The Super Bowl is this Sunday in Silicon Valley, and the Patriots-Seahawks game at Levi’s Stadium will be loaded with tech money. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is expected to be there. Apple’s Tim Cook too. (It’s become a fixture of the Super Bowl since Apple Music began sponsoring the halftime show a few years ago.)
Longtime VC Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures was quoted by the New York Times on the whole thing, saying the Bay Area Super Bowl is “tech billionaires who got picked last in gym class paying $50,000 to pretend they’re friends with the guys who got picked first.” Ganesan added, “And for the record, I too was picked last in gym class.”
Ganesan could probably afford a $50,000 ticket if he needed one. Menlo went all-in on Anthropic, setting up a $100 million fund with the AI company in the summer of 2024 to invest in other AI startups. The firm has also participated in a number of funding rounds both for Anthropic itself and through its flagship fund and various special purpose vehicles. (Anthropic is expected to close a $20 billion funding round next week at a post-earnings valuation of $350 billion.)
Tickets are expensive across the board, averaging nearly $7,000, according to the Times (with some last-minute seats still available on StubHub going for close to $3,600, according to a quick look at the ticket seller’s site). Only a quarter goes to the general public; the remainder is distributed to NFL teams. Of all ticket buyers, the largest group (27%) comes from Washington state for the Seahawks, who have won just one Super Bowl in franchise history compared to the Patriots’ six titles, all with Tom Brady at quarterback.
Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and Meta are filing competing ads about whose AI is best for customers, so their respective CEOs might even make an appearance. Except for Amazon’s Andy Jassy, who reportedly splits his time between Seattle and Santa Monica, all have homes within an hour or so of Sunday’s game.
This is only the third time the Bay Area has hosted a Super Bowl. The first time was in 1985 at Stanford Stadium, Stanford University’s original football stadium, where the 49ers defeated the Dolphins. The other came 10 years ago at Levi’s Stadium when the Broncos defeated the Panthers.
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June 23, 2026