B Capital, Lightspeed, Thrive and other venture firms are funding giant AI rounds with pools of money their limited partners set aside for a few hot startups, since their main funds are too small for the checks, according to Julia Hornstein at The Information. B Capital used one to put $100 million into Reflection AI, twice its earlier investment, because its $500 million main fund couldn’t cover it. Limited partners get bigger stakes in companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and pay lower fees, sometimes no management fee and 10% carry instead of the usual 2% and 20%. Some firms are also borrowing through warehouse loans from banks such as JPMorgan, which let them invest before their investors have committed the cash.
