BREAKING: Inside General Catalyst’s $1.5B AI Roll-Up Engine: The Creation Strategy
Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst
The State of AI Roll-Ups
Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst and head of the firm’s Creation Strategy (incubations, transformations, & venture buyouts), breaks down one of the most significant shifts inside venture & private markets today: AI Roll-Ups.
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One of the 3 largest venture players with ~$40B AUM, General Catalyst has quietly built a $1.5B AI roll-up engine, investing $100-150M into incubating AI-native companies & acquiring the fragmented services businesses they can transform — a model that sits directly at the intersection of venture creation, operational transformation, & what has traditionally been the realm of private equity.
Marc explains why the firm believes the global services economy (a $16 trillion market historically defined by low margins and slow modernization) is now on the verge of being reshaped. Not by traditional software, and not by classic PE rollups, but by AI-enabled companies that combine in-house automation software with the acquisition of real distribution.
These companies, built initially inside GC’s Creation Strategy, have already begun doubling EBITDA margins within 12 months (with some hitting $100M in EBITDA in <2 years) demonstrating what becomes possible when AI automation frees 30-40-50 % of repetitive tasks and allows teams to handle significantly greater throughput.
The conversation goes deep into how GC selects industries for this strategy, mapping 70 services categories down to the 10 where AI can have the most immediate impact. Marc outlines the 4 categories of work AI now reliably automates, from customer service & data entry to content generation & early-stage reasoning, and how those capabilities form the backbone of portfolio companies like Crescendo, Long Lake, Titan MSP, Eudia, & others.
Marc Bhargava
In addition to leading the Creation Strategy, Marc also leads early stage crypto & fintech investing. Previously, Marc was co-founder at Tagomi (acquired by Coinbase), now Coinbase Prime. Experienced in early-stage investing, private equity, & operationally focused roles in tech, he is extremely well suited & well spoken on this subject.
To date, Marc has led GC’s investments in Long Lake, Rox, Eudia, Titan MSP, Dwelly, Pallet, Kick, Serval, Vivere, Cartesia, Aaru, Civic Roundtable, Physical Intelligence, Agora, as well as sourced Mercor, Windsurf, Together AI.
As an individual, Marc was an early investor from 2020-2022 in Ramp, Zip, Harvey AI, Windsurf (acquired by Google), Together AI, Neon (acquired by Databricks), Polymarket, Sardine, Doppel, Bridge (acquired by Stripe), DolarApp, Seel, Vantage, Stitch Money, TRM Labs, Recraft, Keep, Healthy Together, Flowdesk, Exa, Monad, Eigen Layer, Savvy Wealth, and others.
Resources
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Marc Bhargava, General Catalyst
(02:54) Inside the $1.5B Creation Strategy & why AI rollups emerged
(05:42) Early successes: Crescendo, Long Lake, Titan MSP, Eudia
(08:15) The AI capability map: 4 categories of task automation
(10:42) How GC narrowed 70 industries down to the top 10
(13:18) The $16T services AI opportunity
(15:46) Competing with traditional PE: long-term compounding vs. short-term flips
(18:11) Funding mechanics: incubate → automation proof → acquisition → scale
(20:33) How GC builds hybrid teams: AI-native + PE + operators
(22:47) Why Fortune 100 AI transformation often fails
(24:55) Will AI shrink or expand the workforce? Marc’s stance
(27:22) How GC decides when to build an AI rollup vs. invest in SaaS
(29:49) Global expansion and where talent lives today
(32:10) Why AI rollups are still massively underrated & what’s coming next
(44:19) Global Expansion and Talent Distribution
(47:13) General Catalyst’s Investment Philosophy
(48:56) Looking Ahead: The Future of AI Rollups
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The incubate-then-acquire model here is brilliant because it flips the traditional rollup playbook on its head. Instead of acquiring first and hoping automation fits, you're basically building the AI backbone with real task-level knowledge before buying distribution. The fact that some of these are hitting $100M EBITDA in under two years is wild, considering most traditional PE rollups are still wrestling with basic digitization at that stage.