Venture Capital Industry Statistics 2026: AI Megadeals and Exits

Annual global VC investment is already at a five-year high of $560.4 billion, second only to the record $750.9 billion seen in 2021, with six months of 2026 still remaining, according to KPMG’s Venture Pulse. In the US, the total AI deal value of $355.9 billion made up 86% of all venture dollars in the first half, per the NVCA Venture Monitor. The venture capital industry statistics below cover investment, SEC-filed fund data, fundraising, exits, unicorns, and venture debt from KPMG, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the SEC, and Carta.

The money is reaching fewer places. Megadeals (rounds of $100 million or more) made up 87.5% of the $412.7 billion deployed, and deals under $100 million drew $51.4 billion in the US. Meanwhile, first-time funds raised only $3.4 billion across 53 vehicles.

Key Takeaways

• Deals under $100 million drew $51.4 billion, and their share of value has compressed consistently and sharply over the years, from 43.8% in 2024 to 33.1% in 2025 and 12.5% in the first half of 2026.
• Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital and Founders Fund together took in $34.8 billion, or 48.1% of all venture capital raised in H1 2026.
• Active unicorn counts reached a record 945, up 9.4% from year-end 2025, and aggregate unicorn value totaled $5.3 trillion.
• Corporate VC investors participated in just 21.1% of VC deals in H1 2026, the lowest share in the past decade.
• Experienced firms took 89% of capital raised in H1 2026, the greatest share in a decade.
• First-time fund formation collapsed to 101 funds in 2025, the lowest level since 2011 and down 77.9% from the 457 launched in 2021.

Editor’s Choice

• Global VC investment, Q2 2026: $227.4 billion across 8,440 deals.
• US VC investment, Q2 2026: $144.9 billion across 3,644 deals.
• US deals closed in 2025: 15,352 deals worth $320 billion.
• US VC funds on SEC Form PF: 3,616 venture capital funds in the third quarter of 2025.
• US capital raised, H1 2026: $72.4 billion across only 405 funds.
• Global exit value, Q2 2026: $1.9 trillion across 775 exits.

Global Venture Capital Industry Statistics for Q2 2026

Compiled from 15 source entries across 7 publications: 1 tier 1 (SEC Form PF statistics), 13 tier 2 (KPMG Venture Pulse, the NVCA Venture Monitor and NVCA Yearbook, Carta data reports), and 1 tier 3 (a syndicated fund announcement). Data periods run from the third quarter of 2023 to June 2026, with sources published through September 2026. Only figures published by regulators, industry associations, or named data providers qualify; figures are updated when those sources publish new editions.

• Q2’26 was the second strongest quarter for global VC investment ever, with $227.4 billion invested, despite deal volume dropping from 10,277 to 8,467 quarter-over-quarter, a low not seen since Q3’17.
• Asia’s $50.8 billion marked its fifth consecutive quarter of growth and its strongest quarter since Q4’21.
• China attracted $35.1 billion in Q2’26 as it continued to recover after several years of challenging market conditions.
• VC investment in Europe remained stable at $25.6 billion in the second quarter.
• KPMG’s release cites 8,440 deals in its opening summary and 8,467 in its highlights list, so the deal count carries a small internal discrepancy.

Source: KPMG Venture Pulse, Q2 2026

US Venture Capital Deal Value by Year

• H1 2026 deal value already exceeds the 2025 full-year figure by nearly 30%, according to the NVCA Venture Monitor.
• US VC firms closed 15,352 deals worth $320 billion, a 51% increase in deal value and the second-highest total on record, in 2025, per the NVCA 2026 Yearbook.
• Artificial intelligence accounted for 65.4% of all deal value in 2025.
• First-time financings reached an estimated 5,674 deals in H1 2026, putting the year on pace to see more than 10,000 companies raising their first venture round, which would be a record.

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Recent Developments

• September 2026: Bain Capital Ventures announced the close of Bain Capital Ventures Fund XI exceeding its target, raising $1.6 billion in total capital, in a release published September 16, 2026.
• August 2026: Carta reported that U.S.-based startups on Carta raised $3.19 billion across more than 11,500 pre-seed instruments in Q2 2026, in a report dated August 13, 2026.
• July 2026: KPMG’s Venture Pulse, released 23 July 2026, put Q2 global VC investment at $227.4 billion, making it the second-best quarter on record.
• June 2026: The NVCA Venture Monitor, with data as of June 30, 2026, recorded Q2’s seven rounds at or above $1 billion, which totaled $87.2 billion.
• June 2026: SpaceX’s $1.7 trillion IPO generated more value than all exits in the past decade combined and raised $75 billion in the second quarter.

How Big Is the Venture Capital Industry?

Advisers filing SEC Form PF reported 3,616 venture capital funds with gross asset value of $474 billion in the third quarter of 2025, the latest edition of the SEC’s Private Fund Statistics captured here. That is a regulator’s count of fund assets rather than a survey estimate.

• Venture capital fund net asset value stood at $436 billion in 2025Q3, per SEC Form PF data.
• The number of advisers advising venture capital funds rose from 285 in 2023Q3 to 340 in 2025Q3.
• Traditional VC fundraising totaled $67 billion across 585 funds in 2025, per the NVCA 2026 Yearbook.
• Form PF covers registered advisers that file the form, so smaller managers below the filing threshold sit outside these totals.
• The step up between 2024Q3 and 2024Q4 appears in fund counts and assets alike, so quarter-to-quarter comparisons across that break deserve caution.

Source: SEC Private Fund Statistics, Third Calendar Quarter 2025

By the numbers: SEC Form PF data shows 3,616 venture capital funds with gross asset value of 474 ($ billions) in the third quarter of 2025, while the NVCA Venture Monitor puts aggregate unicorn value at $5.3 trillion. Reported fund assets are a fraction of the paper value those funds helped create, which is why exits matter so much to limited partners.

Private equity funds report on the same SEC form, and our private equity market statistics track the buyout side of that universe.

AI and Megadeal Concentration in Venture Capital

• Five of Q2’s seven rounds at or above $1 billion were for AI companies, a sign of AI’s dominance among the largest rounds, according to the Venture Monitor.
• More than 60% of all venture capital raised by companies on Carta in Q1 went to AI companies in 2026.
• On Carta, foundational model companies accounted for 14.2% of total capital and nearly a quarter of AI capital in Q1 2026.
• In SaaS, 83% of capital went to AI startups, per Carta.

What are the key trends in venture capital for 2026?

Three trends dominate the data: AI concentration, megadeal dependence, and a shrinking manager base. The total AI deal value of $355.9 billion made up 86% of all venture dollars in the US in the first half, while on the fundraising side, 13 firms have crossed $1 billion in commitments this year, according to the NVCA Venture Monitor.

Largest Venture Capital Rounds of Q2 2026

• US-based Anthropic attracted the largest deal ($65 billion) of Q2’26, followed by US-based Prometheus ($12 billion) and China-based DeepSeek ($7.4 billion), according to KPMG.
• Anthropic’s $65 billion round marked a 157.1% pre-money valuation step-up to $900 billion from $350 billion three months earlier and lifted its post-money valuation to $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s, per the Venture Monitor.
• Q2’s seven rounds at or above $1 billion came from Anthropic, Prometheus Industries, Anduril Industries, Baseten, MiRus, Kalshi, and Cognition.
• Finland-based space intelligence company ICEYE raised $1.2 billion during the quarter.
• AI research firm Ineffable Intelligence raised $1.1 billion in the UK.
• Rounds of this size now rival the single deals ranked in our most expensive venture capital investments list.

Why it matters: KPMG counts Anthropic’s $65 billion raise as the largest deal of the second quarter, and the Venture Monitor records a 157.1% pre-money valuation step-up in three months. A single round of that size moves quarterly totals on its own, so headline records say more about a few AI labs than about the typical startup.

Venture Capital Investment by Country

• The UK’s $9.4 billion in VC investment across 411 deals was a very robust result compared to historical trends, despite a minor dip from $9.8 billion in Q1’26.
• The Nordics region came in second, attracting $4.6 billion in its strongest quarter since Q2’21 in Europe.
• India and Australia also saw VC investment rise, from $3.5 billion to $4.1 billion and from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, respectively.
• Canada saw VC investment decline from $1.9 billion in Q1’26 to $1.5 billion in Q2’26.
• Ireland attracted $342.2 million in the second quarter, per KPMG.

Startup Valuations, Down Rounds and Pre-Seed Funding

• The down-round rate fell to 11.4% in Q1. This is back in line with 2019 and 2020 levels, according to Carta.
• Series B and Series C primary pre-money valuations are up 17.2% and 12.5%, respectively, since Q1 2025.
• 34 IPOs priced in Q1, raising $9.9 billion in 2026, per Carta.
• Last year’s Q2 saw $3.22 billion invested across 14,825 instruments at the pre-seed stage.
• AI companies have captured half of all pre-seed dollars so far this year, Carta reported.
• Carta flags its Q2 pre-seed total as preliminary, so the year-over-year dollar comparison may narrow as late entries arrive.

Source: Carta State of Private Markets Q1 2026 and State of Pre-Seed Q2 2026

Key finding: Carta data shows an AI foundational model startup at Series A might be raising at a $300 million median valuation. A non-AI startup at the same stage is at $55 million. That gap means a median across all startups describes neither group well.

Early-stage investors now face a different mix of competitors than before; our angel investor statistics cover the individual backers who write many of these pre-seed checks.

Venture Capital Fundraising Statistics

• Funds of $1 billion or more raised $49.5 billion in H1 2026 across 16 vehicles, already well above the $27.5 billion those funds raised across 13 vehicles in all of 2025.
• Experienced firms raised $64.5 billion in H1 2026, against $7.9 billion for emerging firms.
• For first-time funds, the annualized value is well below the $11.4 billion they raised in all of 2025.
• The top ten funds alone captured a combined $22 billion, 32.9% of all VC capital, up 2.5 times from the 13% they claimed in 2021, per the NVCA 2026 Yearbook.
• Global VC fundraising was at $98.8 billion at the end of Q2’26, well on the path to exceeding 2025’s decade-low total of $145.9 billion, according to KPMG.

What is the largest venture capital firm in the US?

By capital raised in the first half of 2026, Andreessen Horowitz raised $14.2 billion across seven funds; Thrive Capital, $10 billion across two; and Founders Fund, $10.6 billion across two. Of the three firms the Venture Monitor names, Andreessen Horowitz raised the most, though a fundraising ranking is not the same as a ranking by assets managed.

Venture Capital Exits and Liquidity

• In Q1, SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI totaled $250 billion, the largest acquisition of a VC-backed company ever, per the Venture Monitor.
• SpaceX’s $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor will be the second-largest M&A of a VC-backed company, behind its acquisition of xAI.
• US YTD acquisition value is at a decade high of $375.4 billion in 2026.
• The Venture Monitor’s quarterly chart shows Q2 2026 exit value: $1,828.8 ($B) for US VC-backed companies.
• Globally, exit value more than quadrupled from $434.7 billion to $1.9 trillion quarter-over-quarter, despite the number of exits falling from 811 to 775, according to KPMG.
• This brought the 2026 annual total to $2.3 trillion with six months left in the year.
• Venture-backed exits totaled $217.1 billion across 1,463 deals in 2025, more than double the prior year, per the NVCA 2026 Yearbook.

Source: KPMG Venture Pulse, Q2 2026

Venture-backed listings are one slice of the wider market covered in our IPO statistics.

What is the success rate of venture capital?

No single success rate appears in the sources captured here, but exit counts give a proxy. With 859 unicorns valued at $4.34 trillion but only 30-40 unicorns actually exiting last year, the gap between investment and realization is widening, according to the NVCA 2026 Yearbook. Secondary markets reached volumes of over $100 billion, a liquidity outlet that sits outside the exit counts.

Unicorn Statistics and Trapped Value

• Active unicorn counts reached a record 945, up 9.4% from year-end 2025, in Q2 2026.
• SpaceX’s $1.7 trillion IPO saw its market capitalization surge above $2 trillion in early trading, per the Venture Monitor.
• Anthropic carried a valuation estimate of $1,014.2 billion and OpenAI $905.2 billion in the Venture Monitor’s unicorn exit table, as of June 30, 2026.
• Ripple showed a $40.0 billion last known post-money valuation and $0.8 billion of VC raised to date, the crypto-linked entry in that table.
• Ripple’s presence among the largest US unicorns ties this data to the funding patterns in our crypto venture capital funding statistics.

Worth noting: The NVCA 2026 Yearbook counted 859 unicorns valued at $4.34 trillion for 2025, while the Q2 2026 Venture Monitor reports a record 945 active unicorns. The count keeps rising because few of these companies are leaving the private market, which is the trapped-value problem limited partners describe.

Corporate, Crossover and Nontraditional Investors

• Nontraditional investor deal value reached $379.4 billion in H1 2026, but much of it is attributable to a handful of companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Crossover investors participated in $325.1 billion of deal value through Q2, more than double 2025’s total, yet the count of deals involving crossover investors fell to the lowest level since 2019.
• In 2025, nontraditional investors participated in roughly 30% of deals and accounted for 83% of all investment value, per the NVCA 2026 Yearbook.
• Global CVC-participating investment was $149.1 billion in Q2’26, including $92.1 billion in the US, according to KPMG.

The NVCA’s nontraditional category includes hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, corporate strategics, and endowments; our sovereign wealth fund statistics cover the state-backed investors in that group.

Venture Debt Statistics

• The H1 debt issuance of $64.7 billion was extremely high, though it was boosted by a few outsized loans, including a $20 billion debt refinancing for SpaceX, per the Venture Monitor.
• The 280 loans recorded through Q2 highlight a challenging market.
• Venture-growth-stage debt surpassed $54 billion in H1 alone.

Conclusion

Annual global VC investment is already at a five-year high of $560.4 billion this year, and AI accounts for most of it. The deeper pattern across these sources is concentration: fewer funds, fewer managers, and a handful of AI companies absorb record capital, while exit value lands in very few hands. That combination helps the largest platforms and the limited partners in their funds, and it leaves first-time managers and non-AI startups competing for a shrinking share.

The next test is whether the pending AI listings return cash broadly enough to restart fund formation, or whether the gap between paper value and distributions keeps widening through the rest of the year.