OpenAI Takes On Microsoft Office, Crypto IPOs Heat Up | July 16, 2025

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0:35Welcome everyone to the Informations TITV. My name is Akash Basriche. It is Wednesday, July 16th, and we have got a great show planned for you today. We're talking about IPOs and blockchain lending companies. We've got Christine Tsai, the founding partner and CEO of 500 Global. I just learned that they've got over$2 billion in asset under management. I am really excited for that conversation. But I want to start with a big scoop that we just published yesterday. The information reported OpenAI is working on chat GPT agents that will let people make presentations and spreadsheets. It is the latest in a string of products that OpenAI is working on.

1:13I mean, we've heard about their web browser. We've heard about their social media feed. We've heard about their coding assistant. And now they appear to be going after Microsoft Office. I want to bring on Stephanie Palazzola, who is the reporter that broke that story. She also authors our AI Agenda daily newsletter. Stephanie, thank you so much for being here. And from Vancouver at the ICML conference, I should say. Yes, of course. Happy to be here. So, you know, the first place I want to go here is, you know, we know that the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft is, it has grown a bit more rocky as time has went on.

1:51I mean, is this a direct shot at Microsoft Office or how are you thinking about it? Yeah, so I wouldn't say it's a direct shot quite yet. I mean, the product is very, very early. But I do think it's clear that OpenAI is moving more into the enterprise. I know we recently wrote that actually last year, ChatGPT enterprise sales only made up about 3 % to 4 % of total revenue generated from ChatGPT. So now, you know, workers being able to make presentations and spreadsheets should make this a much stickier product with businesses and enterprises. But I do think there's still a lot that Microsoft Office and Google Workspace have that this doesn't get.

2:33Like collaboration features, the ability to invite others to work on presentations or spreadsheets together. So it's very early stages, but it's clear that they're building out their capabilities in this area and could definitely be moving towards something that looks like a Microsoft Office. I'm curious. I mean, you know, the idea of AI for PowerPoint, AI for Excel. I mean, these are not new ideas. There are several smaller startups that have gotten a lot of funding to sort of get at this exact product. I'm curious if you have spoken to any of the founders of these smaller startups, you know, what's going through their mind.

3:10This is a very classic tale of a bigger tech company sort of trying to replicate that. What's on their minds? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's definitely I think every time OpenAI comes out with a product, there's always a kind of reaction of, oh, my gosh, this is going to kill X many startups. And so definitely a story, you know, that we've seen a lot over the course of this company's history. But I think there's kind of two different types of startups in the space. There are those that are making, you know, more general presentations and spreadsheets. And I think those folks are obviously going to be quite worried about this capability in ChatGPT.

3:44But there's another set of startups that focus on specific industries like financial services or health care. And I think for these folks, this is obviously still worrying, but they can make the argument that they, let's say, a startup that targets investment bankers, they have a better idea of the formatting that bankers want in their spreadsheets or maybe a specific way a bank wants to calculate a metric and OpenAI doesn't have access to that. So this is still a pretty general product right now. We're not getting so specialized in terms of application. Yes, exactly. Right. I mean, it leads me to one question I wanted to ask, which is OpenAI has a lot of money, and you can put a lot of money at this problem.

4:29I mean, does money always win for a product like this? Or in some cases with AI, it matters, obviously, what data you are feeding the models. And so with a product like this, AI for Excel and PowerPoint. I mean, could it be the case that their data is just better and the product works better still? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think money definitely always helps, but I think we've even seen examples in coding, for instance, where many developers tell us that Anthropics models are much better. And it seems like this is an area that OpenAI has tried to focus on a lot over the past year and still Anthropics seems to be ahead.

5:07So whether it's data or it's just some sort of intangible capability to kind of understand the end customer. Right. Or it could be that OpenAI has lots to focus on and maybe making spreadsheets for investment bankers is the number one priority. So money is helpful, but there's a lot of other things that go into it too. Right. Great. Well, look, it was a very interesting story. I'm excited to see where this product goes and when it comes out. And when it does, you'll have to give us a review. As a former investment banker yourself, you'll have to tell us if it's working. Definitely. That was Stephanie Palazzolo.

5:44She is in Vancouver right now at the ICML conference. I want to go to another colleague of mine, Corey Weinberg, our IPO reporter. He has been growing much busier over the past few months. He was first to report this week that Figure, a blockchain lending company, is planning to go public in the fall. I want to bring Corey on to talk about that story and also about the IPO markets more broadly. Corey, thanks so much for being with us. Hey, Akash. So, look, I think people hear blockchain lending and they might think crypto lending. And that might remind us of 2022 when there was kind of a massive crypto lending.

6:22This business is slightly different. So help us understand how Figure actually makes money and clarify that for us. Figure has a few different ideas that it's working on related to the blockchain. The one that probably is driving the business the most right now and that's being used out in the world is essentially using its blockchain to originate and to keep track of home equity lines of credit, which is this growing part of the housing finance market. It essentially has been growing as mortgage rates have remained stubbornly high. People use it to get cash out of the rising values of their home.

7:03This is an expensive, heavily audited financial product. And Figures claim that they're making a good amount of sales in the hundreds of millions of revenue by essentially being able to use their blockchain to audit those loans more easily, to bundle them up, securitize them and sell them to investors. And that's like they're pitching it as the executive chairman, Mike Tagney, told me, you know, we want to prove to the market that there are some non meme coin, non crypto, you know, specific, you know, use cases for the blockchain. And until now, I feel like that has been a somewhat, you know, like controversial or or at least not everyone is taking that seriously.

7:53And this IPO will, I think, be the first test of whether the market's going to. Right. I mean, you say first test. I mean, Circle just went public last month, obviously, to much fanfare. The stock is up more than 700 % in a little over a month. I want to bring up, so the information has an IPO tracker. We track a number of these pre-IPO companies, and we've got a number of crypto companies on here. Kraken, Gemini, Blockdaemon, Chainalysis. Many of these are at varying points in their progression. But, I mean, Corey, let's talk about some of the names that we know there's been news about, Kraken and Gemini specifically.

8:35What are you hearing about these companies and are crypto IPOs back? Yeah, they're definitely back. I think they're in different stages of preparation, right? So the thing to remember, and this is why we keep this IPO tracker sort of steady and up to date, is that an IPO, it's a process. It takes months. You're testing the waters with investors. You're getting your own financials in order. And so I definitely expect basically what's happening right now is the pipeline of crypto companies, especially off the momentum of Circle, it's filling up faster than I think anyone expected. you know, between, you know, Kraken, blockchain.com, some of these like sort of pure crypto exchanges, bankers and the investors that invest in these IPOs, they're telling me like, these are the guys knocking kind of heaviest on our doors right now.

9:32Right. Any sense for when, you know, Kraken and Gemini might actually go? Those seem like more 2026 events to me, only because, I mean, Gemini, I think maybe could go later this year. Kraken, from what I've heard, is more 2026. Big year is aiming for the fall. I think companies are hoping to capture this window of, I mean, we'll see what happens with the stablecoin legislation. But, you know, there's definitely a kind of post-circle IPO, you know, sort of momentum folks want to capture. Right. Let's talk about, you published a great story over the weekend. And it was kind of a company profile of Figma, a company expected to go public now, basically any day now.

10:16You know, you've been watching this company for a while, you know, well before Adobe had said it was going to buy it. And that deal obviously fell through. This could kind of be like a, you know, a floodgate moment, I think, you know, was kind of the narrative I got from your story. Tell us about, you know, why Figma is such a bellwether for whether or not IPOs will really start rushing in. It's a bellwether because it's the kind of company that venture capital has plowed billions of dollars into, especially over the past decade. It's cloud software. It is the kind of company that is not really sort of gone public recently.

10:53There's been a handful of names, Service Titan, Rubric, and some others. But Figma is the first real brand name company that is going public that it would be considered SaaS. And we should say, you know, one of the things you pointed out was that this financial profile, you know, both on revenue growth and on profitability, it is much better than a lot of the public SaaS companies right now. Oh, 100%. It's growing at like 49%. It's free cash flow margin is in the high 20s. Like anyone who looks at the business is like, this is a great company. The TBD, the thing that's going to be the real debate about Figma is does its kind of core business, which is selling software for designers, product managers and engineers to actually be able to collaboratively design a digital product, an app, a website.

11:41Is that whole process going to be disrupted by Vibe Coding, by Cursor, by Replit, by Lovable, these kind of AI startups that is the way we're going to build software completely changed? Are we looking too much backwards at Figma's business and not looking forward enough on what could happen? That's going to be the debate. And I think in the next week and a half before Figma goes public. Right, right. We've got to go to our next guest, but I want to ask you very quickly. I mean, you had some details in your story about what people are telling you. They're thinking the valuation of the company might end up being when it goes public.

12:16We know the$20 billion price tag is what Adobe would have taken Figma out at. What do you think? I mean, you know, there's this like, I think it could hit 20. I think people are telling me it could hit 20. And like when Adobe bought it at 20, people thought Adobe overpaid. like a lot. And let's take that one after growing to that valuation. And it has. I mean, who knows? The bankers could price it closer to 15. Maybe it trades up past 20. You know, we'll see. But it should be in that ballpark, I think. Right. Great. Well, thank you so much, Corey, for coming on. We appreciate it. And Corey Weinberg is definitely the reporter to watch the information as it relates to who is going public, who has filed paperwork confidentially, who's coming in the pipeline, so be sure to watch his feed.

13:05He also writes our Dealmaker newsletter, which goes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now, for our next guest, we've talked a lot on this show about how Meta is investing in AI. On Monday, the company bought a voice AI company called Play AI, and I want to bring in Christine Tsai, who is the founding partner and CEO of 500 Global, a venture capital company that was an investor in Play AI. Christine, this was a nice exit for you. Of course, we don't know the price unless you're willing to tell us that. By all means, this is the floor to do it. But tell us a little bit about what you gather. How does Play AI fit into Meta's AI strategy, do you think?

13:50Well, Play AI is a, you know, as you know, it's an enterprise voice agent infrastructure. So they've also built their own voice AI model called Dialog. And, you know, we met this team back in 2022. We invested early 2023. So as you can imagine, this is a very, relatively speaking, a pretty fast exit. But, you know, for them, they were always very much early believers in the power of AI to generate a human conversational voice, which is a very hard problem. And, you know, from what I gather, that is something that is also top of mind for Meta within the realm of their overall kind of AI master plan.

14:30So, you know, we're really excited for the team. I think, as you said, it's not publicly disclosed in terms of the transaction, but, you know, we're excited for what's to come. We had Mark Zuckerberg on the show this week. You know, he talked about his grand visions for personal super intelligence. And so, you know, I thought this voice AI certainly, you know, from a consumer perspective, it makes a ton of sense. in the thing that I'm trying to think about, and this is less about PlayAI, it's more about some of the acquires that we've seen now, a la Windsurf, Character, et cetera. This week, what we're trying to sort of sort through is these exits are good in terms of fueling the startup ecosystem and fueling innovation.

15:15On the other side, it's the big tech companies getting bigger. And so, you know, I just wondered how you think about this. I mean, you know, you want to propel innovation, but, you know, how do we get another open AI or another meta if they keep snapping up all the great talent? I think so. You know, this is a really good question. And I actually think about it from this perspective where it just really emphasizes the extreme level of urgency there is within both big tech as well as, you know, this is actually not just in a tech bubble or in the Silicon Valley echo chamber. There is just strong momentum around AI technology investment and sovereignty.

15:53I think there's been almost a trillion dollars globally that's been committed to national sovereign AI initiatives just in this first half of this year. So it is not is no longer just kind of within tech. It's broadly if you look at governments, even our own all around the world, this is something that is really driving kind of what they see to be economic growth, as well as a chance for a lot of countries to really leapfrog. I'm sure you've seen a lot of the investment into data centers and AI in many countries. So I think with the big tech companies, I mean, you know, as we've seen, they're just being incredibly ruthless with these mind-boggling, massive deals.

16:32But also what is kind of astonishing is just that speed and urgency at which they're doing it. I think it's good reason AI first era means things can be built very quickly, much more than before. And I imagine we're going to continue to see more of these outrageous deals, both with the big tech companies and kind of the big AI companies like OpenAI and others acquiring. I'm sure Zuck's AI Avengers group will continue to grow. But I actually think despite that, I mean, this dynamic is not a new one just in terms of startup land, right? The big, you know, David versus Tom. Totally. Yeah. So I think we're still very early and it's a great time to be investing, honestly.

17:10Yeah. Let's talk about your portfolio. I mean, you've built 500 Global into truly a global venture capital company. I just want to get a sense, I mean, how much of your portfolio sits outside of the U.S.? How do you divide your portfolio companies into the international group and then within the U.S.? Just so we get a sense of how much. Yeah. So, you know, 500 has been investing both here. I mean, I'm based here. I'm actually, you know, dialing in from from our headquarter office in Palo Alto. But we've been investing globally since day one. I think today we are this is our 15th year. I would say roughly about with the overall global portfolio, about half of the portfolio is U.S.

17:51based and half is non-U.S. based. And the lines honestly blur quite a lot because we do have many companies happen to be based somewhere else, but they really target a global or U.S. audience. And so we see that as a strength. Silicon Valley is always going to be very critical. It's where we're based. But that ability to have that global footprint, find great companies everywhere, be able to bring them here, bring them outside is really key in this world. Tell me about, you know, as it relates to companies outside of the U.S., which country are you spending most time focusing on right now? It's hard to say which one is getting the most focus.

18:29I think it's, you know, we, our portfolio is 80 countries around the world and our team. But if you had to pick one, it's tough to pick a baby. But, you know, I mean, gosh, you're, you know, you're in Japan. you're in all of Southeast Asia, you know, you're all here. Tell me about what country is just really fascinating you right now from an investment perspective. So this will be my spotlight, insisting it's not a favorite. I won't get into trouble if I say that. So I'll pick Korea and I'll say the reasons why there's three. So one is what's really unique about the Korean market is, you know, it does have very, very advanced digital infrastructure and expertise.

19:05If you think about what Korea has historically excelled at, it is in the manufacturing semiconductors, chemicals, consumer electronics, robotics, and all of those things, I think, actually really are very opportune, especially with AI infrastructure. So that's one. There's a huge commitment to R &D. Two, Akash, I will be shocked to hear if you haven't seen any Korean movie, Korean drama, K-pop, you know, Big UD, maybe. So that global cultural influence is really key from the consumer's perspective. And then, you know, the last thing is, there is a huge top-down push from the government. I mean, the current administration is really prioritizing AI and pushing forward investment into certain strategic sectors, which very much align with some of the areas that I just mentioned around semi and robotics and manufacturing.

19:52So I think with all of that, especially in terms of where can Korea or any market really have an edge in an AI world, especially when Silicon Valley and the US are really dominating from that perspective, is that applied AI. So the physical infrastructure, AI into the manufacturing, those industrial sectors. So it's exciting for us. We've been there since 2012. I do happen to be Korean American. I swear that's not the only reason, but Korea is definitely a really, really fascinating market. And so what I hear you saying is that K-pop is actually driving startup investment in Korea. That's one of my key takeaways here.

20:31It definitely is drawing more and more foreign. Wow, that's great. Gosh, I mean, I'm here for the K-pop startups. I think that's great. Before we let you go, we just had Corey on the show talking about the IPO market. You know, your company has been at this, like you said, 15 years. You've got a number of companies now that have grown into late stage companies, not the least of which is Canva, a company that we've reported is seeking to sell shares privately. Perhaps that means They're pushing the IPO window out a little bit more. Tell me a little bit about how your late-stage portfolio companies are thinking about the IPO market right now.

21:10I mean, is there still hesitation, or are people looking at Figma and saying, we're going, we're going, this is it? I think anecdotally, there's definitely an uptick just in terms of overall liquidity. So, IPOs, M &A, even the secondary markets. So, you know, as you mentioned, or as we just talked about earlier, the Play AI acquisition this week, Superhuman is one of our companies as well. They were acquired by Grammarly. Canva, as you mentioned, they themselves have made acquisitions and just overall secondary market activity has picked up, particularly with our later stage companies. We circle an IPO that's in our portfolio as well.

21:51So I think a lot of the companies which had been intending to go public as an exit in the last couple of years, particularly with a lot of the big rounds raised in 2021, definitely have paused that. And I think many of them are in varying stages. Some of them are really trying to pick up in their growth rates. Many are investing into AI and trying to really reposition the companies as AI first. Some are doing great at that. They've been making that investment for many years, and it shows in terms of their growth numbers and just the perception of the market. So I would definitely think I, like many other investors who invested in some of these companies 10 plus years ago, are optimistic.

22:32And I think there definitely is momentum in the market. Great. Well, look, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I think 500 Global is a fascinating venture capital company with its global focus. So we look forward to having you on the show again when yet another one of your companies gets bought by Meta or Google or maybe there'll be an acquihire. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Well, that does it for today's show. I want to thank you all for joining us on TI TV. And I want to thank our presenting partner, Amazon Web Services, for being our partner on this production.

23:09We will be back on this stream tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern Time That's it for today, thank you so much, we'll see you tomorrow