June 13, 2025 • 11 mins
Bridge Bank, the technology and innovation division of Western Alliance Bank, offers a full spectrum of commercial banking services with specialized expertise focused on life sciences and technology and innovation companies at every stage in their life cycle, from startup to IPO and beyond. The company serves the private equity and venture capital communities by providing banking solutions for portfolio companies and funds, plus banking solutions for small to mid-size businesses in the Bay Area.
Bob Curley, CEO of Bridge Bank and Deputy Chief Banking Officer of Regional Banking at Western Alliance discusses key financing trends among early stage companies and the broader appetite for IPOs.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All right, So, as you know, it's a busy Thursday,
a lot going on, and that includes in the IPO market.
IPO is definitely having a moment. We talked about Chime
and Financial earlier today, surging as much as sixty six
percent on the company's first day of trading. The IPO
priced at twenty seven dollars to share. Circle Internet surged
one hundred and seventy percent on its first day of
trading last week. And then you had the cryptocurrency exchange
(00:36):
Bullish Global confidentially filing paperwork with the SEC for an
IPO in recent weeks. There's a lot going on that filing,
according to a report last week, Tim in the Ft.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, So the IPO is the culmination for a lot
of venture capitalists. The question we have is how are
things looking for them earlier in the process, for companies
that are raising money right now. For that, we check
in with Bob Curley, CEO Bridge Bank. It's the tech
division of Western Alliance. Bob Curley is Deputy Chief banking
Officer of Regional Banking at Western Alliance. The bank has
(01:08):
more than eighty billion dollars in assets kind of the
market cap of around eight billion dollars. He joins us
this afternoon from San Jose. Bob, your focus at bridges
on every stage of the life of a startup, So
you focus from them raising money all the way to
IPO and you go past that. Tech in life sciences
is your specialty. How would you characterize the environment right now?
(01:29):
We know IPOs are pretty hot, but what about earlier
on in the stages.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, there is a mix of things going on in
the industry, most of them good. There's robust capital available
to founders these days, and so a lot of people
are making choices today whether they go public. It has
that window, as you covered earlier, is wide open. No
telling how long that will last, but it does look
(01:55):
like this will be a nice run. But alternatively, in
the old days, IPOs and M and A were your solution.
Today you have a third option, which is to stay
private for longer, and there are plenty of sources of
capital to be able to do that, and of course
Bridge Western Alliance is one of the sources for that,
(02:16):
So talk.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
To us about in terms of activity and what you're seeing.
I think we love talking to different aspects of financial
markets and kind of our business world, including anything to
do with certainly startup company companies and entities in terms
ofbo of what it tells us about the environment more
a beat or not, certainly when uncertainty has really been
(02:39):
the narrative and the watchword for all of us. And
I think it's safe to say I remember hearing somebody
on surveillance this morning that you know, the one thing
we know that is a very effective tool of this president.
I don't think i'm speaking out a turn here is
that ability to catch people off guard, and so uncertainty
will probably be with us until the end of his
turnure in his second term. So give us an eye
(03:00):
idea of what you are seeing and how you would
describe kind of the environment when it comes to startups,
the capital raise and everything around them.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I think you're dealing with a couple of things.
One is, you have a whole cadre of companies that
raise money at very high valuations during the zero interest
rate environment, the ZERP period. Those folks are trying to
figure out where they go from here. A lot of
them were priced to perfection, and obviously, with the increase
in rates among other things, they're finding sometimes that fundraising
(03:32):
is more challenging. What those folks have been focused on
is bringing the burned down, getting themselves to be more sustainable,
and now addressing whether there's a growth story behind it.
They will go in one of two directions that will
resume a growth story, or they will manage the company
for cash. The third option is if neither of those
paths are available, they will have to look for a
(03:53):
soft landing for the company. Those are the companies that
were funded in the i'll call it the helcyon days
of the of the post pandemic period. Then you have
a whole other group of companies that are up and
coming that I think could be some of the most
exciting companies we have ever seen. Those include very popular
AI companies, but a whole lot of companies that benefit
(04:15):
from the formula of the formative technology developed by AI,
which would lead you into robotics, in the defense, into space, etc.
So I think we're entering a whole new area of
great returns, great opportunities on the new front. While we
also contend with or deal with the companies that we're
(04:36):
left behind.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Is there enough money out there to kind of keep
these companies private for longer. It seems to be the
mode as of late, or certainly what we've seen the
last few years. And sometimes that can be great in
terms of giving company the space to do what they
need to do. It also, though, can keep alive companies
that probably shouldn't be kept alive. So give us an
idea of how liquid it is out there and the
money that are chasing startups at different stages of their
(04:59):
lif life right now.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
They're absolutely right, Carrol. The amount of capital of being
deployed into the space today is a multiple of what
we've seen before. Put in perspective, sixty billion dollars in
venture debt was done this past year. The next highest
year was in twenty twenty one, where it was forty
one billion dollars, So it gives you a sense for
(05:22):
the growth in that period of time. It is almost
double last year what it was in twenty twenty three.
So we're seeing all different sources of capital. I think
the most important thing if you're a founder, you want
to align with investors who have been there, done that,
who have been through the cycles. We've been doing this
for twenty years. We've seen a lot of people come
(05:43):
in and go referred to as the tourists. But I
would say at this point in time, there are more
options on the table, and I think it's also becoming
more accepted in the boardroom that people will consider debt
because of its non diluted nature or less diluted nature.
But as an alternative.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
It's an alternative, but it's an alternative that comes out
of price because of the and look the entire businesses
that are made up of venture debt and entire public
trading companies that really just focus on venture debt. But
what are we talking rates rates here in an environment
such as this.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, so the old prime rate or reference rate is
the rate. And depending on how early a stage, you
may also have a little bit of warrants I at
warrant in a warrant upside. However, tim you've got to
compare that to equity dilution where ownership is being given up.
And the primary tool of using venture debt in the
(06:35):
earlier stage companies is to defer that next capital raise
so that you can knock down milestones and or attract
customer bases that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do,
which obviously has a positive impact on the valuation that
you're able to drive for the company. So in a sense,
it's a way of staging. When I raise the amount
of equity capital, I think the need the business needs
(06:57):
over time.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I want to get into, in particular, what you're seeing
in terms of AI and where the money's going. We
just came off of an event on TIM and I
at in San Diego on Tuesday at Cisco Live twenty
twenty five, and we talked to a lot of their
key executives in terms of what they are doing in
AI strategy in particular, They've got a lot going on
(07:20):
and it seems like they are working aggressively to pivot
to the AI infrastructure build. But it's been fascinating right
to watch over the last two years where it was
all it seemed like Nvidia and open AI. But it's
branching out to power needs and software and so on
and so forth. But where are you seeing capital deployed,
(07:40):
be it debt or equity, you know, in terms of
capital raises when it comes to AI, what's interesting what
are the trends that maybe aren't being talked about as much.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Sure well, certainly, you're absolutely right. There's a huge amount
of money being deployed into the infrastructure for AI and
pure compute power. You need to accomplish that. Those tend
to have very large investors, very large dollar amounts involved,
and hence you tend to have mega funds that are
(08:13):
focused on that. I think what's particularly interesting is I
call it, I would call it applied AI, and that's
companies that are taking AI capabilities and focusing it on
functional areas, solving a single problem, for example, or a
group of problems, or applying it to a particular vertical
which is using AI technology, but then applying it to
(08:36):
real problems that clients have today and solving them very
much the way application software would have years ago, but
ever more efficient with the AI capability.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
In terms of where venture capital is flowing, it does
seem like, you know, a lot of the big money
is going toward the lms, but on sort of the
more the smaller side, the deals that we don't hear about. Bob,
I'm wondering where where you're seeing in the layer that
you're seeing built on AI, where the money is going there?
What can you tell us about where where, What's what's
(09:07):
being attracted where within the valley?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, so a little more than half of what we
see is somehow AI deployed. I think we have to
be a little bit careful now. Uh. I was around
for the whole Internet craze and everyone put a dot
com after their name, and so there are different levels
of AI involvement and AI capability. But having to put
(09:30):
that in place, what I would say is we're seeing
the ability to take AI and get great amounts of
information and create, create, create quick learning where someone's able
to develop what would have tend over over weeks, maybe
even months, they can have a summary of data very quickly.
And so we're seeing it applied in security situations. We're
(09:53):
seeing it applied in cyber We're seeing it applied clearly
in defense, uh, and we're seeing it apply in healthcare.
So again, I view of the greatest opportunity for mid
sized funds is in these applied AI categories.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You mentioned that you saw you were around for the
dot com boom and busts, So I got to get
your take on if you think there's a there there
right now with the rise of AI versus sort of
what we saw in the late nineties early two thousands
with the bust of dot com. Are you seeing similarities?
There is this completely different.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Well, we said the bust of dot com, and certainly
there were a number of casualties associated with that. That's
because I think investors knew at the front end it's
going to be a huge change in our economy and
the way we look, the way we do things, and
so there was a frenzy to make sure I got
in at any price, and as a result, a lot
of business models were funded that probably shouldn't have been,
(10:48):
but that was all in an effort to be associated
what would turned out to be one of the greatest
developments in technology. I think we're at a similar turning point.
I think we're at a point where our official intelligence
is that enabling technology but I don't. But I believe
there will only be a few winners of it, and
there's probably much many more companies getting funded, particularly on
(11:11):
the lum side.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Bob just twenty seconds here, Silicon Valley Bank and all
that that entailed. Andy worried about the future of Western
Alliance at that time. Everything back to normal after that
or at least back to where you were before and
again just got about fifteen seconds.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It really has. We leveled out a little bit for
a quarter or two, but with the backing with Western
Alliance track record and bank for all seasons, we've resumed
on growth and we're now stutting records.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
All right, Bob Curly, thank you so much. Toeo Bridge Bank,
Deputy Chief Banking Officer of Regional Banking at Western Alliance
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All right, So, as you know, it's a busy Thursday,
a lot going on, and that includes in the IPO market.
IPO is definitely having a moment. We talked about Chime
and Financial earlier today, surging as much as sixty six
percent on the company's first day of trading. The IPO
priced at twenty seven dollars to share. Circle Internet surged
one hundred and seventy percent on its first day of
trading last week. And then you had the cryptocurrency exchange
(00:36):
Bullish Global confidentially filing paperwork with the SEC for an
IPO in recent weeks. There's a lot going on that filing,
according to a report last week, Tim in the Ft.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, So the IPO is the culmination for a lot
of venture capitalists. The question we have is how are
things looking for them earlier in the process, for companies
that are raising money right now. For that, we check
in with Bob Curley, CEO Bridge Bank. It's the tech
division of Western Alliance. Bob Curley is Deputy Chief banking
Officer of Regional Banking at Western Alliance. The bank has
(01:08):
more than eighty billion dollars in assets kind of the
market cap of around eight billion dollars. He joins us
this afternoon from San Jose. Bob, your focus at bridges
on every stage of the life of a startup, So
you focus from them raising money all the way to
IPO and you go past that. Tech in life sciences
is your specialty. How would you characterize the environment right now?
(01:29):
We know IPOs are pretty hot, but what about earlier
on in the stages.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, there is a mix of things going on in
the industry, most of them good. There's robust capital available
to founders these days, and so a lot of people
are making choices today whether they go public. It has
that window, as you covered earlier, is wide open. No
telling how long that will last, but it does look
(01:55):
like this will be a nice run. But alternatively, in
the old days, IPOs and M and A were your solution.
Today you have a third option, which is to stay
private for longer, and there are plenty of sources of
capital to be able to do that, and of course
Bridge Western Alliance is one of the sources for that,
(02:16):
So talk.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
To us about in terms of activity and what you're seeing.
I think we love talking to different aspects of financial
markets and kind of our business world, including anything to
do with certainly startup company companies and entities in terms
ofbo of what it tells us about the environment more
a beat or not, certainly when uncertainty has really been
(02:39):
the narrative and the watchword for all of us. And
I think it's safe to say I remember hearing somebody
on surveillance this morning that you know, the one thing
we know that is a very effective tool of this president.
I don't think i'm speaking out a turn here is
that ability to catch people off guard, and so uncertainty
will probably be with us until the end of his
turnure in his second term. So give us an eye
(03:00):
idea of what you are seeing and how you would
describe kind of the environment when it comes to startups,
the capital raise and everything around them.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I think you're dealing with a couple of things.
One is, you have a whole cadre of companies that
raise money at very high valuations during the zero interest
rate environment, the ZERP period. Those folks are trying to
figure out where they go from here. A lot of
them were priced to perfection, and obviously, with the increase
in rates among other things, they're finding sometimes that fundraising
(03:32):
is more challenging. What those folks have been focused on
is bringing the burned down, getting themselves to be more sustainable,
and now addressing whether there's a growth story behind it.
They will go in one of two directions that will
resume a growth story, or they will manage the company
for cash. The third option is if neither of those
paths are available, they will have to look for a
(03:53):
soft landing for the company. Those are the companies that
were funded in the i'll call it the helcyon days
of the of the post pandemic period. Then you have
a whole other group of companies that are up and
coming that I think could be some of the most
exciting companies we have ever seen. Those include very popular
AI companies, but a whole lot of companies that benefit
(04:15):
from the formula of the formative technology developed by AI,
which would lead you into robotics, in the defense, into space, etc.
So I think we're entering a whole new area of
great returns, great opportunities on the new front. While we
also contend with or deal with the companies that we're
(04:36):
left behind.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Is there enough money out there to kind of keep
these companies private for longer. It seems to be the
mode as of late, or certainly what we've seen the
last few years. And sometimes that can be great in
terms of giving company the space to do what they
need to do. It also, though, can keep alive companies
that probably shouldn't be kept alive. So give us an
idea of how liquid it is out there and the
money that are chasing startups at different stages of their
(04:59):
lif life right now.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
They're absolutely right, Carrol. The amount of capital of being
deployed into the space today is a multiple of what
we've seen before. Put in perspective, sixty billion dollars in
venture debt was done this past year. The next highest
year was in twenty twenty one, where it was forty
one billion dollars, So it gives you a sense for
(05:22):
the growth in that period of time. It is almost
double last year what it was in twenty twenty three.
So we're seeing all different sources of capital. I think
the most important thing if you're a founder, you want
to align with investors who have been there, done that,
who have been through the cycles. We've been doing this
for twenty years. We've seen a lot of people come
(05:43):
in and go referred to as the tourists. But I
would say at this point in time, there are more
options on the table, and I think it's also becoming
more accepted in the boardroom that people will consider debt
because of its non diluted nature or less diluted nature.
But as an alternative.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
It's an alternative, but it's an alternative that comes out
of price because of the and look the entire businesses
that are made up of venture debt and entire public
trading companies that really just focus on venture debt. But
what are we talking rates rates here in an environment
such as this.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, so the old prime rate or reference rate is
the rate. And depending on how early a stage, you
may also have a little bit of warrants I at
warrant in a warrant upside. However, tim you've got to
compare that to equity dilution where ownership is being given up.
And the primary tool of using venture debt in the
(06:35):
earlier stage companies is to defer that next capital raise
so that you can knock down milestones and or attract
customer bases that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do,
which obviously has a positive impact on the valuation that
you're able to drive for the company. So in a sense,
it's a way of staging. When I raise the amount
of equity capital, I think the need the business needs
(06:57):
over time.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I want to get into, in particular, what you're seeing
in terms of AI and where the money's going. We
just came off of an event on TIM and I
at in San Diego on Tuesday at Cisco Live twenty
twenty five, and we talked to a lot of their
key executives in terms of what they are doing in
AI strategy in particular, They've got a lot going on
(07:20):
and it seems like they are working aggressively to pivot
to the AI infrastructure build. But it's been fascinating right
to watch over the last two years where it was
all it seemed like Nvidia and open AI. But it's
branching out to power needs and software and so on
and so forth. But where are you seeing capital deployed,
(07:40):
be it debt or equity, you know, in terms of
capital raises when it comes to AI, what's interesting what
are the trends that maybe aren't being talked about as much.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Sure well, certainly, you're absolutely right. There's a huge amount
of money being deployed into the infrastructure for AI and
pure compute power. You need to accomplish that. Those tend
to have very large investors, very large dollar amounts involved,
and hence you tend to have mega funds that are
(08:13):
focused on that. I think what's particularly interesting is I
call it, I would call it applied AI, and that's
companies that are taking AI capabilities and focusing it on
functional areas, solving a single problem, for example, or a
group of problems, or applying it to a particular vertical
which is using AI technology, but then applying it to
(08:36):
real problems that clients have today and solving them very
much the way application software would have years ago, but
ever more efficient with the AI capability.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
In terms of where venture capital is flowing, it does
seem like, you know, a lot of the big money
is going toward the lms, but on sort of the
more the smaller side, the deals that we don't hear about. Bob,
I'm wondering where where you're seeing in the layer that
you're seeing built on AI, where the money is going there?
What can you tell us about where where, What's what's
(09:07):
being attracted where within the valley?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, so a little more than half of what we
see is somehow AI deployed. I think we have to
be a little bit careful now. Uh. I was around
for the whole Internet craze and everyone put a dot
com after their name, and so there are different levels
of AI involvement and AI capability. But having to put
(09:30):
that in place, what I would say is we're seeing
the ability to take AI and get great amounts of
information and create, create, create quick learning where someone's able
to develop what would have tend over over weeks, maybe
even months, they can have a summary of data very quickly.
And so we're seeing it applied in security situations. We're
(09:53):
seeing it applied in cyber We're seeing it applied clearly
in defense, uh, and we're seeing it apply in healthcare.
So again, I view of the greatest opportunity for mid
sized funds is in these applied AI categories.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You mentioned that you saw you were around for the
dot com boom and busts, So I got to get
your take on if you think there's a there there
right now with the rise of AI versus sort of
what we saw in the late nineties early two thousands
with the bust of dot com. Are you seeing similarities?
There is this completely different.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Well, we said the bust of dot com, and certainly
there were a number of casualties associated with that. That's
because I think investors knew at the front end it's
going to be a huge change in our economy and
the way we look, the way we do things, and
so there was a frenzy to make sure I got
in at any price, and as a result, a lot
of business models were funded that probably shouldn't have been,
(10:48):
but that was all in an effort to be associated
what would turned out to be one of the greatest
developments in technology. I think we're at a similar turning point.
I think we're at a point where our official intelligence
is that enabling technology but I don't. But I believe
there will only be a few winners of it, and
there's probably much many more companies getting funded, particularly on
(11:11):
the lum side.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Bob just twenty seconds here, Silicon Valley Bank and all
that that entailed. Andy worried about the future of Western
Alliance at that time. Everything back to normal after that
or at least back to where you were before and
again just got about fifteen seconds.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It really has. We leveled out a little bit for
a quarter or two, but with the backing with Western
Alliance track record and bank for all seasons, we've resumed
on growth and we're now stutting records.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
All right, Bob Curly, thank you so much. Toeo Bridge Bank,
Deputy Chief Banking Officer of Regional Banking at Western Alliance
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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