Let’s Catch Up! (Feb ‘26)
Note from the Founders 👋
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Is everything just… down? 😅
Deal Spotlight: Alta AI 📊
Investor Resource: The Rules of Angel Investing 👼
Media & Press: Spreading the Girl Math Gospel 📣
What’s Coming Up: Pop Up Grocer & HBS 👩🏫
Note from the Founders 👋
GM ☕ from Serena, Porter, and Emma, the co-founders of Girl Math Capital. Wondering what we’ve been up to since our last newsletter?! Consider this your official Girl Math update, but if you don’t already, follow us LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok to catch all the action.
On January 21st, we announced our partnership with Ellevest, a leading wealth management and financial planning firm built for women. Ellevest hosted our first session for Cohort 3, focused on how alternatives fit into a well-rounded financial portfolio. Expect much more content, resources, and events to come from this partnership.
Porter also led a workshop for founders at UT Austin’s Kendra Scott Center Startup Accelerator Program on early stage fundraising. We can’t wait to share some takeaways from her session over the following months.
Girl Math Capital was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania Venture Lab’s startup accelerator program, VIP-X! Wharton MBA candidate Serena is taking advantage of the next three months to catalyze GMC’s next phase of growth.
Finally, Emma spoke at Remedy Product Studio’s Modern Angel Playbook Summit, alongside PlayMoney, SPANVentures, and Remedy.
And it’s only February 💗
For those who are new here, welcome! We hope that our newsletter gives you a sneak peak into the amazing insights shared in our community every day and gets you excited to put your money to work. Happy reading!
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Is everything just… down? 😅
Read time: 8 minutes
Last week was a busy one for the headlines. The Seattle Seahawks dominated the Patriots 29 to 13 (a bummer for Emma and our New Englander readers 😔). Bad Bunny made history as the first Spanish-language headliner, giving viewers a 13-minute halftime performance featuring Lady Gaga. The 25th Winter Olympic Games kicked off in Milano Cortina with more than 2,800 athletes competing. Another Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree was charged with fraud. Lastly, on a much smaller (but far more exciting?!) scale, Girl Math Capital was featured in All Things Fashion Tech!
What we’re unpacking today, though, is last week’s market volatility: particularly two key sectors that saw sharp declines, and what it signals for individual investors.
First up: SaaSpocalypse & Semi-Conductors
It might not be the best time to check your 401k 😅. Software and semiconductor stocks tumbled last week, wiping out over one trillion in market value in just a few days. According to Yahoo Finance¹, some of the biggest names that were hit were:
Advanced Micro Devices: almost -21%
Intuit: more than -17%
Micron Technology: almost -13%
Salesforce: -12.5%
Nvidia: -9%
Microsoft: -7%
This week has been just the slightest bit more promising, but let’s dig into why this happened in the first place.
1. Fear that AI will eat up parts of the software market
When Anthropic announced new tools aimed at automating legal work, investors immediately started questioning the future of startups and public companies that do similar things. While this announcement was specific to legal workflows, it raised a broader question:
What about companies built around financial modeling, tax filing, forecasting, compliance, or other data-heavy tasks? Could large AI players eventually subsume these categories entirely?
The reactions started with companies like Legal Zoom, Thomson Reuters, Equifax, and Intuit, then spread to other software stocks like Salesforce, Workday, SAP, and Service Now.
Whether you think that fear is justified or not, markets tend to react quickly when entire business models are perceived as “at risk,” and it hits particularly hard when valuations are already stretched.
2. Overvaluations
Over the last two years, AI-adjacent companies have been trading at sky-high multiples. Yes, part of this was based on current performance, but much was priced on perfect execution - sustained explosive growth, expanding margins, and massive upside. When valuations stretch that far, the bar becomes incredibly high. Even small uncertainty, like “maybe growth normalizes,” can trigger a reset.
Some of last week’s turmoil was simply gravity pulling prices back toward more reasonable expectations, and while expectations were resetting on one side, spend was ramping up on the other.
3. Big Tech is going all out on data centers.
At the same time, Big Tech’s spending spree is making investors uneasy. AI requires massive physical infrastructure: GPUs, chips, servers, cooling systems, and entire data centers to power model training and inference. Here’s what some of the giants are planning to spend this year²:
Alphabet - $175 billion - $185 billion
Amazon - $200 billion
Microsoft and Meta have also signaled record levels of capex for AI infrastructure. It’s leaving investors with more questions than answers. How long until this spending translates into durable revenue? And how much upside will it ultimately justify?
Next up: Crypto Winter
Crypto prices in recent years have increasingly been correlated with other risk assets like the tech stocks we just mentioned. However, relative to tech stock performance, the impact on crypto has been significantly worse - almost half of the value has been erased since its October peak. While the downturn can’t be isolated to one true event, the intense price fluctuation is showing just how volatile the asset class still can be.
Looking at a 6-month time horizon, Bitcoin is down -46%, Ethereum -53%, and Solana -62%. (👉 To check out live prices, head to CoinGecko.)
A variety of factors are contributing:
Institutional adoption → performance correlation - Once crypto exposure became accessible through things like ETFs and public companies like Coinbase, it started trading like any other risk asset in institutional portfolios.
Macro sensitivity - Crypto now reacts heavily to Fed policy, interest rates, and inflation data just like traditional equities. Not to mention there’s active uncertainty above a new Fed chair appointee, precious metals are correcting, and tariffs are still an ongoing battle.
"Risk-off" mentality driving sell offs - In periods of uncertainty, investors tend to lean into perceived safety. Crypto is still viewed as speculative and is often one of the first assets dropped. This type of activity causes a cascading effect of market selling and leveraged markets liquidations.
However, while prices may be down, institutional activity is definitely up. Just this week, Citadel, ICE Markets (parent company of NYSE), and DTCC announced they’re partnering with Layerzero and have invested in ZRO, Layerzero’s token. Additionally, Blackrock announced they’re building on UniswapX and have invested in UNI, Uniswap’s token.
This level of institutional adoption has some investors wondering why performance hasn’t followed, leading to additional fear and potential sell offs.
So, what’s the takeaway?
The reality of the situation is that both the performance of tech stocks and crypto point to something bigger - our financial and technological worlds are undergoing structural changes, which rarely happen without volatility. As to when we stabilize, that remains to be seen.
If anything, this moment reminds us of the importance of maintaining a diverse portfolio so that recent fluctuations don’t have a long-term impact on your wealth. Alternative investments carry their own risks, but they’re often less exposed to day-to-day market whiplash and can help smooth volatility across a broader portfolio. We all know that the stock market ebbs and flows, but spreading risk across asset classes can protect your portfolio in the long run.
Deal Spotlight: Alta AI 📊
ICYMI: Each month, we’ll share a few of the deals our community has backed, not to give investment advice, but to show you the breadth of opportunities Girl Math members are exploring and spotlight some epic founders.
The growth of the AI market has enabled many small companies to move quickly and drastically improve their operations. What about in the enterprise market?
Last June, Girl Math connected with founder Vanessa Heppner of Alta AI, a platform that gives finance and operations leaders a single, trusted view of enterprise technology and AI usage. It unifies data across SaaS, AI tools, cloud, hardware, and data centers to help teams understand utilization, improve governance, and forecast technology spend - all without replacing existing systems.
As an SVP in banking, Girl Math member Melanie Gonzalez was interested in Alta because she experienced firsthand how painful and fragmented the problem is in her own job. She backed Alta because “no one else is building something this holistic and it's very much needed in the market”.
After a successful pre-seed raise, Alta is heating up and finding their niche in the CFO space🔥. They recently secured a partnership with Rillet and Ramp, got accepted into the Mentors + Angels accelerator, and joined the Google for Startups program.
Alta is looking for awesome CFOs who would love to pilot their product & give feedback - if you want to share Alta with your organization, reply to this email and let us know!
Investor Resource ✏️
The Rules of Angel Investing 👼
from Guest Speaker Cheryl Kellond
Cheryl’s energy is contagious, and there’s a reason she kicks off the first of our angel investing sessions. As the founder of Play Money, she’s making it easier than ever to start angel investing for as low as $500. Below are here angel investing rules to live by.
Always back your besties. If you’ll spend the money to support her wedding, support her company too.
Angel investing is a game of outliers. You need a diversified portfolio over time to have the odds play in your favor.
The only reliable predictor of a portfolio's performance is the number of companies in the portfolio, not the ability to pick winners early.
Beware of the J-curve. Losses tend to hit faster than winners because companies that fail do so quickly, while those that succeed take longer to grow.
Media & Press: Spreading the Girl Math Gospel 📣
Redefining “Girl Math” on Venture:F
This month, Emma joined Laura Nix Gerson on the Venture:F podcast, a platform dedicated to helping women invest or build with confidence.
In the episode, Emma shares how she, Serena, and Porter came together to turn “girl math” into a framework for financial empowerment and why we believe angel investing belongs in more women’s portfolios. The conversation dives into our approach to building an investment portfolio, how our annual cohort model helps women move from curious observers to confident check writers, and what’s next for Girl Math, including the recent announcement of our partnership with Ellevest. 🎧 Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
All Things Fashion Tech: Angel Investing, Explained
Girl Math was also featured in All Things Fashion Tech, where we spoke about democratizing access to angel investing and helping more women bridge the gap between interest and action.
We dive into what surprised us most about angel investing, practical advice for first-time angels, and so much more. Our two cents: you don’t need to wait until you’re “older” or “wealthier” to start. Start small, invest with others, and don’t overthink it. 📰 Read the full article here.
Upcoming Events: Pop Up Grocer & HBS 👩🏫
On Tuesday, February 24th, we’re teaming up with Pop Up Grocer to host Girl Math investors and CPG founders for an evening of connections, brand discovery, and relationship building in New York City. RSVP here - space is limited! Must RSVP to attend.
On Wednesday, February 25th, we’re headed up to Boston to speak for Harvard Business School’s Women in Investing Club. Located in the Boston area and want to join us?! Reply to this email for all the details.
Lastly, follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok so you don’t miss a thing.
Closing Note 💌
Girl Math Capital was born from the frustration that deals were shared in some circles and not in others. This newsletter is one more way to make sure those conversations and opportunities reach more people, and in particular, more women. If you know someone who’d love this newsletter, pass it along. We believe alternative investing isn’t just for finance and tech bros - it’s for women who want to get smart, build community, and build generational wealth. See you next month 💸💅
The Girl Math Team
¹ Yahoo Finance: There's a Rout in Tech Stocks. What's Going On?
² Yahoo Finance: Amazon Announces $200B 2026 Capex Plan, Shares Slide Over 8% Premarket
If this got you curious, submit your information to join our next cohort, or apply to be a community member here.
