Lightspeed's Mohapatra: jagged AI needs young founders, specialist VCs (opens the source in a new tab)
- Hemant Mohapatra, an investor at Lightspeed India, argues that AI's uneven abilities, brilliant at olympiad maths yet shaky on everyday sense, now shape who wins: a few giant outcomes, a flat middle and deeper valleys. Seven companies took just over half of US venture dollars this year, he notes.
- Founders are getting younger and more technical. He cites Indian deep-tech founders backed in their teens, including Shreyans Jain of Celestial Aerospace at 14 and Naman Pushp of Airbound at 17, and counts twelve such founders raising about $340 million.
- His conclusion: generalist venture capital is fading, down to 5% of new emerging funds in early 2026. Investors need the depth to judge a technical paper, not just a pitch deck.
- 5%
- generalist share of new emerging funds, Q1 2026
Why it matters For Indian founders, age and pedigree count for less than depth in a hard problem. For investors, the bar rises from spotting trends to understanding the science, which favours specialist funds in deep tech.
Other side Mohapatra's firm backed several founders he cites, so the young-founder story doubles as a portfolio pitch. His own data show only 2.3% of founders are under 25, and the youngest leave more dead companies; specialists can also miss shifts that cut across industries.