Podcast Sentiment Reveals a Cautious New Cycle in VC

Venture capital is often described as a discipline driven by strategy, pattern recognition, and long-term conviction. In practice, emotion and narrative also play a visible role. For an asset class built around uncertainty and limited data, the way investors feel and talk about the future can shape how they behave, even if that influence is hard to quantify.

That is why Silicon Valley Bank’s recent analysis of podcast sentiment in its State of the Markets: H2 2025 report is interesting. Instead of focusing only on familiar indicators such as deal volumes, fund sizes, or valuations, the report examines how investors talk in long-form conversations. It suggests the industry is in what it calls a “VC Vibecession”: a period in which capital continues to flow, but the tone of discussion is more subdued than in the recent past.

The term may sound informal, but the underlying idea is clear. The data points to a situation where activity has resumed after the shocks of 2022–2023, yet the level of confidence expressed in investor conversations has not returned to earlier peaks.

Turning Conversations into a Time Series

The Podcast Sentiment Index is built from 3,200 podcast transcripts pulled from shows focused on technology and venture capital. Podcasts are a useful window for this kind of analysis because they capture extended, unscripted discussions. Investors are more likely to talk through uncertainty, caveats, and evolving views in that format than in a formal memo or a short social media post.

SVB’s team used FinBERT, a financial sentiment model, to assign scores to each episode based on the language used. Aggregating these scores over time creates a sentiment curve, which the report divides into three broad phases since 2020.

The first phase, the ‘Stimulus Surge,’ runs from 2020 into early 2022. It coincides with near-zero interest rates, significant pandemic-era stimulus, and record fundraising across venture funds. Sentiment in the index is generally positive over this period. Discussions are often framed around new categories, expanding markets, and rapid growth, reflecting a backdrop where capital was widely available and risk appetite was elevated.

The second phase, termed the ‘Hype Hangover,’ covers roughly 2022–2023. As inflation rose and central banks tightened policy, speculative segments of the market, most visibly parts of the crypto ecosystem, unwound. The sentiment data shows a clear decline in tone during this period. Conversations on podcasts shifted toward topics like extending runway, adjusting valuations, and rethinking hiring plans. The language became more cautious, with more emphasis on resilience and cost discipline.

By the end of 2023 and into 2024–2025, the sentiment curve stabilizes at a level that is neither deeply negative nor strongly euphoric. This is the phase the report labels the VC Vibecession. Investment volumes and fundraising have recovered from the sharp adjustment, but the emotional tone reflected in podcasts remains measured. Investors are active, yet their language reflects uncertainty about the durability of some themes and about the broader macro environment.

AI Momentum and a Measured Mood

The most striking example of this more restrained tone appears in the discussion around artificial intelligence. On the quantitative side, AI has become central to venture activity. The report notes that in 2025, AI-related companies account for a majority share of US VC dollars. The release of systems such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 clearly triggered waves of interest.

However, the sentiment data shows that while these events produced short-term spikes in positive tone, they did not lead to a sustained return to the optimism of 2021. After each surge in enthusiasm, the index moderates again. The overall mood around AI in the podcasts is one of recognition that the technology is important, coupled with ongoing questions about business models, defensibility, regulation, and long-term unit economics.

This produces what you could call an “AI paradox.” On one hand, investors and founders are devoting a significant share of time and capital to AI. On the other, many of the conversations captured by the index reflect caution about overconcentration, competition, and the risk of overestimating near-term outcomes. The result is a pattern where investors feel they must pay attention to AI, while also acknowledging the uncertainties around how value will ultimately accrue.

The Vibecession label captures this mix of participation and hesitation. The industry is clearly engaged in the AI wave, but the sentiment data suggests that engagement is accompanied by a relatively high level of risk awareness rather than unqualified exuberance.

How Narratives Rotate Across Sectors

Beyond the overall sentiment line, the report also tracks how often particular themes come up in podcasts over time. These topic trends give a sense of how the narrative focus of venture has shifted since 2020.

Crypto displays a pronounced rise and decline. It occupies a large share of conversation in 2021, aligning with peak hype and rising asset prices. By 2023, its presence in the discourse has reduced sharply. This doesn’t necessarily imply that activity has stopped, but it does indicate that crypto is no longer at the center of mainstream venture discussion in the same way.

AI, by contrast, shows a steady and then accelerating increase. It moves from a specialized topic to the dominant one, especially after late 2022. By 2025, AI permeates multiple sub-themes: infrastructure, applications, tooling, and sector-specific use cases.

Energy is an interesting case because it reappears in the narrative through a different lens. Rather than being discussed only in the context of climate or renewables, it is increasingly linked to AI’s infrastructure needs. Podcasts highlight power availability, data center constraints, and efficiency as practical bottlenecks for continued AI scaling. This indicates that a technology often framed as purely digital is now drawing attention back to physical systems such as grids, generation, and cooling.

Defense technology has also undergone a visible shift in how it is discussed. Historically, many investors approached the sector cautiously due to regulatory complexity and ethical concerns. Over the last couple of years, the report notes an increase in mentions of defense and dual-use technologies, particularly following the 2024 US elections. The tone of the conversation has moved toward seeing the area as an important intersection of national security, software, and hardware, reflecting a broader normalization of the topic in public venture discourse.

Taken together, these patterns illustrate how quickly the center of gravity in venture narratives can move. A theme can shift from central to peripheral or the other way around over the course of just a few years. The report’s line that “what gets talked about today gets funded tomorrow” summarizes this relationship in a memorable way. While the reality is more nuanced, it is reasonable to view sustained narrative attention as one of several leading indicators of where capital may concentrate over time.

A More Cautious, More Complex Cycle

The idea of a Vibecession is useful mainly as a shorthand for this more complex environment. It does not describe a collapse in activity. Instead, it points to a combination of resumed deployment and enduring caution.

Compared to the early-2020s stimulus period, today’s conversations sound more disciplined. Founders and investors are spending more time discussing sustainability of business models, paths to profitability, cost structures, and the practical constraints of scaling. The sentiment data suggests that the industry has adjusted its expectations after the sharp reset of 2022–2023.

At the same time, a strong focus on a small number of dominant narratives, especially AI, creates its own set of questions. When many participants in the ecosystem listen to similar sources, refer to similar examples, and internalize similar talking points, the information environment can become highly synchronized. That can make it harder for contrarian or less-publicized themes to be heard, regardless of their underlying fundamentals.

The Podcast Sentiment Index offers a useful way to observe this process. It does not prescribe what investors should do, nor does it predict specific outcomes. Instead, it highlights where attention is clustering, how confident or uncertain that attention sounds, and how those patterns change over time.

Why Sentiment Still Matters

Ultimately, the report reinforces a basic idea: in venture capital, narrative and sentiment are part of the data landscape. They do not replace traditional analysis of markets, teams, and financials, but they provide additional context for how participants are reacting to the same set of facts.

The Stimulus Surge, Hype Hangover, and VC Vibecession are one way of describing the last five years of that context. First came a period of very high optimism and liquidity, followed by a corrective phase, and then a more measured environment where activity has returned but confidence remains tempered. AI has emerged as the dominant theme, yet it has not fully restored the industry’s previous level of exuberance. Energy, defense, and other sectors have been pulled into the conversation through their connection to these larger shifts.

How these sentiment trends translate into long-term outcomes will only be clear with time. For now, the Podcast Sentiment Index serves as a structured way to observe how investors talk when they are trying to make sense of rapid technological and macroeconomic change. It does not offer investment advice or a playbook, but it does provide a clearer view of the mood in which decisions are being made. In a field where uncertainty is the norm, understanding that mood adds another layer to how we interpret the current phase of the venture cycle.

Brand Manager

Aayushi Thakur

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the Podcast Sentiment Index?

A: A sentiment score built by SVB from 3,200 VC and tech podcast transcripts using FinBERT to track how investor tone has shifted since 2020.

Q: What does “VC Vibecession” mean?

A: A term from SVB’s H2 2025 report describing a period where investment activity has resumed, but investor conversations sound more cautious than in earlier cycles.

Q: Why analyze podcasts for venture sentiment?

A: Podcasts capture longer, unfiltered discussions where investors openly talk through uncertainty, making them useful for assessing mood and narrative trends.

Q: How did SVB identify the three sentiment phases?

A: By charting sentiment over time, the report highlights the Stimulus Surge (2020–2022), the Hype Hangover (2022–2023), and the current Vibecession (2024–2025).

Q: Does sentiment predict VC performance?

A: No. The index highlights conversation trends, not investment outcomes. It provides context, not forecasts or advice.

Sources

1. State of the Markets: H2 2025. Silicon Valley Bank, 2025.