Insight Partners’ Devin Parekh on why the firm is diversifying while everyone else bets the farm on OpenAI and Anthropic
Insight Partners' Devin Parekh opens up about losing Legora to General Catalyst, why he's fine holding stakes in rival AI labs, and why — even as everyone else piles into OpenAI and Anthropic — his $90 billion firm is deliberately staying diversified.
Devin Parekh, the 26-year veteran co-running Insight Partners, shared candid insights at a recent TechCrunch event. He explained that his firm has both led and co-led several rounds in companies like Databricks, and holds stakes in AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic. Insight Partners has had missed opportunities, including AI legal-tech firm Legora, but Parekh emphasized the importance of a diversified strategy, despite many VCs focusing heavily on frontier AI companies.
In response to AI risk concerns, Parekh viewed potential bioweapon creation as less likely than AI accelerating medical breakthroughs. Insight Partners, managing $90 billion in assets, prefers a quieter approach, allowing their portfolio's performance to speak for itself. The firm's investment strategy is global, with no fixed allocation across early-stage, growth, buyouts, or secondaries.
While they haven't done major buyouts recently, they anticipate a shift towards earlier investments due to rising valuations and stagnant valuations. As a global investor, Parekh noted that deal concentration tends to be regional, with AI infrastructure talent clustering in San Francisco. Nonetheless, vertical AI investing can be more geographically diverse.
Despite holding stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, Parekh and his firm did not experience internal conflict, as they considered the companies as dominant consumer and enterprise players, respectively.
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