The Numbers Nobody's Saying Out Loud

Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das posted a detailed breakdown on May 16, 2026 that cut through the noise.

His estimate: roughly 10,000 people — founders and employees at OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Nvidia, and Meta — have crossed $20 million in personal wealth from AI equity. That's it. Ten thousand people in a country of 340 million.

Everyone else in tech? Das described "a deep malaise about work and its future," with software engineers feeling their core skill set is being erased beneath them.

The Valuation Gap Is Insane

These aren't small numbers on the winner's side either.

According to Malay Mail, OpenAI raised $40 billion in its latest funding round at a $300 billion valuation — the largest private fundraise in Silicon Valley history. Anthropic is valued at $61.5 billion. Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly in talks to raise at a comparable scale.

For context: in 2025, AI and machine-learning deals accounted for nearly two-thirds of all U.S. venture capital dollars, according to Fortune. A decade ago that figure was roughly 10%. Two-thirds of all venture money flowing to one technology category.

The VC Divide Is Just as Real

It's not just workers getting squeezed. Smaller venture firms are getting left behind too.

According to Malay Mail, the VC world has split into two camps: funds with "deep enough pockets to invest in AI behemoths" and everyone else waiting to see where the chips fall. If you can't write a check into OpenAI or Anthropic, you're essentially watching the party from outside.

Wellington Management's Matt Witheiler, Head of Late-Stage Growth, flagged the distortion this creates in reporting by Fortune. Strong non-AI companies with solid fundamentals and real revenue are being starved of capital simply because they can't attach an AI narrative. Meanwhile, AI-branded companies raise "multiple rounds in rapid succession, often at successively higher prices" — momentum feeding on itself.

That's a bubble dynamic.

What Mainstream Coverage Gets Wrong

Most outlets are telling half the story.

The center-left press — TechCrunch included — accurately reports the wealth concentration but frames it as a Silicon Valley feelings piece. Entrepreneur Deva Hazarika dismissed Das's post on X by saying these people "can simply make a choice to be happy." That's not a counterargument.

The financial press, meanwhile, treats the AI investment surge as obviously rational and inevitable. Wellington Management's Witheiler is one of the few to flag the capital distortion — but even he stops short of calling it what it is: a speculative concentration that's actively harming healthy non-AI businesses by cutting off their oxygen.

The boom is real AND it's structurally screwing most people, including most investors.

The Data

Here's what the numbers show:

• ~10,000 AI insiders became multi-millionaires in five years, per Deedy Das's May 2026 estimate
• OpenAI: $300B valuation, $40B raise — the largest in private market history, per Malay Mail
• Anthropic: $61.5B valuation
• AI captured ~65% of all U.S. VC in 2025, per Fortune
• Software engineers outside the AI inner circle report career obsolescence and layoffs
• Non-AI companies with strong fundamentals are being systematically underfunded

One commenter on X put it bluntly: it's "pretty damn novel & also kinda nasty" that the same technology is both "the lottery ticket and the thing eating your fallback."

What This Means for Regular People

If you're a software engineer who isn't at one of five companies, your career calculus has genuinely changed — not because you're not smart or capable, but because capital is flooding one lane of the highway and leaving everything else to rot.

If you're a small business owner, a mid-career professional, or a student picking a major, the AI gold rush isn't happening for you. You're the terrain it's happening on.

If you're a taxpayer watching AI companies lobby for favorable regulation while sitting on $300 billion valuations, the question is straightforward: why should public institutions, retraining programs, and anyone outside San Francisco expect this to trickle down on its own?

History says it doesn't.