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Claire Zau is a pre-seed and seed investor at Lightspeed and co-host of Lightwork, Lightspeed's new weekly AI podcast with CMO Josh Machiz. She also runs Zauey Talks, where she reaches 350K+ people and 10M+ monthly impressions explaining AI and startups to an audience that mostly does not work in tech.
Tech is racing to own direct distribution and auramax to save their lives. a16z acquired Erik Torenberg's Turpentine in 2025, OpenAI acquired TBPN in 2026, and Jack Altman's Uncapped joined Benchmark. Lightspeed's move was to bring in one of the strongest creators in the space and give her a dual mandate: keep building for the mainstream while investing at the earliest stages.
Molly sits down with Claire to talk about that split role, why Lightspeed bet on it, and what Lightwork will cover. They get into the gap between tech Twitter optimism and mainstream skepticism, the AI bubble question, the jobs narrative, and which AI leaders tell the story best. Claire also breaks down the Lightspeed portfolio she's digging into, from agent infrastructure to an AI-native audit firm.
About Lightspeed
Lightspeed is a global, multi-stage, venture capital firm managing over $40B in assets. Since its founding in 2000, Lightspeed has been the first investor and an early backer of some of the most innovative companies in the world including Abridge, Anthropic, Anduril, Castelion, Databricks, Glean, Mistral, Navan, Neko Health, Netskope, Thinking Machines, Reflection AI, Rubrik, Snap, Skild AI, Vinted, Wiz, and more.
Claire Zau: https://x.com/clairejyz
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea
Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryy
𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ht_DuxWLh8M
𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev
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Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.