Insight Partners’ Devin Parekh on why the firm is diversifying while everyone else bets the farm on OpenAI and Anthropic
Devin Parekh of Insight Partners explains the firm's strategy of maintaining a diversified portfolio rather than focusing exclusively on frontier AI labs like OpenAI. He argues that AI's potential to scale healthcare and improve drug discovery outweighs the risks associated with the technology.
Why it matters
This perspective provides insight into how major venture capital firms are balancing the current AI hype cycle with long-term investment stability.
Devin Parekh has co-run the heavyweight investment firm Insight Partners for 26 years. Unlike many VCs who are loud on X and seem to live on podcasts, Parekh and Insight Partners tend to lay low.
In this sit-down with TechCrunch at its StrictlyVC event on Thursday night in New York, Parekh was refreshingly candid about some of the firm’s wins (it has led and co-led numerous rounds in Databricks, for example, and owns stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic); the deals it hasn’t won, including buzzy AI legal-tech company Legora; conflicts of interest in venture investing; and why Insight has stuck to a diversified strategy even as VCs have piled into the frontier AI labs.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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