Answer: Look at the stack. In a true technology wave, the whole stack changes, not just one layer, says Kindred Ventures’ Steve Jang. And if you look at AI, he says, that’s exactly what’s going on: “Right now you’re seeing it all the way from chips all the way up through the application layer.”

Jang, Kindred’s founder and managing partner, was speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Monday, on a panel to discuss how VCs are thinking about these bubbly times in the AI market. His point is that the angst over the AI bubble is kind of besides the point. What really matters is whether the underlying tech transformation is real or not. 

Sapphire Ventures partner Cathy Gao, who was also on the panel, said that valuations for some companies have clearly climbed far beyond any sort of fundamentals. But she also noted that the growth curves of certain companies right now “far outstrip the growth curves of companies we’ve ever seen before.”

To help sift through the hype in this environment and find the startups with real staying power, Gao said she uses a three-question test.

First, is the startup’s product a “feature” or a “workflow?” The stand-outs, she says, are “companies that are able to actually embed and fully overtake an existing workflow, while building significant switching costs.”

Second, is distribution built-in? People don’t want to learn how to use another tool, says Gao. The key qualities here are whether the tool is “integrated in usability and in all the other solutions that it needs to be in order for the workflow to be fully functional?”

And finally, does the company get stronger over time? This is called “compounding durability,” says Gao. “With every new user, does the solution get better, does it get cheaper, does it get faster?”

We’ll have more questions, and answers, at Brainstorm AI today. Watch the livestream here.

See you tomorrow,

Alexei Oreskovic
X:@lexnfx
Email:alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– UnconventionalAI, a San Francisco-based developer of chips and computer systems designed for AI, raised $475 million in seed funding. AndreessenHorowitz and Lightspeed led the round and were joined by Sequoia, LuxCapital, DCVC, FutureVentures, JeffBezos, and others.

– Airwallex, a San Francisco and Singapore-based payments and banking platform for businesses, raised $330 million in Series G funding. Addition led the round and was joined by T. Rowe Price, Activant, Lingotto, and RobinhoodVentures.

– BlueCurrent, a Hayward, Calif.-based developer of silicon solid-state batteries, raised $80 million in a Series D extension from Amazon, KochDisruptiveTechnologies, PiedmontCapital, RusheenCapitalPartners, and Allen& Company.

– Crown, a São Paulo, Brazil-based stablecoin issuer, raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. Paradigm led the round.

– ResembleAI, a Mountain View, Calif.-based security platform for enterprise AI, raised $13 million in funding from SonyInnovationFund, BerkeleyFrontierFund, ComcastVentures, CraftVentures, and others.

– Scowtt, a Seattle Wash.-based AI-powered advertising optimization platform, raised $12 million in Series A funding. InspiredCapital led the round and was joined by LiveRampVentures, Angeles Investors, and AngelesVentures.

– Equixly, a Verona, Italy-based agentic AI platform designed for API security testing, raised €10 million ($11.6 million) in Series A funding. 33NVentures led the round and was joined by existing investors.

Private Equity

– ContextLogic agreed to acquire US Salt Parent Holdings, a Watkins Glen, N.Y.-based producer of evaporated salt products, from private equity funds managed by EmeraldLakeCapitalManagement for $907.5 million. 

Exits

– BerkshirePartners agreed to acquire UnitedFlowTechnologies, an Irving, Texas-based provider of process and equipment solutions for water and wastewater systems, from H.I.G.Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Even after adjusting for inflation, big tech companies are issuing more bonds than during the late 1990s. And the companies aren’t just refinancing existing debt—they’re taking on additional debt.

“While the increasingly aggressive (and creative) borrowing by AI companies won’t be their downfall, if they do fall short of investors’ expectations and their stock prices suffer, their debts could quickly become a problem,” Zandi wrote. 

“Borrowing by AI companies should be on the radar screen as a mounting potential threat to the financial system and broader economy.”

The 10 largest AI companies, including Meta, Amazon, Nvidia and Alphabet, will issue more than $120 billion this year, Zandi said in a LinkedIn analysis last week.

And this time is different from dot-com era debt issuance, as internet companies back then didn’t have a lot of debt, he pointed out. Instead, they were funded by stocks and venture capital.

“That’s not the case with the AI boom,” Zandi added.

Even though hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft could pay for the AI buildout with their profits, bond issuance is the “cheapest and cleanest” way to finance an infrastructure buildout of this scale, which will likely last more than a decade and be worth trillions of dollars, Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told Fortune.

“These companies are a lot more comfortable issuing 10- to 40-year papers, for example, at very low spreads, because the market now views them as quasi-utility names—because they’re building all this infrastructure—not just a pure tech company anymore,” Boloor said.

He added that in the previous six months, tech companies have shown “proof in the pudding” that future demand for AI is booming.

Despite AI bubble concerns, Nvidia delivered a strong earnings report for its third quarter last month, saying its AI data center revenue increased by 66% from last year. 

Still, critics warn that the buildout may not keep up with how rapidly AI is developing.

Computer hardware, which makes up most AI data centers’ cost, may be more susceptible to becoming obsolete and replaced by more advanced technology during the AI boom as opposed to wireless and internet buildouts, much of which still runs today, George Calhoun, professor and director of the Hanlon Financial Systems Center at Stevens Institute of Technology, told Fortune.

“The cycle of innovation in the chip industry is much faster than for wireless technology or fiber optics,” he said explained. “There is a real risk that much of that hardware may become competitively disadvantaged by newer technologies in a much shorter timeframe,” before being fully paid off.

At the same time, big players in the AI boom—namely OpenAI—do not have the profits currently to cushion their massive investments at the moment, increasing their risk, Calhoun said.

“If OpenAI fails, the snowball effect of that is gonna be substantial,” Futuruum Equities’ Boloor said. Though larger tech companies won’t likely be impacted much by a potential OpenAI bust, companies that largely rely on its business like Oracle could, he added.

Still, Boloor is optimistic about the AI buildout, saying the main bottleneck for its success is U.S. energy capacity.

“I think that the risk is that trillions of dollars of AI capacity gets built faster than the North American grid can support it, which could slow realization,” he warned. 

Amid an ongoing tariff war with the U.S.—and a temporary truce—the Trump administration is racing to build up domestic mining and processing capabilities, while also developing the global partnerships necessary to eventually undermine China, which controls 90% of the world’s rare earths refining.

In October, Trump inked a deal with Australia for both countries to invest $3 billion in critical minerals projects by mid-2026. Australia is home to the largest publicly traded critical minerals miner in the world, Lynas Rare Earths. Trump then signed a series of bilateral critical minerals deals in eastern and southeastern Asia, including Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia. The U.S. also has new deals with Ukraine, Argentina, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, and more.

Althaus is specifically developing mining and processing facilities for tungsten—a heat-resistant metal used in electronics and military equipment—and rare earths in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. He sees the most potential in former Soviet Union nations in central Asia.

“The Soviets spent many decades exploring and developing mines. Many of their databases have been left and are quite meticulous,” Althaus said. “This gives companies looking to develop projects in central Asia a jumpstart compared to what would be here in the United States, where most of the opportunities are greenfield—very early stages, very high risk, and very little appetite for investment.”

In November, the Ex-Im Bank offered Cove Capital a $900 million financing letter of interest for the $1.1 billion Kazakh tungsten projects. A separate letter of interest was received from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

Jeff Dickerson, principal advisor for Rystad Energy research firm, said only a long-term, coordinated effort—essentially a “wartime” approach—both domestically and with international partnerships can lead to success. But it cannot be done without new projects with foreign allies. “The challenge is that the U.S. doesn’t have a strong pipeline of mature mineral projects that are shovel ready,” he said. 

“The cycle of China extracting concessions on the back of mineral geopolitics and weakening the U.S. strategic negotiating position will likely continue without a coordinated, long-term response during the current moment of heightened attention to critical minerals,” Dickerson said, questioning whether the U.S. will maintain a concerted focus for years to come.

New emphasis

The Trump administration is increasingly making financial partnerships with critical minerals developers—even becoming a majority shareholder of U.S. rare earths miner MP Materials—and offering deals for floor-pricing mechanisms to offset China’s recurring dumping practices that aim to eliminate competition.

A native Australian turned New Yorker, Althaus is, naturally, a big fan of this approach. Chinese price dumping has crippled global competition and scared away potential investors, he said.

“By providing a price floor, it removes the question marks; it removes the instability; it removes the most significant risk in funding a project that’s about to go into production,” Althaus said. “It creates a predictability where you can take geology all the way through to profitability. I think there should be a global effort to create transparent markets and prices for the key critical minerals.”

Critical minerals are increasingly included in U.S. negotiations for all foreign deals. In the tariff agreement with Indonesia, for instance, the Asian nation agreed to lift export bans on nickel. The White House leveraged its military support for Ukraine by demanding the rights to its critical minerals in return. And the recent U.S. bailout of Argentina included a partnership on critical minerals mining.

In addition to its strategic defense location, rare earths are even a reason Trump continues to show interest in annexing Greenland from Denmark.

Veteran geologist Greg Barnes, who founded the massive Tanbreez mining project, which remains in development, briefed Trump at the White House during his first presidential term. This year, Critical Metals acquired 92.5% ownership of the Tanbreez project.

Critical Metals CEO Tony Sage is keen to supply the U.S. with desired rare earths, and the company recently received a letter of intent for a $120 million Ex-Im Bank loan. The goal is to start construction by the end of 2026.

“There’s an absolute need to make sure that more than 50% of the supply of these heavy rare earths come from outside of China—mined and processed outside of China,” Sage told Fortune.

Regardless of any long-shot annexation bids, Sage said Greenland can and should be a key ally to the U.S. for critical minerals. “They definitely don’t want to be part of the U.S., but I think they’ll be pro-U.S.,” he said.

For his part, Althaus said he sees all the international deals as progress, and not as competition for his Cove Capital.

“I think it’s a positive, and I think we’ll start to see a lot more happen in the coming months in terms of the U.S. and collaboration with other countries.”