The children picked last in gym class get ready for Super Bowl | TechCrunch

The Super Bowl takes place this Sunday in Silicon Valley, and the Patriots-Seahawks game at Levi’s Stadium will be chock-full of tech money. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is expected to attend. Tim Cook from Apple too. (He’s become a Super Bowl fixture since Apple Music began sponsoring the halftime show several years ago.)

Longtime VC Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures gave the New York Times a quote about the whole thing, saying that the Super Bowl in the Bay Area consists of “tech billionaires who are picked last in gym class and pay $50,000 to pretend they are friends with the guys picked first.” Ganesan added, “And for the record, I too was picked last in gym class.”

Ganesan could probably afford a $50,000 ticket if he needed one. Menlo went all in on Anthropic, setting up a $100 million fund with the AI ​​company in the summer of 2024 to invest in other AI startups. The company has also participated in numerous funding rounds for Anthropic itself, both through its flagship fund and various specialty funds. (Anthropic is reportedly expected to have one $20 billion round of financing next week at a post-money valuation of $350 billion.)

Tickets are expensive across the board, averaging almost $7,000 according to the Times (and there are still some last-minute seats available on StubHub for closer to $3,600, according to a quick look at the ticket reseller’s site). Only a quarter goes to the general public; the rest is distributed among NFL teams. Of all ticket buyers, the largest group (27%) comes from Washington state for the Seahawks, who have won just one Super Bowl in franchise history compared to the Patriots’ six titles, all with Tom Brady at quarterback.

Googling,OpenAI, Anthropic, AmazonAnd Meta They’re pouring into competing ads about whose AI is best for customers, so maybe their respective CEOs will show up too. Except for Amazon’s Andy Jassy, ​​who reportedly splits his time between Seattle and Santa Monica, all have homes within about an hour of Sunday’s game.

This is only the third time the Bay Area has hosted the Super Bowl. The first time was in 1985 at Stanford Stadium, the original football stadium of Stanford University, where the 49ers defeated the Dolphins. The second took place a decade ago at Levi’s Stadium, when the Broncos defeated the Panthers.