Shakti Day One
Timely perspectives from the Shakti community: founders, Titans, LPs, and beyond
The best AI model is the one you don’t have to choose
How a liberal arts major became AI native, and what I learned along the way
Image created with Abacus AI. All names and companies shown are fictional.
If you use multiple AI models and are tired of switching between them, this is for you. It is also for you if you have not started using AI yet because you do not know where to begin…
A Re-imagination of the Kelley Blue Book … TRACE the First Pre-Sale Marketplace
By Sydney Landau, Partner, SHAKTI VC
Consumer ownership is changing. For the next generation, clothing is no longer viewed as a sunk cost. It is increasingly viewed as a tradable asset.
Over the last decade, The RealReal helped normalize resale behavior by enabling shoppers to unlock value from items already sitting in their closets…
Three Questions LPs Are Asking About AI
By Liz Harrow
Originally published in Family Wealth Report (https://www.wealthbriefing.com/html/article.php/the-three-questions-limited-partners-ask-about-ai)
We are lucky to speak with many smart, thoughtful LPs, and recently the same three questions have come up from investors, both family offices and institutions…
The Great Wealth Transfer Meets the Largest IPO … Where Will The Capital Flow?
By Sydney Landau
“There are currently 75,000 families in the U.S. with more than $100 million in assets, and that population is growing roughly 30% year over year.” — Matt Fleissig, Co-Founder & CEO, Pathstone (Shakti AGM 2026)
You’ve heard the headline: $124 trillion is expected to change hands over the coming decades…
Space 3.0: Day One of the Commercial Space Age
By Keval Desai, Shakti VC
Space: From geopolitics and defense to commercializationThe imminent arrival of the SpaceX IPO is a landmark event. It’s been a near-miraculous journey over two decades, and their team and investors deserve all the credit for making the implausible possible.
From the standpoint of entrepreneurs and VCs, is an IPO the end of an era in a market or the beginning of a new one…
The Imagination Era
The following is an edited transcript of remarks delivered by Keval Desai, Founder and General Partner of Shakti VC, at the firm’s 2026 Annual General Meeting in San Francisco.
We’re in San Francisco. The sun is shining. The Golden Gate Bridge looks as beautiful as ever. Outside this room, there are thousands of founders who have come from all over the world to start companies and reimagine how our largest industries work…
Execution Is Being Commoditized. Imagination Isn’t.
By Jonathan Rosenberg
Reflecting on Eric Schmidt and Dror Berman’s “When Machines Build for Machines,” Shakti TITAN and former Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg draws on his father Nathan’s work in economic history to argue that once the “human-comprehension tax” is repealed, execution becomes a commodity, and imagination becomes the only thing left that can’t be…
Sinner or Saint? How can we TRUST in the age of AI…
by Keval Desai, Founder and GP, Shakti
A month ago, MJ Rathbun wrote a public blog accusing Scott Shambaugh of prejudice, hypocrisy, gatekeeping and exercising unwarranted control.
Who are MJ & Scott? And how is this relevant to SHAKTI?
The answers to these questions lead us to a recent “first” in human history; a future that leads to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Musubi, a Shakti Fund II company…
Introducing Shakti AI
by Keval Desai, Founder Shakti
My #1 takeaway starting 2026 = NotebookLM is the killer app of AI and heralds a future where AI will showcase its true potential. It’s going to be unprompted and ambient.
We had this epiphany at SHAKTI last year as we transitioned into AI as a daily habit — using it to run our business on Gemini, but specifically more so on NotebookLM…
AI is the El Niño of Tech
by Keval Desai, GP Shakti
Entrepreneurship & VC are like sailing. One must find big oceans (TAM) and forceful winds (a catalyst for disruption). When there is both, one finds lots of great sailors & their sponsors who enter the race. Sometimes the winds can last “forever” creating conditions for long lasting voyages…