Venture capital, though its roots go back earlier, came into its own in the 1970s and 80s with small, tightly focused partnerships like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, backing early icons such as Apple and Genentech. The 1990s and early 2000s brought a shift: as computing and storage costs plummeted, it became easier than ever to launch a company, and seed-stage funds flourished. But as companies stayed private longer, the scale of venture capital expanded dramatically. By the mid-2010s, firms like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz were raising multi-billion-dollar vehicles, while late-stage companies like Uber, WeWork, and Airbnb absorbed unprecedented rounds of private capital. This dynamic was supercharged during the zero-interest-rate era (2009–2021), when abundant liquidity encouraged mega-funds to deploy vast sums into unproven business models. Even as interest rates rose in 2022, the incentive structure for these funds remained unchanged: fund size compels deployment. The AI boom—epitomized by OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar raises beginning in 2023—picked up exactly where the last era left off, with capital concentration defining the landscape and setting the stage for today’s “great divide.”