Our house view: the privacy debate is already settled — the only live question is who gets to use the data, when, and under what rules. On this week's episode of The Cap Table — Pre-IPO Podcast, Aaron Dillon of AGDillon & Co. and Aaron Ross work through four stories that all reduce to the same variable: proprietary data. Flock Safety is taking public heat over its license-plate-reader network, but its technology reportedly helped locate more than 10,000 missing people in 2025, and city councils are voting these systems in. Our take is that capture is inevitable and consent will follow — first at the business level, then personally via AI assistants and AR hardware — so the underwriting question becomes access controls and audit trails, not whether the cameras exist. Oura, reported to be preparing an IPO at roughly a $16 billion valuation with a raise in the $3 billion range, is the same thesis in a ring: we would underwrite it as a data and subscription business rather than hardware, with women's health as a differentiated niche and a real risk that Apple integrates the same capabilities into the Watch. Sacra's figures put Oura at roughly $1 billion of 2025 revenue, about double the prior year. The unlock we would watch for is proactive, always-on AI that stitches wearable data into clinical care — the difference between a dashboard and a product that calls 911. Reed Jobs' Yosemite is the segment that makes the case for why any of this matters: AI-driven cancer research is a multi-year, low-visibility compounding story that people will only appreciate once a drug that didn't exist three years ago saves someone they know. We flag the underwriting reality — long runways, regulatory gates, and comparables like Colossal Biosciences at a reported $30 billion valuation with no obvious revenue model — as the reason we stay disciplined on entry points in bioscience. Finally, Hugging Face is reportedly in acquisition talks at around $13 billion, up from a $4.5 billion mark in 2023; Dillon puts Stripe in the mix given its recent acquisitive streak, Ross bets on SpaceX or NVIDIA. Either way, the buyer is paying for the same thing every company in this episode is built on: the data.
Companies discussed: Flock Safety, Oura, Whoop, Apple, Yosemite (Reed Jobs), Anthropic, Colossal Biosciences, Hugging Face, Stripe, SpaceX, NVIDIA
00:00 Intro — Flock, Yosemite, Hugging Face, Oura
00:37 Flock Safety: does America want this?
01:03 Dillon: capture is inevitable, usage is the question
03:02 10,000 missing people found — the stat you can't ignore
04:14 "Assume you're already being recorded"
06:40 The privacy paradox: Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube podcasts
07:13 How consent will arrive: businesses first, then AI assistants
08:35 Oura Ring: reported $16B IPO, $3B raise
09:41 Whoop vs. Oura — what we actually use them for
10:36 Underwriting Oura: ~$1B revenue, 100% growth (Sacra)
11:13 Recurring revenue vs. the Apple Watch threat
12:18 The missing piece: proactive AI + your doctor
15:56 The aneurysm story — why always-on matters
17:00 Reed Jobs and Yosemite: cancer as a livable condition
18:03 AI's science impact is real — you just can't feel it yet
20:06 Dario Amodei and the "gift to humanity" thesis
21:47 Why bioscience is hard to underwrite: runways and regulators
22:41 Colossal Biosciences at $30B — "is it zoos?"
23:23 Hugging Face: reported $13B acquisition talks
24:27 Who's buying? Stripe vs. SpaceX vs. NVIDIA
24:48 Close
Nothing in this episode is investment advice. Private company investments are illiquid, speculative, and available only to accredited investors. Valuations and raise amounts referenced are reported figures and have not been independently verified.