AI isn’t just disrupting SaaS. It’s disrupting venture capital itself

May 3, 2026

 

The same AI capital surge that has rewritten the rules for software companies is now testing the asset class that funded the rewrite.

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HSBC head of innovation banking Australia and New Zealand Alan Watters and global counterpart David Sabow at Sunrise.
Supplied.

AI has spent the past two years rewriting the economics of the software industry. HSBC’s global head of innovation banking David Sabow says it is now doing the same to the asset class that funded the rewrite.

Sabow, in Australia last week for Blackbird’s Sunrise conference, said capital is gathering with a shrinking group of household-name global firms with ever-larger fund sizes.

The “big challenge for venture,” he said, will be ensuring it continues to “deliver more alpha than other illiquid alternatives like private equity,” with venture hold periods typically far longer than PE.

If returns revert to the mean, LPs allocate elsewhere, and the dynamic becomes self-fulfilling with significant consequences for innovation at the sovereign level, he said.

Topics:
Venture capital,
Startups