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The New Investment Thesis: How AI Is Rewriting What VCs Fund and What Platforms Buy
AI isn't just a category attracting capital — it's changing the logic of how capital moves across all of Work Tech. In this panel discussion, venture investors and strategic platform leaders examine what AI has done to the investment thesis in 2026: which assumptions about category value, defensibility, and growth trajectory still hold, and which have been replaced.
When does it make more sense to acquire AI capability than fund it? When does a VC bet on a standalone company in a category a platform could absorb in 18 months? And what does all of this mean for founders navigating a market where the line between your next investor and your next acquirer has never been thinner? The discussion explores where investment is flowing, what’s driving those decisions, and what they signal for the future.
When does it make more sense to acquire AI capability than fund it? When does a VC bet on a standalone company in a category a platform could absorb in 18 months? And what does all of this mean for founders navigating a market where the line between your next investor and your next acquirer has never been thinner? The discussion explores where investment is flowing, what’s driving those decisions, and what they signal for the future.
Learning Objective 1
Understand how AI has shifted the VC investment thesis in Work Tech — which categories are attracting conviction capital and which have been repriced or bypassed entirely.
Learning Objective 2
Assess how strategic platforms are using the build, buy, or partner calculus differently in an AI-native market — and what that means for the competitive landscape.
Learning Objective 3
Leave with a clear view of what founders, investors, and HR executives should make of a market where the distance between a funding round and an acquisition has never been shorter.
Access Level
Open to All Pass Holders