Undercover VC | AMD Takes On Nvidia Amid Export Roadblocks

Undercover VC

Here’s what’s happening this week in the world of VC:

- AI SDR tools set to become a $37.5B market by 2034
- CapitalG puts $100M behind Clay’s AI-native sales engine
- AMD sharpens its MI350 roadmap while dodging new export rules
- Figma’s 3x pop shows IPO windows can still reward real revenue
- 60 under-the-radar AI startups are quietly reshaping enterprise stacks

⏱️THE MINUTE READ

Why Multi-Threading Is Now a Non-Negotiable in SaaS Sales

In 2025, buying groups are bigger, stakeholders churn faster, and single-threaded deals are dying quietly in the funnel.

This report unpacks:

If you’re still relying on one champion to get the deal done, you’re already at risk.

📌WEEKLY MUST-KNOWS

PUBLIC MARKETS
Figma’s 3× IPO Pop Rekindles Tech Exit Optimism
July funding held flat at $29.7 billion, yet Figma’s first-day triple sparked talk of a reopening IPO window for revenue-generating unicorns. With AI still capturing 37% of private capital, public-market validation could accelerate liquidity timelines for late-stage assets sitting on VC and PE books.

VENTURE FUNDING
Clay Bags $100M Series C At $3.1B Valuation
CapitalG led a fresh $100 million into Clay, tripling its annual revenue run-rate and lifting the AI sales-automation player’s valuation to $3.1 billion. The deal underscores investor conviction that automating SDR workflows is now core infrastructure, giving portfolio operators a faster path to pipeline visibility and lower headcount burn.

SEMICONDUCTORS
AMD Leans On Memory-First GPUs To Counter Nvidia — And Washington
AMD’s MI350 line ships with 288 GB HBM3E and 8 TB/s bandwidth while a MI400 refresh targets real-time inference in 2026. Export controls have already shaved $2.3 billion off revenue, forcing AMD to court Europe, India, and Saudi hyperscalers — a supply-chain reroute that could reshape where portfolio companies train and serve large models..

⚡QUICK READS

Who’s Next: 60 High-Velocity AI Startups To Watch: Exploding Topics’ 2025 list maps emerging vendors across infra, sales, and creative tooling — a shortcut for spotting future add-ons or co-sell partners. (More)

AI SDR Market Rockets Toward $37.5B: Market.us projects a 28.3% CAGR through 2034, signalling that data-driven outbound workflows will soon be table stakes for every B2B GTM playbook. (More)

🧠LEADING VOICES

Everyone’s Buying AI for Pipeline: But Who’s Fixing The Close?

Leads are flowing. Dashboards look great. Pipeline reviews? A total vibe.

And then... the numbers miss. Again.

Most sales tech stops after the first meeting. We’ve overbuilt for “do we have enough pipeline?” — and ignored “are we actually closing it?”

🧠 Top-of-funnel = AI-powered.

👀 Mid-to-bottom funnel = vibes + Google Docs.

Right now:

→ Reps don’t know what to do next / → Managers can’t see why deals were lost / → Leaders can’t tell what’s actually working.

It’s not just an enablement gap. It’s a visibility problem.

At Hive Perform, we’re obsessed with the messy middle — where deals die quietly or get saved by smart execution and fast feedback.

Sales Intelligence is a ClickZ Media publication in the Sales & Marketing division