PALO ALTO, CA — A press release was quietly emailed from a local coffee shop’s Wi-Fi last week, announcing that Aetheria, a conceptual “pre-startup,” had officially closed its Series A funding round of $150 million, valuing the company at a staggering $1 billion. Aetheria currently consists solely of its 22-year-old founder, Jaxon Vortex, and possesses no product, no staff, and a business plan described only as “post-disruptive.”
The valuation has been driven by lead investor Momentum Capital, whose partner, Seraphina Sterling, championed the deal. When asked what Aetheria actually does, Vortex, a self-described “synergistic ideator,” took a long sip of his oat milk latte before responding. “We’re not building a product; we’re cultivating a paradigm. Products are restrictive, they have to *do* something. Aetheria is a platform for potentiality. Why limit ourselves to code and servers when we can harness the raw, untamed power of a good feeling? Our pitch deck was a single slide with a picture of a cloud. The investors got it.”
Seraphina Sterling defended the nine-figure investment with unshakeable confidence. “Most companies are weighed down by assets, revenue, and a reason to exist. That’s old-world thinking,” she explained during a phone call from her private jet. “Aetheria has zero friction. It has no cost of goods sold because it sells no goods. It has no disgruntled employees because it has no employees. It’s a flawless business model. We’re not investing in a company; we’re investing in a placeholder for the future’s greatest idea, whatever that may be. It’s the ultimate hedge.”
Moving forward, Vortex says his immediate plan is to use a portion of the capital to rent a significantly larger, emptier office space to “foster a greater sense of infinite possibility.” His first major operational goal is to “begin the search for a Chief Philosophy Officer” to help him “determine the metaphysical framework of their future brainstorming sessions.” The rest of the tech world is already taking notes, with rumors circulating that a rival VC firm is now actively seeking to fund a “really profound nap” someone had last Tuesday.