MONTY by March Capital

[Monty2026: The Agentic Enterprise]

Pam Maynard (Chief AI Transformation Officer, Microsoft) and John Chambers (Founder & CEO, JC2 Ventures) discuss enterprise AI adoption with Lari Hämäläinen (Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company)

Hämäläinen opens with a provocative briefing: despite explosive model improvement, 95% of enterprises report no measurable P&L impact from AI, and initiative cancellations more than doubled in 2025. He argues this changed by late 2025, when developer productivity flipped from a 20% real-world decline to a 20% gain as new model generations crossed a five-hour automation threshold.

Chambers adds that the internet raised U.S. productivity 1.4% over a decade, while Q4 2025 productivity hit 2.7%. He believes AI can push that to 5% or more.

[Monty2026: AI at the Frontlines of Medicine]

Jim Martineau (Co-Founder & CEO, Nosis Bio), Jacob Rubens (Co-Founder, Tessera Therapeutics), and Chun-Hao Huang (Co-Founder & CEO, Algen Bio) discuss the convergence of biotech and AI with moderator Pradeep Khosla (Chancellor, UC San Diego).

All three companies build directly on Nobel Prize-winning science, including CRISPR gene editing and RNA biology, and argue that the time between discovery and clinical application has compressed dramatically. Martineau contrasts traditional drug development's roughly 95% failure rate with the 70% success rate of targeted gene-silencing medicines already on the market.

Rubens describes Tessera's first gene-writing drug now in patients for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, with a second targeting sickle cell disease entering clinic in 2026.

[Monty2026: AI at the Frontlines of Medicine]

Mel van Londen (Co-Founder & CEO, Develop Health), Anan Kashyap (CFO, Hippocratic AI), and Andre Esteva (Co-Founder & CEO, ArteraAI) discuss healthcare AI adoption with moderator Katya Andresen (SVP & Chief Digital & Analytics Officer, The Cigna Group).

The panel moves beyond efficiency narratives to genuinely new capabilities. ArteraAI predicts patient outcomes to personalize cancer treatment, Hippocratic AI's voice agents conduct clinical outreach at scale, and Develop Health automates prior authorization, addressing $500 billion in payer-provider administrative waste.

Esteva frames adoption through five moats: data, evidence, regulation, reimbursement, and clinical workflow. Hippocratic AI reports 99.9% safety across 11 million patient calls, while van Londen's "fully subtractive" design philosophy avoids retraining staff or upending existing workflows.

[Monty2026: AI at the Frontlines of Medicine]

Dimitrios Iliopoulos (Co-Founder & CEO, Athos Therapeutics), Mike Nally (CEO, Generate:Biomedicines), and Jorge Cardoso (Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer, Hologen) discuss AI's role in drug development with moderator Dr. Narimon Honarpour (SVP, Global Development, Amgen)

The panel reaches broad consensus that AI has genuinely transformed early-stage discovery, including protein design, target identification, and hypothesis generation, while its translation into successful late-stage clinical outcomes remains largely unproven.

Nally frames the opportunity through "Arrow's Law," the $2.9 billion cost to develop a new drug, predicting the industry will see its first downward cost inflection in 50 years within five years.

[Monty2026: The 2026 Capital Markets & Investment Landscape]

Scott Sandell (Executive Chairman & CIO, NEA) and Peter Chung (Managing Director & CEO, Summit Partners) discuss the future of venture investing with Sumant Mandal (Co-Founder & Managing Partner, March Capital)

Sandell and Chung, each with over 30 years in venture, argue that AI is transforming the economy far faster than the internet did, compressing what took 25 years into a fraction of the time. They point to $600 billion currently being invested in U.S. AI infrastructure by the world's most profitable companies, roughly 10x the peak cloud buildout spend a decade ago.

Both argue that AI-native companies play by entirely different rules, forcing firms built during the dot-com and mobile eras to rethink how they evaluate businesses.

[Monty2026: The 2026 Capital Markets & Investment Landscape]

Michelle Gonzalez (Corporate VP & Global Head, M12), Jai Das (Co-Founder & President, Sapphire Ventures), and Matt McIlwain (Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group) discuss the private capital landscape with moderator Ben Bergman (Senior Correspondent, Business Insider).

McIlwain warns of a tension between disruption speed and durability, while Das focuses on infrastructure "picks and shovels" investments as less exposed to model displacement. Gonzalez highlights a striking reversal: 90% of subscription AI revenue went to OpenAI in February 2025; a year later, 70% was going to Anthropic. McIlwain discloses that Madrona passed on OpenAI's $25 billion round in 2022, before ChatGPT launched.

The panel also compares AI-native company economics with the SaaS benchmark and debates the likely order of anticipated SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI IPOs.

[Monty2026: The 2026 Capital Markets & Investment Landscape]

Charles Black (Head of North America Technology, Equity Capital Markets Investment Banking, Citi), Emma Norchet (Partner, T. Rowe Price), Carly Roddy (Head of West Coast Private Capital Markets, J.P. Morgan), and Jack Cassel (Head of New Listings, Nasdaq) discuss the 2026 IPO market with moderator Michael Brown (Partner, Fenwick)

The panel describes a "very selective" market. Only 23 tech IPOs priced in 2025, and 2026 opened with just three before geopolitical disruption paused momentum. There is a sharp bifurcation between AI-adjacent companies attracting strong investor appetite and traditional software facing valuation compression.

The panel highlights the rise of "triple-track" processes --- IPO, M&A, or private continuation vehicle --- as the new standard exit path, and debates whether SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic will go public in 2026.

[Monty2026: Geopolitics, National Security, & Government]

Zac Bookman (Co-Founder & CEO, OpenGov) and Garrett Langley (Founder & CEO, Flock Safety) in conversation with Wes Nichols (Partner, March Capital)

Bookman and Langley describe how AI is transforming public safety and government operations. Flock Safety's camera network and LLM-powered 911 analysis helped apprehend roughly a million criminals last year, about 20% of all U.S. crimes solved, while OpenGov, competing with Tyler Technologies, is overhauling San Francisco's permitting system and helping Los Angeles prepare for a carless 2028 Olympics.

Both CEOs frame acute government staffing shortages as the real driver of rapid AI adoption. On privacy, Langley argues AI should augment rather than replace human judgment, with humans initiating and concluding decisions while AI runs the analytical middle.

[Monty2026: Geopolitics, National Security, & Government]

Zane Mountcastle (Co-Founder & CEO, Picogrid), Ian Kalin (Co-Founder & CEO, TurbineOne), Grant Demaree (Co-Founder & CEO, OneBrief), and Katie Arrington (CIO, IonQ) discuss the defense industry's transformation with moderator General John Allen (Ret.), Strategic Advisor to Microsoft.

The founders describe a new generation of software-native defense companies with SaaS-style margins and rapid deployment timelines, incompatible with traditional cost-plus prime contractor economics. Arrington says the department is now run with a venture mindset, with EBITDA and innovation replacing cost-plus as the metrics that matter.

OneBrief's Demaree describes reducing multi-week operational planning cycles to about 10 minutes using agentic AI, with users productive on classified networks within an hour versus 17 months under legacy systems. The panel identifies the Pentagon's Risk Management Framework as the single biggest obstacle to faster AI deployment.

[Monty2026: Geopolitics, National Security, & Government]

Joe Lonsdale (Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC) and Geoffrey von Maltzahn (Co-Founder & CEO, LILA Sciences) discuss national AI policy with moderator Martin Giles (Policy Fellow & Executive Director, Hoover Technology Policy Accelerator, The Hoover Institution).

As AI becomes a driver of national competitiveness, this session examines the policy decisions positioning the United States to lead. From the DOE’s Genesis Mission to accelerate science through AI to the U.S. approach to open-source models and AI infrastructure, the conversation explores how government and private builders are aligning around compute, talent, and capital.

The discussion focuses on what it will take to secure durable American leadership in the next wave of AI.