The Quiet Titan: Deven Parekh on Navigating the AI Boom and the Future of Venture Capital

In the hyper-kinetic world of Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists often compete for attention on X (formerly Twitter) and via relentless podcast appearances, Deven Parekh remains an outlier. As a managing director at Insight Partners, one of the world’s most formidable investment firms with $90 billion in assets under management (AUM), Parekh has spent 26 years operating with a philosophy of calculated restraint. While his peers chase viral trends and performative industry commentary, Parekh prefers that Insight’s portfolio—which includes heavy hitters like Databricks, OpenAI, and Anthropic—serve as the firm’s primary voice.

At the recent TechCrunch StrictlyVC event in New York, Parekh offered a rare, candid glimpse into the mechanics of high-stakes investing, the shifting landscape of artificial intelligence, and why the current venture ecosystem may be headed toward a necessary correction.

The AI Paradox: Risk vs. Opportunity

The industry is currently gripped by a debate regarding the existential risks of "frontier" AI models, a conversation punctuated by the recent resignation of high-profile researchers expressing concerns over safety. When asked whether these alarms constitute legitimate caution or mere hysteria, Parekh adopted a pragmatic, long-term outlook.

"There is a non-zero risk that a non-state actor could exploit an open-source model to develop biological threats," Parekh acknowledged. "But there is a significantly higher probability that we are on the precipice of a revolution in drug discovery and disease eradication. I will take that bet every time."

Parekh, who serves on the board of NYU Langone, points to concrete healthcare applications as proof of AI’s positive potential. He describes current systems capable of analyzing 50 million patient records to predict cardiovascular events with striking accuracy, long before symptoms manifest. For Parekh, the societal need to scale healthcare—driven by an aging population and a critical shortage of medical professionals—necessitates the adoption of AI. He likens these technological growing pains to the advent of drone warfare or other historical shifts: disruptive, risky, but ultimately net-positive for the advancement of human living standards.

Strategy in an Age of Excess

With $90 billion under management, Insight Partners occupies a unique space in the investment hierarchy. Unlike smaller, more nimble firms, Insight’s massive scale demands a diversified approach. Parekh dismissed the notion that VCs should attempt to be "experts on everything," from geopolitics to epidemiology. Instead, he advocates for a performance-first model.

"We have to communicate enough that the market knows who we are, but our performance should speak for itself," Parekh noted. "That performance is driven by the founders and the portfolio, not by our presence on social media."

The Shift Toward Early-Stage

Parekh revealed that Insight’s strategy is temporal rather than fixed. As debt markets have tightened and exit multiples for software companies have cooled, the firm has pivoted away from major buyouts—a sector they haven’t touched since 2024.

"Valuations are rising at a pace we saw in 2021, and we know how that ended," Parekh warned. His firm has responded by moving upstream, focusing on earlier-stage bets where they can deploy $20–$25 million checks rather than massive half-billion-dollar investments. This allows the firm to "double down" on winners like Wiz, where Insight participated in the Series A and progressively increased their stake, realizing a far higher return than a one-off growth-stage entry would have provided.

The Geography of Talent and the "Legora" Lesson

The decentralization of global talent is a theme Parekh follows closely. While he noted that general software talent is now "flat globally," he conceded that specialized infrastructure talent remains heavily concentrated in San Francisco.

"My 23-year-old son is moving to the Bay Area because he believes you can’t invest in the AI stack without being there," Parekh said. However, he argued that vertical AI—applications tailored to specific sectors like finance or law—is geographically diverse. He cited his recent pursuit of the AI legal-tech firm Legora, which led his partner Jeff Horing to Stockholm to meet the founder. Though Insight ultimately lost that deal to General Catalyst, Parekh remained unfazed, emphasizing that "it’s a big world, and we don’t need to win every deal."

Managing Conflicts: The OpenAI and Anthropic Duality

Perhaps the most significant shift in modern venture capital is the willingness to invest in direct competitors. Insight holds stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic, a move that would have been considered taboo a decade ago.

Parekh explained that this is a matter of stage-gating. At the Series A level, firms often demand exclusivity and board seats, making it impossible to back rivals. However, at later stages, the dynamics change. "Once you’re off the board and not driving governance, you’re just buying a great stock," he explained. As these companies command valuations in the tens and hundreds of billions, they have effectively outgrown the ability of any single firm to enforce exclusivity. Insight maintains information-sharing restrictions to protect these investments, but Parekh noted that even the perception of a 2% revenue overlap can trigger sensitivity among founders.

Liquidity and the "DPI" Imperative

A recurring critique of the venture industry is the "paper gain" phenomenon, where firms claim high valuations without returning cash to Limited Partners (LPs). Parekh is adamant that liquidity is the primary duty of a fund manager.

"DPI (Distributed to Paid-in Capital) matters, even on fund 13," Parekh stated. Over the past two years, Insight has returned more than $20 billion to its LPs. He expressed concern that many newer funds, which prioritized growth at all costs, will fail to raise future capital because they have not proven an ability to turn positions into realized cash.

Regarding the "narrow window" for exits proposed by investors like Elad Gill, Parekh agreed that founders should take chips off the table. "I tell my founders: if you get an offer at a frothy valuation, de-risk 10 or 20%. You don’t have to sell everything, but you have to account for the fact that the market will correct. The math of compounding $40 billion at 50% every two months simply doesn’t work in the long run."

Implications: The Future of the IPO Market

As the industry looks toward the potential public listings of OpenAI and Anthropic, Parekh sees a changing of the guard. These companies are reaching market caps of a trillion dollars in less than half a decade—a velocity that makes traditional public-market growth look sluggish.

"If you’re a public-market investor watching something go from zero to $65 billion in four years, traditional growth no longer looks exciting," Parekh noted. He predicts that the next 18 months will be defined by a surge of "mega-IPOs," forcing the public markets to recalibrate their expectations for what constitutes a successful growth company.

For Insight Partners, the path forward remains one of disciplined, long-horizon investing. By avoiding the siren song of the "boom-bust" cycle and focusing on inflection points rather than hype, Parekh and his team are positioning themselves to survive the inevitable correction that follows every period of excessive capital inflow.

"We are on fund 13," Parekh concluded. "We have to think in terms of ten funds, not just one. The goal is finding the best founders in the best markets—and having the patience to wait for them to reach their full potential."