The Intuit Dome is a place built by and with tech.
The stadium—brand-spanking-new and oddly luminous—bears the tax software firm’s name but is indelibly tied to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, now owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. Ballmer was involved in the Intuit Dome’s design, which involved building in facial recognition tech, checkout-free concessions, and a dual-sided immersive screen.
The Intuit Dome’s tech imprint then makes it a fitting place for the Upfront Summit, Upfront Ventures’ annual conference. The Upfront Summit, known for its glamour and L.A.-long ethos, is the kind of place where Alexis Ohanian is walking around, Gavin Newsom makes a surprise appearance, and Prince Harry actually shows up. There are smoke machines, light-up basketball hoops, and a stadium bowl filled with 18,000 glimmering seat-lights. Rob Biederman, first-time attendee and managing partner of Asymmetric, texted me: "Virtually everyone we wanted to see in U.S. tech right now was present."
In 2024, the conference was held in a West Hollywood movie studio lot, and everyone was still bundled up for VC winter. In 2025, I’m writing this from the Intuit Dome’s courtyard, encircled by food trucks, bright umbrellas, and hundreds of VCs, LPs, and conference-goers. I hesitate to call VC spring, but there’s definitely a sense of optimism—even if it’s complicated. Sequoia partner Pat Grady told the audience that, when it comes to VC as a whole, he’s a "short-term pessimist, long-term optimist."
"If I unpack that a little, why am I a short-term pessimist? Well, if you go back to the origins of venture capital, it’s been a cottage industry for most of its existence," said Grady. "But thanks to the last ten or 15 years, ZIRP, coupled with the cloud and mobile super cycle, it’s gone from being a cottage industry to being a business…When you’re in business, the business of business is business. Now, you’re focusing on maximizing shareholder value. That takes you down a different path."
Grady’s take gets at the tension entrenched in a bifurcating industry. Many large VCs are becoming asset managers, while boutique shops can thrive doing 'traditional' venture capital—if they’re good enough to generate substantial returns. That’s easier said than done, of course, in an exit environment that remains stagnant.
But the AI boom, now matured as compared to a year ago, has infused hope into tech overall, despite the sluggish IPO landscape. Perplexity cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas took the stage with Kindred Ventures founder Steve Jang (and a Perplexity investor). Nodding to the rapid rate of change in AI, Jang asked Srinivas: Why are you shipping so fast?
"I have a choice? This whole field is moving at a fast pace, and I think the only way to stay relevant right now is to ship better at that pace," Srinivas said. "It’s good and bad, right? It’s bad, because there’s no hope to have several hours of sleep and a relaxed life. But it’s good, because you get to enjoy…the constant iteration of the product." (Perplexity has a business relationship with Fortune).
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber (market cap: $155 billion) took the stage after Srinivas, which struck me as a sign of just how big of a draw the founders of high-flying AI startups like Perplexity have become. (My favorite part of Khosrowshahi’s talk was about the weirdest things left behind in Ubers: pet turtles, and one rider’s mother’s ashes, apparently.) The conference came to a close with a conversation featuring GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan and Paris Hilton, 11:11 Media founder. The two spoke passionately about rebuilding Los Angeles in the aftermath of the fires that devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January.
It may seem like a surprising way to end a tech conference, but the Upfront Summit has always been defined by its sense of place, its commitment to L.A. The fires were not forgotten at the conference but featured, often in ways that honored those who’ve been affected. The Upfront Summit this year was very much about the core idea that brought the conference to life in the first place—that in its own right Los Angeles is a tech hub, and bringing capital to the city will only make it more so.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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