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Benchmark made a rare addition to its highly successful partnership this week: investor and entrepreneur—and brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—Jack Altman.
As such, Altman’s job will now be all about leading Series A financings into startups—a stage he said he loves, “when there’s enough going on that an investor can be useful but not so much that you can’t have an impact.” But the Series A math for a boutique firm like Benchmark has become trickier over the years. READ MORE
As global venture funding in 2025 ratcheted up to the third-highest total on record after the peak years of 2021 and 2022, capital also concentrated further, with the number of companies raising rounds of $50 million or more drastically shrinking roughly by half to a cohort of just 1,440.
The investors backing the hottest companies in this highly competitive venture capital market have also changed drastically since 2021, Crunchbase data shows. While private equity investors dominated during the pandemic boom, Silicon Valley’s traditional VC firms have reclaimed ground in leading rounds of $50 million and over, our analysis indicates. READ MORE
Last week, Thomas Dohmke, the former CEO of GitHub, announced a $60 million seed round and a $300 million valuation for his new startup Entire, a developer platform focused on AI-generated code. By the standards of today’s AI market, that’s considered restrained.
Dohmke initially floated a $50 million raise to Madrona Ventures’ managing director S. “Soma” Somasegar — once the head of his division at Microsoft — who suggested a $250 million valuation. Dohmke said he would come back after testing the market, Somasegar told me. READ MORE
Nuclear fusion has captured Silicon Valley's imagination, even as investments in the technology break every venture capital norm. A cohort of investors—a combination of ultra-wealthy individuals and deep-pocketed firms—enthusiastic about the promise of fusion energy is pouring more capital into its commercialization than ever. And that's despite the fact that it's still several scientific discoveries away from being a realistic option for the energy grid. READ MORE
A rising tide may lift all boats. But lately it lifts California boats the most.
In 2025, only two states with a sizable venture scene saw a year-over-year gain in their share of U.S. venture funding: California and Washington. This held true even though several others, including New York and Texas, actually saw a pretty big bump in investment. READ MORE
J.P. Morgan Private Bank releases its 2026 Global Family Office Report, revealing that while single family offices are professionalising, significant gaps in succession planning and risk management remain.
The report, which surveyed 333 family offices across 30 countries, finds that 37 per cent of respondents plan to increase their private equity allocations over the next 12 to 18 months. This comes despite 86 per cent of family offices globally admitting they still lack a clear succession plan for key decision-makers. READ MORE
Venture capital has long avoided ‘hard’ sectors such as government, defence, energy, manufacturing, and hardware, viewing them as uninvestable because startups have limited scope to challenge incumbents. Instead, investors have prioritised fast-moving and lightly regulated software markets with lower barriers to entry.
End users in these hard industries have paid the price, as a lack of innovation funding has left them stuck with incumbent providers that continue to deliver clunky, unintuitive solutions that are difficult to migrate from. READ MORE
Just as a disciplined a soccer player might pass on a hopeful shot in favor of a better chance later on, the biopharma venture capital market reflected a preference for de-risked assts over platforms and is expected to display a “continued, albeit disciplined” recovery in 2026, according to a fourth-quarter PitchBook report.
After bottoming out post-pandemic surge, biopharma venture capital continued to make a modest rebound in 2025. For the second consecutive quarter, deal value rose as capital became more selective and concentrated on fewer, larger deals. READ MORE
The co-founders of startup Ricursive Intelligence seemed destined to be co-founders.
Anna Goldie, CEO, and Azalia Mirhoseini, CTO, are so well-known in the AI community that they were among those AI engineers who “got those weird emails from Zuckerberg making crazy offers to us,” Goldie told TechCrunch, chuckling. (They didn’t take the offers.) The pair worked at Google Brain together and were early employees at Anthropic. READ MORE
“Everyone understands that the AI revolution is enormous, and whoever succeeds in building the truly significant companies will do so within the next year or two at most. Everyone is playing for time,” said Pavel Gurvich, co-founder and CEO of Tenzai, during a panel moderated by Meir Orbach at Calcalist’s Tech TLV conference, held in collaboration with Leumi.
“We see that the market is ready to fund such ventures, ready to back teams that not only have the technological ability to execute but also the capacity to go to market quickly. Raising a $75 million Seed round is a major and significant step, but the journey ahead is much bigger. In the very early stages, the main risks are the team, whether the market truly exists, and whether you know how to build a product,” he said. READ MORE
Venture capital is in the middle of a quiet power shift.
Over the past few years, some of the largest and most consequential deals in tech, healthcare and life sciences have not been led by traditional venture firms at all. Instead, family offices and sovereign wealth funds are backing bigger bets, longer timelines and platforms that stretch across borders, often outside the constraints of the traditional 10-year fund model. READ MORE
National security has always been a lucrative opportunity for startups, but recently venture capital has been pouring into the sector at an astounding rate.
The Trump administration has vocally prioritized defense and security spending, but the trend started a few years before he took office, sparked by initiatives like the CHIPS Act and government-focused accelerators. The spike in venture capital investment is visible both at national scale, and locally in the DMV, where startups can gain an edge thanks to proximity to the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. READ MORE
Venture capital continued to flow into the artificial intelligence (AI) sector in early February, though the targets are changing. Investors are now prioritizing the durability and economics of the technology over simple scale. READ MORE
My agency gets these two calls in one week. First, a Series B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup burning through its 18-month runway, desperate to differentiate before its next fundraising round. Then, a mid-sized venture capital (VC) firm managing $500 million, struggling to stand out in a deluge of “value-add investors.” READ MORE
Initial compliance deadlines are rapidly approaching for California’s new Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law (FIPVCC), with the California Department of Financial Protection & Innovation (DFPI) delivering initial guidance and other resources to assist covered entities with compliance. READ MORE
Last year, AI grabbed half of venture dollars globally. But the sector’s blockbuster growth hasn’t necessarily come at the expense of other startup industries. Rather, areas that benefit from AI-driven automation such as legal tech, or that combine AI software with physical tech, like robotics and defense tech, are seeing record-high funding levels as well, Crunchbase data shows.
With that, here are five areas where we’ve seen venture funding increase significantly in recent quarters. READ MORE
As employers and workforces settle into the new year, change, as always, is sure to be among the major challenges they face.
More specifically, says Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, this year’s change scenario will be particularly acute within the ongoing evolution of remote and hybrid environments. READ MORE
I underwrite small-business loans at Impact Loan Fund, a Community Development Financial Institution in Philadelphia. Like other CDFIs, we help businesses access capital when traditional banks and lenders wouldn’t, like if founders have lower credit or limited collateral, or when a company is early in its life cycle.
Our role is different than that of an investor. For our fund to offer capital, a business has to show enough operating history, revenue and — most importantly — profitability. READ MORE
I am more excited about venture capital (VC) today than at any point since starting Harlem Capital ten years ago out of a shared work space. At the same time, the economist in me has some concerns.
One question that comes up in several VC conversations is, “Are we in an AI bubble?” How you answer that question determines whether you invest aggressively, cautiously or not at all. I find myself both bullish and wary. READ MORE
Many investment firms of ultra-rich families are keen to buy stakes in private companies directly rather than through private equity funds, which come with fees and less control.
Cutting out the middleman can come at a steep cost, though, and requires hiring an in-house investment team to source proprietary deals. READ MORE