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Battery Ventures announces the arrival of an AI supercycle, predicting profound market impacts and offering new lessons for AI founders, indicating that this is just the beginning of a significant technological shift.
AI 生成摘要
Battery Ventures 宣布 AI 超級週期已經來臨，預計將對市場產生深遠影響，並為 AI 創始人提供重要的新啟示，表明這僅僅是重大技術變革的開端。
Battery has invested in more than 450 companies over our 40-year history, and we’ve been fortunate to back some very big ideas.
Our investment staff works together as a single, global unit to evaluate and support potential investments.
We exist to support our companies, and we have focused expertise in areas including talent, business development, marketing and communications and growth/leadership.
Last year, in our Battery Ventures “State of the OpenCloud Report,” we predicted a coming AI “supercycle”—a profound technology platform shift akin to the Internet and cloud-computing revolutions that could unseat large tech incumbents and unlock trillions in market value.
As 2025 draws to a close, we have the benefit of hindsight. We can now definitively say the AI supercycle is here. And it’s so profound that we’ve renamed our annual report to reflect this new reality.
Our new Battery “State of AI Report,” attached below, finds that AI is no longer just a trend. It is the dominant force in the public markets, a massive driver of capital investments and the core infrastructure and foundation of a new class of companies growing at unprecedented rates. But as we look towards 2026, it is clear we are still in the early innings of this transformation. AI scaling laws across pre-training and post-training are holding; AI agents are completing human-level tasks and workflows across industries like software development, healthcare and legal; and a massive wave of computing is just now coming online that will continue to support these tailwinds.
According to our analysis, companies that are AI beneficiaries in the public markets, like Nvidia, Google, and Microsoft, now represent, incredibly, roughly half the value of the S&P 500. Since Nov. 2022, when ChatGPT publicly launched, these innovative companies have added roughly $18 trillion in market capitalization, accounting for around 75% of all the S&P’s gains during that period.
Three years in: Is AI just a bubble or something more?
While there is constant chatter about an “AI bubble,” the fundamentals suggest the current state of play is a rational response to a supply-demand imbalance we haven’t seen since the early internet era more than 25 years ago. While many AI-native company valuations are sky-high, and not every market entrant will make it, we believe much of the hype is warranted. Consider:
2026 Outlook: AI design & usage patterns and the agentic revolution
We are moving past the experimental phase and into the industrialization phase of AI adoption. Distinct architectural patterns for AI-native companies are forming, and we are witnessing a shift from tools that assist humans to autonomous agents that complete work. To drill down:
The new playbook for AI founders
These developments and others are also driving our company-building advice for AI founders in the market today. The SaaS 1.0 playbook is officially obsolete and everyone needs an AI story to win funding and succeed in the broader market now. Some of our key recommendations for founders building in the world of AI:
In sum: It’s AI’s world right now, and we’re just living in it. The opportunity has never been larger, and urgency has never been higher. AI founders must act nimbly and adapt to the current market, where innovation is happening more quickly than we’ve ever seen. But those strong enough to build differentiated products and create competitive moats have the potential to realize substantial value.
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The information contained in this market commentary is based solely on the opinions of Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan and Jason Mendel, and nothing should be construed as investment advice. This material is provided for informational purposes, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors.
The information above may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or expectations. Predictions, opinions and other information discussed in this publication are subject to change continually and without notice of any kind and may no longer be true after the date indicated. Battery Ventures assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward-looking statements. * Denotes a Battery portfolio investment. For a full list of all Battery investments, click here.
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