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Joseph “Joe” Montana, co-founder of iMFL and retired National Football League (NFL) quarterback, speaks during an interview in San Francisco, California, U.S. on Tuesday, April 30, 2013.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Joe Montana won his first Super Bowl as an NFL quarterback in 1982. Almost four decades later, he’s about to get his first IPO as a venture capitalist.

Montana, who led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl victories and was inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame in 2000, has spent the past six years investing in start-ups through his firm, Liquid 2 Ventures. He started with a $28 million fund, and is now closing his third fund that’s almost three times bigger.

One of Liquid 2’s first investments was announced in July 2015, when a code repository called GitLab raised a $1.5 million seed round after going through the Y Combinator incubator program. GitLab’s valuation at the time was around $12 million, and other participants in the financing included Khosla Ventures and Ashton Kutcher.

On Thursday, GitLab is set to debut on the Nasdaq with a market cap of almost $10 billion, based on a $69 share price, the high end of its range. Montana’s initial $100,000 investment, along with some follow-on funding, is worth about $42 million at that price.

“We’re all pretty pumped,” Montana, 65, said in an interview this week, while vacationing in Italy. “This is going to be a monster for us.”

Joe Montana #16 of the San Francisco 49ers celebrates after they scored against the Cincinnati Bengals during Super Bowl XVI on January 24, 1982 at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. The Niners won the Super Bowl 26 -21.
Focus On Sport | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

While famous athletes dabbling in start-ups has become a trend in Silicon Valley — from NBA stars Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala to tennis legend Serena Williams — Montana jumped into the game much earlier. Prior to Liquid 2, Montana was involved with a firm called HRJ, which was founded by ex-49ers stars Harris Barton and Ronnie Lott.

HRJ, which invested in other funds rather than directly into companies, collapsed in 2009 and was sued for allegedly failing to meet its financial commitments.

But rather than return to the sport that brought him fame in an executive role or as a broadcaster, like so many fellow all-star quarterbacks, Montana stuck with investing. This time he took much a different route.

Convinced by Ron Conway

Ron Conway, the Silicon Valley super angel known for lucrative bets on Google, Facebook and Airbnb, started showing Montana around the world of early-stage investing, primarily through Y Combinator. Montana, along with a growing crop of seed investors and celebrities, would attended Y Combinator Demo Days, where entrepreneurs show slides of their companies with growth that’s always up and to the right.

“We were trying to see what their secret sauce was and who they looked at and what they were really looking for in early-stage companies,” Montana said referring to Conway and his team. “He started taking us there, and we started doing a handful of investments here and there, and then he talked me into starting a fund.”

In 2015, Conway was speaking to the latest group of founders in the Y Combinator program, and he invited Montana to attend the event. That’s where Montana met GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij, a Dutch entrepreneur who had turned an open-source project for helping developers collaborate on code into a company that was packaging the software and selling it to businesses.

“We got together, and said, ‘hey this is a special guy,'” Montana said. “We committed that night.”

GitLab had just come out of Y Combinator. In his presentation at Demo Day that March, Sijbrandij told the audience that his company had 10 employees along with 800 contributors working on the open-source project. GitLab was on pace for annual sales of $1 million, he said, and paying customers included Apple, Cisco, Disney and Microsoft.

GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij at company event in London
GitLab

GitLab now employs over 1,350 people in more than 65 countries, according to its prospectus. As it prepares to hit the public market on Thursday, GitLab’s annualized revenue is over $230 million. Sales in the second quarter jumped 69% to $58.1 million

However, because GitLab spends the equivalent of three-quarters of its revenue on sales and marketing, the company recorded a net loss of $40.2 million in the latest quarter. Much of the marketing budget is focused on expanding its DevOps (the combination of software development and IT operations) user base.

“To drive new customer growth, we intend to continue investing in sales and marketing, with a focus on replacing DIY DevOps within larger organizations,” the company said in the prospectus.

‘Still listening to pitches’

For Montana, GitLab marks his firm’s first IPO, though he said “we have 12 or 13 more unicorns in the portfolio,” referring to start-ups valued at $1 billion or more. They include Anduril, the defense technology company led by by Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, and autonomous vehicle testing start-up Applied Intuition.

Montana has three other partners in the firm: Mike Miller, who co-founded Cloudant and sold it to IBM; Michael Ma, who sold a start-up to Google and became a product manager there; and Nate Montana, Joe’s son, who previously worked at Twitter.

Montana said he’s involved in the fund on a day-to-day basis and attends the partner meetings every Tuesday. He said his partners, who are more experienced in technology, handle much of the technical diligence and sourcing of deals, while he focuses on helping portfolios with connections in his network.

“Until the pandemic, I was still speaking around the country,” Montana said, adding that he didn’t start taking a salary until the third fund. “I was out speaking to companies like SAP, Amex, Visa and a lot of large corporations, like large insurance firms down to Burger King.”

Specific to GitLab, Montana said he connected Sijbrandij early on with a senior executive at Visa, when the company was looking to do a deal with the payment processor.

“I’m still listening to pitches, I go to pitches and do all that,” Montana said. “But my time is better spent now helping with connecting these companies as they mature.”

WATCH: GitLab co-founder and CEO on the future of work during and after the pandemic

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Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

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Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

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Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

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Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

It’s been a tough November for Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.

Palantir started November off on a high note.

The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.

In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”

Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”

“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.

But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.

Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.

In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.

Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.

Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.

Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.

Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir declined to comment for this story.

WATCH: Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We’ve printed venture results for the average American

Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We've printed venture results for the average American

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CME disruption, Black Friday, the K-beauty boom and more in Morning Squawk

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CME disruption, Black Friday, the K-beauty boom and more in Morning Squawk

CME Group sign at NYMEX in New York.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Down and out

Stock futures trading was halted this morning after a data center “cooling issue” took down several Chicago Mercantile Exchange services. Individual stocks were still trading before the bell, while the CME said futures indexes and options trading would open fully at 8:30 a.m. Follow live markets updates here.

The stock market has rebounded during the holiday-shortened trading week. But the three major indexes are still on pace to end November’s trading month — which ends with today’s closing bell — in the red. The Dow and S&P 500 are poised to snap six-month winning streaks, while the Nasdaq Composite is on track to see its first negative month in eight.

Today’s trading session ends early at 1 p.m. ET.

2. Shopping and dropping

A Black Friday sale sign is displayed in a shop window at an outlet mall in Carlsbad, California, U.S., Nov. 25, 2025.

Mike Blake | Reuters

Black Friday was once considered the biggest in-person shopping day of the year, drawing huge crowds to stores in search of bargains. But while millions are still expected to partake in the occasion, it’s not what it used to be.

Here’s what to know:

  • In the past six years, online sales have outpaced brick-and-mortar spending on Black Friday. Data shows in-person foot traffic has been mostly flat over the last few years, as well.
  • No matter where they make their purchases, shoppers are also skeptical that they’re getting the best deals.
  • As CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, the shift has meant a change in strategy for many of the retail industry’s biggest names. Some have started offering their holiday sales earlier in the season, while others are spacing out their promotions.
  • Deloitte reported that the average consumer will shell out $622 between Nov. 27 and Dec. 1, a decrease of 4% from last year.
  • Even as the day of deals loses its allure, AT&T found that Gen Z participates the most, while their older counterparts do their shopping closer to Christmas.

3. AI comeback

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Alphabet has been a notable exception to the recent tech downturn. Shares of the Google parent have surged more than 13% this month as Wall Street sees the company as an AI leader.

Alphabet began the month by announcing its latest tensor processing units, or TPUs, called Ironwood. Last week, the company launched its latest AI model, Gemini 3, which caught positive attention from Silicon Valley heavyweights.

Shares of the stock are now up close to 70% this year, making it the best-performer within megacap tech. But experts told CNBC’s Jennifer Elias that Alphabet’s lead in the competitive AI market is marginal and could be hard to hold onto.

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4. Tech’s tug of wars

Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.

Alibaba

The Alphabet-Nvidia AI race isn’t the only tech rivalry that has heated up in recent days.

Alibaba‘s AI-powered smart glasses went on sale yesterday. With its new wearable tech offering, the Chinese tech company is going up against major players — namely Meta, which unveiled its smart glasses with Ray Ban in September.

Meanwhile, Counterpoint Research found Apple is poised to ship more smartphones than Samsung this year for the first time in 14 years. Apple is also poised to boast a larger market share, driven by strong iPhone 17 sales.

5. From Seoul to Los Angeles

Carly Xie looks over facial mask items at the Face Shop, which specializes in Korean cosmetics, in San Francisco, April 15, 2015.

Avila Gonzalez | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

American shoppers are increasingly looking to South Korea for their cosmetics. NielsenIQ found U.S. sales of so-called “K-beauty” products are slated to surge more than 37% this year to above $2 billion.

Retailers ranging from beauty product hubs Ulta and Sephora to big-box chains Walmart and Costco are jumping on the trend. On top of that, Olive Young — aka the “Sephora of Seoul” — is opening its first U.S. store in Los Angeles next year.

The Daily Dividend

Here are some stories worth circling back to over the weekend:

CNBC’s Chloe Taylor, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Laya Neelakandan, Jessica Dickler, Sarah Min, Sean Conlon, Jennifer Elias, Arjun Kharpal and Luke Fountain contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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