WashU Endowment CIO Scott Wilson: SpaceX hit 20% of AUM, half of AI firms may vanish in a decade
20VC · rss · 2026-11-07
20VC interviews Scott Wilson, CIO of WashU's endowment, which grew from $8BN to $19BN under his leadership. SpaceX at one point made up over 20% of its AUM.
Key points:
- Sold over 75% of the portfolio when he joined; bets on concentration, conviction, and direct investments other LPs miss.
- Argues concentration limits are killing venture returns; explains why he walked away from Sequoia and why WashU fires venture managers.
- Predicts half of today's AI companies could disappear in 10 years; private valuations are detached from reality and the AI boom faces a massive shakeout.
- Sees European companies as far cheaper than US ones, and still views China as a great investment destination.
More from AGI Musings
- Two scaling laws collide in robotics: exploding data collection meets self-improving AI — Scobleizer · 2026-11-07
- Musk: Going all-in on autonomy is a blindingly obvious move, everything else is 'horse carriage variants' — elonmusk · 2026-11-07
- TimnitGebru mocks AI safety teams by resurfacing longtermism's rich-country-lives-first quote — PolarBearby · 2026-11-07
- Toby Ord pushes back on METR's claim that AI acceleration isn't driven by training compute — tobyordoxford · 2026-11-07
- Models are organisms, not algorithms — the truth even CS experts resist — sebpaquet · 2026-11-07
- Pinboard founder rebuts the 'knee of the exponential' AI hype: exponential curves have no knee — thesephist · 2026-11-07