I was thinking about that in the context of this week’s Term Sheet Podcast with Josh Wolfe, Lux Capital cofounder and backer of companies like Anduril, Applied Intuition, Hugging Face, Impulse Space, Osmo, and Physical Intelligence. Wolfe invests with a broad lens—often both scientific and geopolitical—and he had some combustible predictions for the remainder of this strange year through 2027.

The first of his predictions: Warren Buffett will die soon, and we could see a crisis in the Nasdaq. 

“I believe we’ll see a headline—possibly the end of this year, maybe early next, a sad but realistic one—which is I think Warren Buffett dies,” Wolfe said. “And the headline says something like ‘reports of the death of Buffett were not exaggerated, but the reports of the death of value investing were.’”

Value investing—an investment strategy that emphasizes buying stocks trading below their intrinsic value—in recent years has fallen out of favor. So, here’s what Wolfe believes could happen: Tech mega-caps are more fragile than they look, and the widespread adoption of index investing has created a market structure that automatically and indiscriminately bolsters the largest companies. So, if there’s a sweeping Nasdaq decline (say, 10% to 15%) concentrated heavily in the Magnificent 7, it could create a crisis—and an opening for value investors. 

He calls this scenario a “lower probability, high magnitude outcome,” relatively unlikely but consequential.  

“I don’t know if it’s going to be Dan Loeb or David Einhorn or my wife, Lauren Taylor Wolfe, or some other value investor,” Wolfe said. “It might be some new person, but people suddenly say: ‘Oh my god, how are they outperforming by 30 basis points, 300 basis points? When the market’s down 15, and they’re up 15. I do think that we see a scenario that would be unexpected in that shift from passive growth, which has been dominating for the past ten-plus years, into active value. That’s not self-serving for me as a venture investor.”

Something else Wolfe thinks could be possible: That the war in Iran ultimately creates seismic societal pressures in Europe. 

“You could have a scenario I would put reasonably low odds on—let’s call it 10%, which is still maybe high but a huge order of magnitude of importance—where fertilizer scarcity leads to a food crisis on the periphery of Europe,” said Wolfe.  “Maybe it’s a place like Macedonia or Bulgaria. Compounded with migratory pressures, you get an economic crisis in the EU, you have a decline of currency, a decline of markets, and you have panic. You get a rise of the sort of far-right strongmen that typically are there.”

Wolfe has hoped, as he’s shared this idea with intelligence professionals, that it might get totally rebuffed. Not so.

“As I’ve shared this hypothesis, I always want people to either pooh-pooh it or sort of invalidate it,” he said on the podcast. “But instead they’ve said that the sort of Hitler or Mussolini or strongman of the 30s and 40s is already in Europe. They don’t know if he’s 35 years old or 45 years old or 55 years old, but he’s there waiting for the stage. And that’s chilling.”

Wolfe wants to be clear: Imagining worst-case scenarios is part of success. He even has an optimistic streak, in the macro sense and in his way.

“I always like to say that failure comes from a failure to imagine failure, so I’ve imagined a geopolitical and socioeconomic failure,” said Wolfe. “Life will always continue to get better because of technology. While I’m very cynical about people—people are unchanging in their Shakespearean motives, ‘there’s daggers in men’s smiles,’ we’re full of envy and jealousy, and vainglorious—but technology compounds because of science. When you zoom out, it’s amazing, and the march of progress will continue despite the daily headlines.”

If you want to hear more from Josh about where ideas meet businesses, listen to the full podcast here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Ollin Biosciences, an Austin, Texas-based biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for vision-threatening diseases, raised $330 million in Series B funding. TCGX and ARCH Venture Partners led the round and were joined by others.

- Assort Health, a San Francisco-based AI voice agent platform designed for the entire patient journey from intake to follow-up, raised $120 million in Series C funding. Menlo Ventures led the round and was joined by Felicis, Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Chemistry, and others.

- Runpod, a San Francisco-based AI developer cloud that provides GPU infrastructure for building and scaling AI applications, raised $100 million in Series A funding. Summit Partners led the round. 

- Sail Research, a San Francisco-based cheap, fast infrastructure that lets AI agents run independently and handle complex tasks on their own, raised $80 million across seed and Series A rounds. Kleiner Perkins led the Series A and was joined by Sequoia, Redpoint, Theory Ventures, Vine Ventures, and CRV also participated

- xCures, an Oakland, Calif.-based health care data company, raised $46 million in Series B funding. Innovius Capital led the round and was joined by iGrow, GKCC, Spring Mountain Capital, and existing investors.

- Allium, a New York City-based blockchain data infrastructure platform, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Amplify Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Theory Ventures.

- Hang Ten Systems, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based enterprise AI services company, raised $32 million in seed funding. Mayfield led the round and was joined by Aramco Ventures and angel investors.

- Runlayer, a New York City-based AI enablement and governance platform for enterprises for enterprise AI agents, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Felicis led the round and was joined by Khosla Ventures.

- Coval, a San Francisco-based provider of infrastructure for testing, monitoring, and evaluating autonomous voice agents, raised $28 million in Series A funding. Norwest led the round and was joined by Base10 Partners, Twilio Ventures, and Y Combinator.

- AlpSemi, a Grenoble, France-based developer of semiconductor power switch technology, raised €17 million ($19.3 million) in Series A funding. Yotta Capital led the round and was joined by SE Ventures, Navitas Semiconductor, and Cycle Group.

- Trovy, a New York City-based consumer fintech company designed to replace high-interest debt with home equity-powered financing products, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Left Lane Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors.

- Jarvie AI, a San Francisco-based AI assistant for group chats on iMessage, raised $8.3 million in seed funding. a16z, Base10 Partners, and Lightspeed led the round.

- EQON, a Sandvika, Norway-based industrial heating efficiency company, raised $6 million in seed funding. Azolla Ventures and Wilstar Innovate led the round and were joined by Climentum Capital and Gain Venture Capital.

- Valence AI, a San Francisco-based platform that helps enterprises measure and operationalize customer sentiment, raised $5 million in funding. Differential Ventures led the round and was joined by Difference Partners, Willowtree Ventures, Change Paradox Ventures, and SRI International.

- Nudge, a New York City-based developer of commerce infrastructure for AI shopping, raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from S16VC, Antler, and others.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- New Mountain Capital acquired a majority stake in RRC Companies, a Round Rock, Texas-based integrated engineering services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

- The Exigent Group, a portfolio company of Huron Capital, acquired Superior Building Services, a Columbus, Ohio-based mechanical contractor. Financial terms were not disclosed.

PEOPLE

- Base10 Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, hired Aaron Hinz as CFO. Previously, he was with Industry Ventures.