Kids ‘picked last in gym class’ prepare for Super Bowl

The Super Bowl will be held in Silicon Valley this Sunday, and the Patriots vs. Seahawks game at Levi’s Stadium will be a big investment in technology. YouTube CEO Neil Mohan will also be in attendance. Apple’s Tim Cook too. (He became a regular at the Super Bowl after Apple Music started sponsoring the halftime show a few years ago.)

Venky Ganesan, a longtime investor at Menlo Ventures, was quoted in the New York Times on the whole story, saying that the Super Bowl in the Bay Area is “paying $50,000 for the tech billionaires who got picked last in gym class to pretend to be friends with the guys who got picked first.” Ganesan added, “By the way, I was also chosen last in my physical education class.”

If Ganesan needed a ticket, he could afford a $50,000 ticket. Menlo is fully committed to Anthropic and has set up a $100 million fund with AI companies in summer 2024 to invest in other AI startups. The company has also participated in a number of Anthropic’s own funding rounds, both through its flagship fund and various special purpose vehicles. (Anthropic is reportedly expected to close a $20 billion funding round next week at a post-money valuation of $350 billion.)

Tickets are generally expensive, averaging nearly $7,000, according to the Times (a quick look at ticket resale sites shows some last-minute seats are still available on StubHub for nearly $3,600). Only a quarter is open to the public. The rest will be distributed to NFL teams. Of all ticket buyers, the largest group (27%) comes to the Seahawks from Washington state. Compared to the Patriots’ six titles, they have only won one Super Bowl in franchise history, all with Tom Brady at quarterback.

Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and Meta are all trumpeting competing ads about which AI is best for their customers, so their respective CEOs will probably make an appearance, too. All have homes within an hour of Sunday’s game, except for Amazon’s Andy Jassy, ​​who reportedly splits his time between Seattle and Santa Monica.

This will be the third time the Bay Area has hosted the Super Bowl. The first time was in 1985, when the 49ers defeated the Dolphins at Stanford Stadium, Stanford University’s original football stadium. The second time was 10 years ago at Levi’s Stadium, when the Broncos defeated the Panthers.