Good People, Alhaji Aliko Dangote will deliver the 37th Public Lecture of my alma mater, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, on Saturday, April 25, 2026. And when he is done, a peerless icon of Africa’s entrepreneurial capitalism will be honoured with the Ikenga, FUTO’s enduring symbol of strength, excellence, and citizenship (two of mine in photo).

In the Igbo tradition, it takes the killing of one leopard to be called a killer of leopards. In the marketplace of enterprise, Dangote has brought many business leopards home. We warmly welcome him to our University and look forward to him sharing from his vast experience, elevating minds and inspiring the next generation.

Seventeen years ago, I had the privilege of standing on that same podium to deliver FUTO’s 15th Public Lecture, the first by an alumnus in the University history. It remains one of the highest honours because it is the Public Lecture. As an undergraduate, I attended one delivered by late HRM Prof. Joseph Chike Edozien, the former Asagba of Asaba. It was an intellectual festival chaired by Prof. Oba, then Vice Chancellor of FUTO.

On April 25, Dangote will speak under the academic chairmanship of Prof. Mrs. Nnenna N. Oti, our distinguished Vice Chancellor and leader of our University.

Good People, the road leads to Owerri. Come and experience what makes FUTO Africa’s finest technical university. To all the students, Dangote will solve “ODE – o di egwu” but here instead of calculus, it will be the “mystical” calculus of markets. Enjoy the lecture.

Sequoia Capital has closed one of its largest funds in recent memory, securing roughly $7 billion for a new vehicle aimed squarely at late-stage investments in the United States and Europe.

The amount nearly doubles the $3.4 billion it raised for a comparable fund in 2022, signaling the firm’s conviction that the AI opportunity is not only enduring but accelerating in ways that demand ever-larger checks and longer holding periods.

The capital will support Sequoia’s “expansion strategy”, its late-stage investing arm, where the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. In the pre-AI era, late-stage funding typically meant helping already-proven companies polish their operations ahead of an IPO or acquisition.

Today, it often involves backing businesses that can achieve massive scale with startling speed and relatively modest capital intensity, thanks to cloud infrastructure, open-source tools, and the plummeting cost of training and deploying advanced models. Sequoia sees this shift as structural, not cyclical, and the bigger fund gives it the firepower to participate at the table stakes now required.

What stands out is where the firm is placing its bets. Sequoia has long been one of the most aggressive venture investors in foundational AI, backing OpenAI early and pouring substantial capital into Anthropic more recently. Both companies are reportedly preparing for potential public listings in 2026, which could deliver outsized returns if the current valuations hold.

Yet Sequoia is not limiting itself to the handful of giants racing to build the largest models. It has also invested in a growing cohort of applied-AI companies that are putting the technology to work in the real world—most notably Physical Intelligence, the Bay Area robotics startup blending AI with physical dexterity, and Factory, which develops autonomous AI agents for enterprise engineering teams.

This diversification mirrors a broader market trend: there has been a clear uptick in the number of companies raising substantial late-stage funds outside the narrow band of foundational model developers. While OpenAI, Anthropic, and a few peers continue to dominate headlines and command the largest single rounds, a widening circle of startups in vertical applications—robotics, enterprise automation, healthcare diagnostics, scientific discovery, and specialized infrastructure—is attracting nine- and ten-figure checks from top-tier firms. These companies are moving from prototype to revenue faster than previous generations of software startups ever could, often hitting meaningful traction with far smaller teams.

The result is a more crowded and competitive late-stage landscape, where capital is flowing not just to the picks-and-shovels providers of AI but to the builders who are embedding intelligence into specific industries and workflows. Sequoia’s new fund positions it to capture upside across this expanding stack.

The raise also marks the first major capital call under the firm’s updated leadership. Alfred Lin and Pat Grady now serve as co-stewards of the 54-year-old Silicon Valley institution, and the $7 billion vehicle is their opening statement: Sequoia intends to stay at the forefront of the AI wave rather than rest on decades of past success.

Their approach appears pragmatic—maintaining the firm’s historic discipline around founder quality and market timing while adapting to an environment where the best opportunities require both speed and patience.

For the broader venture ecosystem, the fund underscores a simple reality: AI has compressed timelines and inflated check sizes across the board. Founders who once needed multiple smaller rounds to prove product-market fit can now reach escape velocity with a single large infusion, provided they can demonstrate defensible moats in data, distribution, or domain expertise.

That dynamic benefits Sequoia’s portfolio companies but also intensifies pressure on the firm to pick winners early and support them aggressively.

Of course, there are risks. Valuations in AI have reached rarefied air, energy demands for training and inference continue to climb, and regulatory scrutiny is only increasing. Yet Sequoia’s willingness to commit fresh billions suggests it views these challenges as speed bumps on a multi-decade runway. The firm’s long history of riding transformative technology cycles, from the internet to mobile to cloud, has taught it that the biggest returns often come from doubling down when others begin to hesitate.

With this fund, Sequoia is not merely participating in the AI boom; it is structurally repositioning itself to own meaningful pieces of the companies that will define the next era of computing.

Food has emerged as an effective comparative tool in global economics because it connects abstract macroeconomic concepts to everyday consumption. The Big Mac Index, popularised by The Economist, uses the price of a standardized fast-food product as a proxy for purchasing power parity (PPP), allowing simplified comparison of currency valuation and cost of living across countries. By translating exchange-rate theory into the price of a widely recognised meal, the index demonstrates how labour costs, supply chains, and domestic inflation shape consumer purchasing power.

However, the rise of the Jollof Rice Index represents a shift toward culturally grounded economic indicators. Reported by CNBC Africa, the index measures the cost of preparing a staple West African dish using locally sourced ingredients.

Unlike the Big Mac Index, which reflects multinational corporate production and globalised consumption, the Jollof Index captures inflation as experienced in household food economies. Its significant increase in Nigeria highlights how food price changes reveal immediate social impacts of economic instability and currency pressures.

The contrast between the two indexes suggests a broader transformation in economic measurement. The Big Mac Index reflects a Western-centric model rooted in global corporate uniformity, whereas the Jollof Index foregrounds regional consumption patterns and cultural identity. This shift echoes the long-standing culinary rivalry between Nigeria and Ghana, often referred to as the “Jollof Wars,” noted by BBC News. In this sense, the Jollof Index functions as a decolonised counterpoint, re-centring economic analysis on indigenous food systems rather than imported consumer brands.

Together, these food-based metrics illustrate that economic comparison is not purely technical but also cultural. While the Big Mac Index globalised the language of purchasing power, the Jollof Rice Index localises it, signalling a move toward plural, context-sensitive approaches to understanding inflation, affordability, and lived economic reality.

Nnamdi O. Madichie is Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship. He is the author of “Going Global – A Qualitative Analysis of Nigerian Cuisine Beyond the ‘Jollof Rice’ Rivalry”