Drew Oetting On Building An $8 Billion Venture Capital Firm To Invest In Startups That Are Fixing Our Broken World

Human-quality workflows need human-quality data, an axiom that has only grown truer in the AI-first enterprise. However, access to complete, high-signal data remains a limiting factor, given steep data provider fees, inflexible schemas, AI hallucinations, and scattered, inconsistent, and mutating sources. Customers don’t need to be data scientists to recognize shovel-ready datasets, but if they need to be data scientists to generate them reliably, data will always be rate-limiting.

It’s widely agreed that GenAI will transform software development, and GenAI dev tools have emerged as cornerstones of 8VC’s portfolio and broader AI productivity thesis. Up to now, however, hard data on the scale and specifics of this shift have been missing from the equation. In competitive industries, the speed and efficiency gains promised by GenAI coding tools could well mean the difference between market leadership and obsolescence. Companies can’t afford to select the wrong tools and end up on the wrong side of the AI adoption curve.

For many consumers, the grocery aisle is the avatar of post-COVID inflation. Even as headline inflation has cooled (from 9.1% in June of 2022 to 2.8% in February of 2025), food prices remain stubbornly high, driving popular perceptions of gouging. $10 egg cartons, once confined to artisanal producers in Portland who know every hen by name, have hit big box stores. But grocery is a famously low-margin industry, and for CPG brands, the cost of doing business can be prohibitive. 

In the startup world, design is your strategic roadmap. Investing in it early means avoiding costly detours, optimizing efficiency, and outshining competitors. Design doesn't just elevate your product—it creates the vital connection between your vision and your customers' needs, accelerates growth, and drives margins by keeping efforts lean and focused.

We are proud to announce 8VC Fund VI, with $998 million in new LP capital.

In 2023, the U.S. federal government spent a staggering $1.5 trillion on healthcare, yet Americans are becoming unhealthier by key measures like obesity, maternal mortality, and life expectancy. This unsustainable trajectory not only undermines public health but threatens the fiscal future, with healthcare spending growing faster than the economy and consuming nearly 30% of the federal budget. Despite challenges, the path forward lies in incentivizing innovation, reforming payment structures, liberating healthcare data, and reducing fraud. By fostering a competitive, entrepreneurial healthcare system and embracing cutting-edge technologies like AI, the U.S. has the potential to improve health outcomes while controlling costs and ensuring a brighter, healthier future.