A Conversation with GC CEO Hemant Taneja

I recently sat down with General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja to understand how his firm is deploying and building during this incredible period in the private markets. He believes that AI has changed how ambitious both founders and investors can and must be. We get into why a billion-dollar company may no longer feel big, why VCs need to stop treating markups as progress, and why the next era will require entirely new ways of financing ambitious companies.Hemant explains General Catalyst’s “living labs”, including Summa Health and Janus Henderson, where they’re trying to turn century-old institutions into AI-native organizations. We also discuss GC’s evolving view of Anthropic, the economics of frontier models, sovereign AI, and the growing tension between technological abundance and human agency.We don't agree on everything, and that's what made this one so fun. Timestamps(0:00) AI has completely changed what “scale” means(2:14) The controversial markup game thesis(5:15) Reinventing the venture capital playbook(8:51) General Catalyst’s “living labs”(14:03) Turning Janus Henderson into an AI-native institution(17:35) Why GC changed its mind about frontier models(20:46) How Anthropic and other AI labs can make the economics work(24:24) Abundance means nothing without human agency(26:55) Sovereign AI and the global resilience thesis(29:28) How Hemant pushes founders to think much bigger(31:25) Public fear may become AI’s biggest bottleneck(33:03) AI as a tool—and the road toward a post-work society(35:57) What CEOs owe their employees during the AI transition(38:20) How living labs change the way GC invests(42:28) Hemant’s ultimate measure of success at General Catalyst