Menlo Ventures' Matt Murphy speaking to Ben Bergman at Tech Insider: Growth Mode. JY Studio

Ben here. Up until recently, it was a great time to be the founder of a neolab, the lavishly funded, research-first AI startups founded by top talent who defected from the likes of OpenAI or Google DeepMind.

We reported last month that Jeff Dean, Google's former chief scientist, is seeking a valuation as high as $50 billion for his new AI science startup. OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence is worth $32 billion. Another OpenAI alum, Mira Murati, is raising a round for Thinking Machines Lab at a valuation of around $40 billion.

But lately, in conversations with multiple VCs around Silicon Valley, there is a growing divide about whether neolabs can make the economics work with their multibillion-dollar price tags and formidable competition from frontier labs.

One VC at a top firm, who asked that I not use his name, told me neolabs are the most hotly debated type of investment right now.

"Some…