Sponsors sit out M&A recovery in Q3 results

The M&A recovery continues to gather pace, but not to the benefit of private markets.

Speaking on the Goldman Sachs earnings call, CEO David Solomon said that “Year to date, sponsor share of announced M&A remains below historical averages.” Goldman Sachs reported a record $1.65bn in advisory fees for its Q3 results, up 18 per cent YoY.

“It’s very clear to all of us that it’s the strategic real corporate universe that’s leading the [corporate finance] life cycle,” said Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick on an earnings call. The bank reported $887m in advisory revenue for the quarter, up 30 per cent YoY. READ MORE

SEC Proposes Eliminating Important Safeguard Against Private Equity Bribes, Putting Pensions at Risk

The SEC is proposing to get rid of the “pay-to-play” rule, which prohibits asset managers from providing services to a government client (including state and local public pensions) for two years after making a political contribution to certain elected officials or candidates. If successful, the SEC would eliminate an important safeguard against private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds bribing their way into lucrative contracts and exposing pension plans — and the workers and retirees who depend on them for their retirement security — to harm. READ MORE

Aligning M&A And Transformation After A Private Equity Deal

For businesses undergoing private equity investment, the period immediately after an acquisition is often one of intense change. In a carve-out, a new standalone business may need to be built quickly. In an integration, two organizations, systems and operating models must come together.

At the same time, another major program may already be underway. A turnaround, cost reduction or transformation program can be essential to delivering the investment case. The pressure to grow or return to profitability quickly can be considerable. READ MORE

The Real Way to Evaluate Private Equity Performance

Buying a company is the easy part. The real work comes after you own it: the years of active value creation that turn an acquisition into a return. The exit isn’t an afterthought; it’s the proof.

Recent industry data suggests some sponsors lack the consistency and discipline to navigate today’s exit environment, and it can be easy to extrapolate this divergence into a characterization of the entire industry. However, as our co-CEO Scott Nuttall recently said, “averages lie.” READ MORE

The IPO drought is driving private equity-owned companies to the debt market to pay investors

Private equity funds are increasingly pushing their portfolio companies to take on more debt to return cash to their investors, data suggests.

It comes as the typical ways of monetizing private equity investments — selling company stakes via IPOs, or offloading them to other PE funds or buyers — have dried up in recent years. READ MORE

New private funds raise $96bn in September as PE capital more than doubles

More than 2,300 new private funds reported raising $96.1 billion in September, bringing year-to-date fundraising across new and existing private funds to $1.3 trillion, according to data collected and analyzed by Convergence.

The increase came despite a 44.7% decline in new private credit fund issuance to 26 funds in September. Year to date, private credit funds in their initial fundraising stage raised $28.9 billion, down 20% from the same period in 2025. READ MORE

AI megadeals dominate venture capital as investors pour billions into fewer startups

Global venture capital investment reached US$170.9 billion in Q3'26 despite geopolitical uncertainty, as investors continued to back AI at unprecedented levels and poured billions into the infrastructure needed to support the technology's rapid growth.

According to the Q3’26 edition of KPMG’s Venture Pulse, a quarterly report examining VC trends globally and in key jurisdictions around the world, venture funding is on track for one of its strongest years on record, reaching US$728.3 billion through the first nine months of 2026. READ MORE

Brothers Built a $1.1 Billion Company Without Venture Capital. Their Customers Funded It Upfront

AI startups pulled in $102 billion of venture capital last quarter, 64 percent of everything invested worldwide, and a record 27 companies raised rounds of $1 billion or more, according to Crunchbase data published October 5.

Phil and Dom Kwok, two London-born brothers, have not taken a dollar of it. They say EasyA, the AI and blockchain developer education company they started in 2019 from their childhood bedrooms, is now worth $1.1 billion, and they are taking it public through a direct listing while still owning all of it. READ MORE

Venture capital firm tied to Donald Trump Jr weighs legal action against ABC News over botched report

ABC News could face significant consequences as the venture capital firm at the center of a botched report about the Trump family ponders legal action.

"We still have our attorneys completely plugged into this, and we're not taking options off the table because they can't get away with writing completely false things and hit jobs," 1789 Capital spokesperson Alexa Henning told Fox News Digital. READ MORE

Even Benchmark thinks AI is eroding the venture pact against backing rivals

For decades, the unwritten rule of venture capital was that a firm doesn’t back two companies that compete head-on. But speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this week, the partners of Benchmark readily acknowledged that the AI boom is straining that rule.

It’s been on the verge of snapping for some time. The towering AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic share dozens of the same investors at this point. Then, at the end of September, Factory, a startup that builds an AI agent to write software, said it was firing board observer and adviser Chris Degnan for “unethical conduct involving Cognition,” its direct rival and the maker of the Devin coding agent. Factory’s CEO alleged Degnan had discussed a job at Cognition while privy to Factory’s board-level discussions. Degnan said he had already resigned and denied sharing anything confidential. Soon after, he announced he was joining Cognition as chief revenue officer. Powerhouse investor Vinod Khosla sided with Degnan on X, blasting Factory’s CEO and calling the company “a struggling second tier competitor.” Khosla Ventures backs both companies. READ MORE

‘It’s certainly not easy’: How are Boston biotechs coping with a shallower pool of seed funding?

As the world's biggest biotech hub, funding for early-stage startups has long been the lifeblood of Boston's life sciences industry. But the latest figures make for concerning reading—with average seed funding secured by a preclinical start-up plunging 40% over the past year.

In fact, the average seed round for a Massachusetts-based biotech in the first six months of 2026 was just $4.65 million, down from $7.65 million for the same period in 2025, according to the most recent industry snapshot from trade group MassBio. READ MORE

Just 5% of VCs Make Most of the Profits

Beyond a handful of big names, most venture capitalists are relatively unknown. Who are they, and what distinguishes the superstars from the rest?

“To understand why some VCs are super successful and others are not, it is very important to get a full picture on every single player in the VC ecosystem,” says Ilya Strebulaev, a professor of finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, who has spent much of his career trying to understand the inner workings of the venture capital industry. READ MORE

While VCs crowd into San Francisco, Endeavor Catalyst raises $320M for founders ‘elsewhere’

Endeavor Catalyst has closed its fifth fund with $320 million in capital commitments, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to more than $850 million. The raise is good news for founders outside the Bay Area who risk getting overlooked as more funds focus squarely on AI companies in Silicon Valley.

Endeavor Catalyst is the venture arm of Endeavor, a New York-based global nonprofit that has spent 30 years supporting founders outside major tech hubs. (It calls all those other places “elsewhere” throughout its marketing materials.) READ MORE

The Capital Fit Problem In The Creator Economy

Roughly a decade of institutional money has now moved through the creator economy. Enough of it has failed that we can stop treating each collapse as idiosyncratic and start reading the pattern.

The pattern is not fraud, and it is rarely incompetence. It is fit. Capital is not neutral. Every dollar arrives attached to a clock, a required outcome, and a governance posture, and most of the damage in this sector has come from financing one layer of the business with the instrument designed for another. READ MORE

The world's most valuable VC-backed companies

The biggest venture-backed businesses in the world continue to delay listing on public exchanges, driving a rise in secondary exchanges where investors can access the likes of OpenAI, SpaceX and Stripe.

The PitchBook 100 tracks how these pre-IPO startups are driving a bridge between public and private markets by ranking the most valuable VC-backed companies globally. READ MORE

Agtech exits slow to four in Q3, the fewest since 2017

Agricultural technology (agtech) VC deal value reached $2.2 billion in Q3 2026, more than double Q2’s $974.3 million and the highest quarterly total since Q3 2023. Farm automation & equipment accounted for $1.2 billion of that. Almost all of it came from the $1.2 billion Series D raised by Quantum Systems, a German dual-use drone maker operating in agriculture, among other industries. Precision ag added $498.1 million, its highest quarterly figure since Q3 2025, led by deals for Muon Space ($250 million) and Pixxel ($100 million). Animal & aquaculture moved the other way, with $74.1 million raised, its lowest quarterly total since Q1 2020.

Agtech deal count fell to 101, the lowest quarterly count in PitchBook’s data since 2016. Exits also slowed to four in Q3, the fewest since 2017. These were the acquisitions of Skycatch, SCiO, and Folium Science and the buyout of SustainCERT, none with a disclosed value. Year to date, agtech startups have raised $4.6 billion across 378 deals. READ MORE