Venture has always been a cycle business.
Bubbles and bursts are not new, and a bubble is not a bad thing if you find the companies that become generational compounders. Every cycle also overbuilds infrastructure that enables the next decade of value creation. In 1999 and 2000, nearly 450 companies went public each year. Across that period, roughly 2,000 companies IPO’d. Today, only a few dozen of them truly matter. Innovation cycles work this way. Excess capital fuels experimentation, and a small number of outliers define the returns.
2025 made one thing unmistakably clear. We are no longer living in a world with a single gravitational center. Geopolitics, trade realignments and technological acceleration have created a multipolar environment where capital, talent and breakthroughs emerge from multiple hubs at once. The next great companies will not be defined by geography. They will be built by global operators who navigate ecosystems fluidly and scale from wherever they stand.
Liquidity is entering a new chapter as well. The current wave of DPI will not be driven by IPO windows alone. It is being driven by secondaries, strategic M&A and smarter recycling of private market assets. The funds that perform in this cycle will be the ones that understand and design for this new liquidity architecture rather than waiting for past exit conditions to return.
Meanwhile, AI has revealed both its power and its constraints. Without AI-related CAPEX, U.S. growth is almost flat. Infrastructure investment has already crossed 200 billion dollars, and value is consolidating at the extremes. Mega-round infrastructure players dominate one end of the barbell, and lean, capital-efficient companies operate on the other. AI is no longer only a technology investment. It is becoming a strategic sovereign priority in the same way electricity once was.
At ScaleX, we believe this moment rewards being nimble, fast-moving and disciplined. The pace of company building has never been higher, and founders need partners who can adapt with them. We remain committed to disciplined capital, long-term alignment and backing companies built on fundamentals, technical depth, global execution and real momentum, not hype.
This report is our attempt to bring clarity to the shifts that truly matter. Where value is forming. Where liquidity is re-emerging. And how founders can build resilient, high-impact companies in a multipolar world.
To everyone building in this era, we are with you.
Dilek Dayınlarlı
Managing Partner, ScaleX Ventures
November 2025
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