The shift toward an AI-enabled future requires moving away from closed platform ecosystems toward user-controlled agent infrastructure for digital interactions.

An identity/user agent infrastructure layer is critical infrastructure needed to enable AI bots and agents to programmatically interact with web services on behalf of users.

USV and other VCs invested in Anon, a developer platform providing API infrastructure for AI applications to access web services on behalf of users without native APIs.

USV's core fund invests in early-stage opportunities primarily at seed and Series A, with AI being a key domain.

USV lists bio as one of four main investment domains for analyst focus and portfolio development.

USV identifies crypto as a core investment domain for analysts to develop expertise and thesis ideas.

USV lists energy as a primary investment domain for analyst focus and portfolio development.

USV identifies AI as a core investment domain for analysts to develop expertise in, alongside energy, crypto, and bio.

USV is actively recruiting analysts for 2026, indicating continued institutional focus on venture investing and deal sourcing across their portfolio themes.

Being thesis-driven and deeply opinionated about non-consensus opportunities is the winning strategy for venture capital in the coming decade, especially as the volume of new companies proliferates.

The AI era will produce abundant software, abundant founders, and new business models requiring thesis-driven strategies to identify winners before they arrive.

AI infrastructure, foundation models, and category leaders will generate exceptional returns; future success lies in thesis-driven investing to identify emerging opportunities in an era of abundant software and founders.

Creator communities using AI tools are generating massive amounts of workflow data that can be leveraged to train smarter, more specialized AI agents.

There is significant value in building AI tools that function as specialized creative partners rather than generic models, learning from community workflows to provide personalized assistance.

Union Square Ventures is backing Glif, an AI creative orchestration platform that has already achieved significant scale with millions of creators building hundreds of thousands of workflows.

Active debate about wealth concentration and labor market disruption as central economic questions in the AGI era, with modeling approaches being developed to explore policy scenarios.

USV partner views the AGI economy as contingent on policy choices rather than predetermined, rejecting both extreme pessimism and optimism as incomplete framings.

USV's thesis on AGI economy outcomes depends critically on maintaining market competition and wealth redistribution mechanisms to prevent extreme inequality and economic dysfunction.

USV believes anthropomorphization and naming agents with roles similar to employees improves team adoption and makes working with AI agents more natural and engaging.

USV believes in starting with solving one well-defined problem rather than pursuing comprehensive 'AI native' transformations, as experimentation is required to discover what actually works for teams.