The money is back.

Not the careful, sweat-beaded money we’ve seen for the last eighteen months. Not the "let’s see your path to profitability" money that made every founder in SOMA miserable. No, this is the loud stuff. The Sharks—those elite tiers of venture capital firms and M&A vultures who spent the last two years pretending they cared about "fiscal responsibility"—are finally bored of sitting on their hands. They’re sniffing the air, catching the metallic tang of a fresh bubble, and gearing up for their first real stretch run since the world went sideways.

It’s about time. The tech industry has been acting like a reformed addict at a juice bar. Everyone’s been talking about "efficiency" and "headcount optimization" as if they actually enjoyed laying off 20% of their staff. They didn't. They hated it because it’s hard to feel like a god of the universe when you’re worried about the lease on a half-empty office in Cupertino. But the "Dry Powder" era is ending. That $300 billion in unspent capital is burning a hole through the Patagonias of every partner at Sequoia and Andreessen.

They need to spend. They need to hunt. And they’re starting to move.

You can see the ripples in the water. Look at the valuations for companies that do nothing but wrap a thin UI around a ChatGPT API. We’re seeing $50 million seed rounds for startups that haven't even figured out their AWS bill yet. It’s a frantic, desperate attempt to capture the "stack" before the music stops again. The Sharks aren't looking for sustainable businesses; they’re looking for the next thing they can flip to a bigger fish or dump onto the public market before the SEC notices the books are written in crayon.

But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch.

The friction this time around isn't just interest rates or a shaky NASDAQ. It’s the regulatory harpoon. Lina Khan at the FTC has spent the last few years making life hell for anyone trying to buy their way to a monopoly. The $20 billion Adobe-Figma deal didn't just die; it was a public execution that sent a chill through every boardroom from Mountain View to Redmond. That’s the trade-off. The Sharks want to run, but the cage is smaller than it used to be. Every time a major player tries to swallow a smaller competitor to "synergize," they’re met with a three-year court battle and a billion-dollar breakup fee.

It's a high-stakes game of chicken. If you’re a founder right now, you’re looking at a $400 million acquisition offer and wondering if it’ll actually clear, or if you’ll be left holding a bag of legal fees while your burn rate incinerates your remaining cash.

The "stretch run" usually implies a sprint to the finish line—a glorious dash where the strongest survive and the losers get turned into case studies for HBS. This time, it feels more like a frantic scramble for the last lifeboats. The Sharks are betting that AI will be the tide that lifts all boats, but they’re ignoring the fact that most of those boats have massive holes in the hull. They don’t care. They just need to keep the momentum going long enough to justify their management fees.

Don’t believe the press releases. They’ll tell you this is about "innovation" and "the next era of computing." It’s not. It’s about the fact that nobody gets a bonus for holding cash. It’s about the reality that Silicon Valley is a shark that has to keep moving or it dies. The movement is starting again. The checks are getting bigger, the due diligence is getting shorter, and the rhetoric is getting more delusional by the hour.

We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. We know that when the Sharks start their run, the water usually ends up a very specific shade of red. But for now, the mood is electric. The vultures are circling, the predators are feeding, and the tech bros are back to ordering the expensive scotch.

The only question is who’s actually going to be left standing when the bill finally hits the table. Or maybe we’re just waiting to see which one of these unicorns is the first to realize it’s actually a donkey with a party hat stapled to its head.