The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds

Physical tech is back, at least judging by this week’s largest U.S. funding deals. The biggest of all was a $1.5 billion corporate round for a medical device company that develops implants and treatment systems for musculoskeletal disorders. It was followed by an enormous Series A round, backed by a bevy of big-name investors, for Hark, a 1-year-old artificial intelligence startup that says it’s developing personalized AI devices. Along with the usual heavy dose of AI, this week’s list also includes large deals for aerospace and defense, fintech, and retail technology. READ MORE

How Instagram Became A Venture Capital Deal Engine

For decades, venture capital depended on closed networks. Founders needed introductions. Investors relied on private circles. Geography mattered. The strongest deal flow often stayed concentrated around Silicon Valley, New York and a handful of elite startup communities.

Marshall Sandman believes that model is starting to break down. The founder of Animal Capital has spent the last 139 days posting daily videos on Instagram @marshallsandman explaining venture capital in unusually direct terms: fundraising mechanics, dilution, startup mistakes and how investors evaluate businesses. READ MORE

How AI Is Changing Finance, And Why Private Equity Is Behind

Venture capital moves fast and breaks things. Private equity moves deliberately and fixes them. That difference explains a lot about where PE sits on AI right now: not absent, but methodical in a moment moving faster than methodical allows.

According to my company's research, VC-backed companies have adopted AI at a 77% rate. PE-backed companies are at 59%. That gap is less about technology than organizational readiness. READ MORE

a16z Is the Only VC AI Engines Reliably Cite

When founders and investors ask an AI engine about venture capital, the answer leans on Wikipedia, TechCrunch, and Crunchbase — and on exactly one venture firm's own website. 

The Venture Capital AI Visibility Index 2026, released by 5W, the AI Communications Firm, is the first public two-wave benchmark of how often U.S. venture firms and named partners are surfaced, cited, and recommended inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It analyzed 28,400 prompts, 60 firms, and 100 named partners across two testing waves between January and May 2026.  READ MORE

Donald Trump Jr.'s VC Firm Jumped From $200 Million To $3.5 Billion In A Year

1789 Capital, the venture capital firm with Donald Trump Jr. as a partner, has seen its assets under management skyrocket from $200 million to $3.5 billion in just one year by leveraging an America-first investment strategy.

The Palm Beach, Florida-based firm's explosive growth follows a massive dealmaking spree focused on leading privately held companies in artificial intelligence (AI) and defense technology.

The VC is capitalizing on shifting geopolitical dynamics and policies favoring domestic tech manufacturing. READ MORE

Venture Capital Is Concentrating Faster Than Ever. What Happens To Everyone Else?

Capital concentration in the private markets is accelerating. Companies with breakout growth or experienced founders in compelling sectors are raising funding at a faster clip, while the rest of the market is increasingly left behind.

In 2025, 70% of U.S. funding — more than $200 billion — was invested in 389 companies that raised rounds of $100 million and over, Crunchbase data shows. Of that, $90 billion went to just six companies that each raised more than $5 billion last year. READ MORE

How private equity changed the world

The 50th birthday of New York private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – founded with $120,000 by the cousins George Roberts and Henry Kravis and now holding $758 billion of assets under management – is a moment to ask whether the modus operandi the firm pioneered has been good or bad for the world. Private-equity buyouts of underperforming public companies have certainly been a catalyst for sharper corporate performance across every western economy. But with what impact on society? READ MORE

Why are banks cooling on the idea of CVC funds?

Fidelity International Strategic Investments, set up seven years ago by Alokik Advani, has become the latest corporate venture unit to be sold off to become part of a private equity investment company, in this case 7Ridge.  

For a CVC unit, this is about as dignified a parting of ways with a parent corporation as can be hoped for — the alternative is seeing the team disbanded and the portfolio sold off in piecemeal secondary transactions for pennies on the dollar. There’s still a discount in this kind of whole portfolio transaction — any secondary deal has that — but it is heartening to see whole CVC teams being taken on by PE in this way. It feels like a vote of confidence in their skills and sector knowledge. Many private equity companies are looking to expand into earlier-stage investments, and this is a good way for them to pick up the talent they need to make that transition. READ MORE

Nine founder red flags that are keeping VCs from investing in your AI company

AI may be attracting billions in venture capital, but money is not flowing to every founder with a chatbot demo and a slick deck. In fact, as AI makes building a great product faster and more accessible, founder behavior, judgment, and credibility become even more important. In a crowded market where every pitch claims “category-defining AI,” red flags can surface fast. READ MORE

Why Smart Entrepreneurs Are Skipping Venture Capital

When I first met Bryan Papé, co-founder and CEO of MiiR, the reusable water bottle and lifestyle company, in 2016, a lot of direct-to-consumer brands were raising massive amounts of venture capital. By 2018, footwear maker Allbirds had raised over $75 million. Athletic apparel startup Outdoor Voices had raised nearly $57 million. Bryan and his wife, Rebecca, had built their Seattle-based startup differently. READ MORE

Private equity backers slam ‘runaway’ legal costs from top law firms

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An influential body of private equity investors wants to change a longstanding arrangement that leaves them paying the “runaway legal costs” involved in fundraising that have fuelled the growth of some of the world’s top law firms. The Institutional Limited Partners Association has taken aim at a protocol whereby investors in private equity funds pay the legal costs of buyout group managers as well as their own in negotiations over setting up the vehicles. READ MORE

More than the eye can VC: What’s trending in 2026

Wonders of the world include the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and a venture capitalist’s checkbook.

What makes the latter such a rare sight is that Fidelity Private Shares® notes that VCs are writing fewer (yet larger) checks, often concentrated in AI and late-stage companies. Everyone else? They’ll need to navigate a tighter, more scrutinized fundraising environment where clean equity, financial discipline, and a clear story matter more than ever. READ MORE

The 18 Largest US Funding Rounds of April 2026

April 2026 opened with a statement. A single $10B round to Project Prometheus – Jeff Bezos’s AI company targeting the physical economy – set the tone for a month. Leveraging data from CrunchBase, this report tracks the largest US startup funding rounds of April 2026, covering each company’s round type, founding team, industry focus, investor syndicate, and total equity raised to date. Beyond the headline numbers, the deals reflect a decisive shift in venture conviction: defense tech, nuclear energy, autonomous systems, and AI infrastructure are no longer emerging themes – they’re where the biggest checks are going. READ MORE

5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed

AI and software continue to draw the biggest share of startup investment, but most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month were working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen. 

They include a defense-tech startup that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the frontlines, a company working to recycle valuable raw materials from defunct solar panels at industrial scale, and a startup that wants to produce cell-based milk for the dairy supply chain. Let’s take a look. READ MORE

The Future of Venture Capital: Unlocking Liquidity and Growth

Venture capital has evolved from a niche financing mechanism into a central pillar of the global innovation economy, managing $3.5 trillion in assets and backing more than 250,000 companies over the past two decades. Today, however, the model faces a period of significant transition, marked by slowing capital recycling, an uneven global distribution of scale-ups and the rapid reshaping of venture economics by artificial intelligence. READ MORE