of the AI Agenda newsletter, covering artificial intelligence startups, Big Tech, chips, cloud, and policy. A former Morgan Stanley investment banker who pivoted into journalism, she broke major stories on OpenAI, Anthropic, and the broader AI industry, and was part of a SABEW Best in Business award-winning team for coverage of the OpenAI CEO firing in 2023.
Nihal Mehta is a serial entrepreneur turned seed-stage venture capitalist and Co-Founder & General Partner at ENIAC Ventures, one of New York's leading seed funds. Known as the 'Human Rolodex,' Mehta has backed early investments in Uber, Airbnb, AdMob (acquired by Google), and SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft) while building a reputation as a founder-first investor who connects people without keeping score. He founded Pitch & Run NYC, a community blending startup pitches with morning runs, and hosts the Human Unicorn Podcast. A UPenn dual-degree graduate who once filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in his 20s, Mehta channels that hard-won empathy into backing the next generation of founders through ENIAC's $160M sixth fund.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage VC firm with $400M+ under management across two funds. A Princeton molecular biology graduate turned venture capitalist, he previously spent eight years at Shasta Ventures where he backed Canva, ClassDojo, Frame.io, and The Farmer's Dog. He writes the 'Next Big Thing' newsletter on Substack with 18,000+ subscribers, publishes public investment theses before backing founders, and built his career on a 'traction-first' philosophy and obsessive focus on founder learning velocity. An Indian-American from a family with deep public service roots, he co-founded Artsy as a Princeton sophomore and has been a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.
On March 31, 2026, OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history — $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. Anchored by Amazon ($50B), Nvidia ($30B), and SoftBank ($30B), with continued participation from Microsoft and a sweeping syndicate of global institutions, the round dwarfs every prior private tech raise and cements OpenAI as the world's most valuable startup by a wide margin. The company is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, counting 900 million weekly ChatGPT users, and is widely expected to pursue an IPO.