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Startups · by Jan Nowak · 2026-11-04

AI spend is nearing \$1tn and our seed investors suddenly want 'capital efficiency' again

Watching the market this week (big tech falling as AI capex keeps climbing, Canva cutting jobs) and the tone in our investor updates has changed overnight. Six months ago the advice was hire fast and grab the land. Now every reply is about runway and gross margin on inference costs. We're a 6 person team with about 20 months of cash. Are other early-stage founders changing their 2027 plans right now, or is this just noise?

20 sparks · 4 comments

Comments

Chinedu Adeyemi · 2 likes

investors say capital efficiency every time the nasdaq has a bad week, it's like weather

Hamza Malik · 0 likes

this. ours sent the exact same email in 2022 word for word I swear

Yui Tanaka · 1 likes

Real talk the margin thing is legit tho. if you're reselling an api with a wrapper the math gets scary fast

Camille Dubois · 0 likes

20 months is fine. the founders who panic cut too deep and then can't ship. just know your inference cost per customer cold