Children selected last in PE class prepare for Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is coming to Silicon Valley this Sunday, and the Patriots-Seahawks game at Levi’s Stadium will be filled with tech money. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is also expected to attend. The same goes for Apple’s Tim Cook. (He’s been a Super Bowl fixture since Apple Music began sponsoring the halftime show a few years ago.)

Venky Ganesan, a longtime VC at Menlo Ventures, told the New York Times that the Bay Area’s Super Bowl is “a bunch of tech billionaires picked last in gym class paying $50,000 to pretend to be friends with the person picked first.” Ganesan added, “And for the record, I was also ranked last in physical education class.”

Ganesan could probably afford a $50,000 ticket if he needed one. Menlo went all in on Anthropic, raising a $100 million fund with the AI ​​company in the summer of 2024 to invest in other AI startups. The company has also participated in numerous funding rounds for Anthropic itself, through its flagship fund and various special purpose vehicles. (Anthropic is expected to close a $20 billion funding round next week at a post-money valuation of $350 billion.)

According to the Times, tickets average about $7,000 overall (a quick glance at ticket reseller sites showed that some last-minute seats can be found on StubHub for closer to $3,600). Only a quarter are open to the general public. The rest are distributed to NFL teams. The largest group of all ticket buyers (27%) came from Washington state for the Seahawks. The Seahawks have won only one Super Bowl in franchise history compared to the Patriots’ six titles, all with Tom Brady at quarterback.

As Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and Meta get into a race to see whose AI is best for customers, perhaps their respective CEOs will appear as well. Except for Amazon’s Andy Jassy, ​​who reportedly splits his time between Seattle and Santa Monica, all of them are home within an hour or so of Sunday’s game.

This is the third time the Bay Area has hosted the Super Bowl. The first took place in 1985 at Stanford Stadium, Stanford University’s original football stadium, where the 49ers beat the Dolphins. The second game took place 10 years ago at Levi’s Stadium. The Broncos beat the Panthers back then.