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Funding to foundational AI startups, also known as generative AI companies or frontier labs, has doubled in the first quarter of 2026 so far compared to all of 2025, Crunchbase data shows.
That funding is increasingly concentrated in a handful of foundational giants, including OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. In 2025 and early 2026, the market saw a shift to a small number of companies capturing a disproportionate share of global capital. READ MORE
Apple, founded in 1977 to sell hobbyist computers, is currently celebrating its 50th year and is one of the most valuable companies today. However, this wasn’t the case back then, with venture capital firm Sequoia Capital sharing its founder’s memo regarding a potential $600,000 financing for the then-fledgling firm. According to the firm’s X post, its founder, Don Valentine, wrote the note, saying that Apple’s request will give it 10% of equity in the startup with a market greater than $500 million. READ MORE
Venture capitalists are putting young entrepreneurs in incubators again. It sounds like a fun alternative to growing up. READ MORE
Insight Partners is one of the biggest startup investors in the world, managing over $90 billion thanks to its bets on companies like Twitter, Wiz, Databricks and Anthropic — comparable in size to its noisier rivals Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Now, a new lawsuit and SEC filings show that it is in part owned by the government of Abu Dhabi via a private, Abu Dhabi-based investment firm called Lunate. READ MORE
Investors who specialise in scooping up distressed assets at bargain prices have identified a downturn in private credit as their best opportunity since the 2008 financial crisis.
These funds, which typically invest in companies with bad balance sheets but viable underlying businesses, have been largely sidelined for a decade as markets surged but are now betting on making money from strains in private credit. READ MORE
A federal government plan to include alternative assets in 401(k)s has lifted the stock of private equity giants.
On Monday, the US Labor Department officially issued a proposal opening the door for alternative assets like private equity, credit, and cryptocurrency to be included in retirement accounts for more than 90 million Americans. READ MORE
If you focus on some of the top-line, headline-grabbing numbers, this would seem to be a boom time for venture capital.
The industry collectively invested more money in startups last year than in any other year except 2021. And venture investors have been putting gobsmacking sums into particular companies, including what ended up being a record $110 billion earlier this year for San Francisco’s OpenAI.
But if you dig a little below the surface, the venture industry’s foundational business model appears to be under stress, if not breaking down. READ MORE
Investing in startups has gone from being a “luxury” for companies to a critical strategic necessity as AI brings in an era of rapid transformation. Corporate venture investment is at a record level, both in the number of companies making investments and the dollar sums being committed. It has proven itself a steady pillar in the startup ecosystem at a time when venture capital has been in decline.
This makes corporate investment a more valued partner to venture capital. Nicolas Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures, spoke of a “yin and yang” system in which traditional venture capital provides speed and discipline while corporate investors offer the practical assistance — factories, supply chains, customer relationships — for scaling deep tech and AI startups. READ MORE
When competition looms, incumbents often tighten their grip on a market by snapping up rivals and rapidly shelving breakthrough technologies that could otherwise accelerate the next wave of innovation. We now find ourselves at a similar technological inflection point where rapid innovation in AI poses a deep challenge to dominant firms.
To sidestep this challenge, large tech firms have adapted the acquihire—traditionally the acquisition of a company primarily for its talent rather than its products—into a structure that evades the regulatory scrutiny that would ordinarily accompany a merger of two companies. The result is the reverse-acquihire: unlike traditional acquihires these deals avoid antitrust scrutiny by replicating the benefits of an acquisition through alternative structures that stop short of an actual purchase. These deals allow dominant firms to both license a booming startup’s intellectual property and poach its top talent, often hollowing out the remaining company in the process. READ MORE
According to a recent LinkedIn post from Moonfare, selected U.S. private technology and AI companies appear to be attracting a highly concentrated share of venture capital inflows in early 2026. The post cites Financial Times data indicating that U.S. private companies raised more than $200 billion in the first two months of the year, with over half reportedly going to OpenAI and just 10 deals representing more than 80% of total fundraising. READ MORE
Family offices have long understood that wealth carries responsibility. Across generations, families have sought to make a difference through philanthropy, foundations and charitable giving aimed at improving lives and strengthening communities.
But today's most urgent challenges — health care affordability, climate resilience, educational access, technological inclusion and economic opportunity — require more than donations. They require solutions.
And solutions require capital that is patient, committed and willing to take risk. READ MORE
At the height of the pandemic and the global shift to remote work, tech founders and investors alike flocked to Austin, Texas, drawn to a more business-friendly environment, relatively lower housing costs, and the city’s hip reputation.
Venture firms that set up shop in the Texas capital city included Bedrock Capital, Breyer Capital, and 8VC, among others. Elon Musk famously moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin in 2021, while also purchasing a house and establishing a residence there. READ MORE
BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink has an unforgiving message to private-credit investors who want to exit their funds.
was one of several firms running funds that invest in private credit that received more redemption requests than the 5% per quarter that funds typically allow. READ MORE
A Democratic senator launched an investigation Monday into the nation’s two largest for-profit child care providers, as rising child care prices squeeze voters already concerned about the cost of living.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) sent letters to KinderCare Learning Companies and Learning Care Group and their private equity owners requesting financial records and information on their ownership structure, cost and pricing trends, safety protocols and employment practices. READ MORE
Some of the most valuable private companies in the world right now have a problem that has nothing to do with their product, their team, or their market. They have too many investors, too many competing agendas, and a cap table — the record of who owns what and under what terms — that has become so layered with complexity that it is actively preventing them from moving forward. Call it cap table gridlock: the condition where a company’s ownership structure becomes the constraint on its growth, rather than capital itself. READ MORE
Incredibly, when you think about it, US-based venture capital has remained structurally unchanged for half a century. The well known model revolves around the 10-year fund lifecycle, the 2-and-20 fee structure, and the relentless push for growth and outsized returns. Decisions are made in mysterious ways and are known to be full of bias against founders who don’t fit a certain mold. But even as rivers of investment flow into anything touching AI, there may yet be an ironic twist to come. READ MORE
Two high-profile cases in the public/private markets are testing boundaries and investors.
Why it matters: ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF’s XOVR stake in illiquid holdings, including SpaceX, has apparently run afoul of SEC rules. Meanwhile, a high-flying alternative-asset manager has changed the rules for returning investors’ cash from one of its funds. And Blue Owl Capital is now facing backlash.
But first, let’s start with ERShares’ saga. Morningstar’s Managing Director of Manager Research Jeff Ptak has been tracking the firm and its crossover fund. READ MORE
A new report examining private equity activity in healthcare argues that heavy debt loads and aggressive financial strategies can undermine patient care across several sectors of the industry.
The analysis, entitled Private Equity and Healthcare: Balancing Profit and Wellness, reviews more than a decade of private equity-backed transactions and case studies involving hospitals, nursing homes, behavioral health providers, medical staffing firms and medical equipment manufacturers. READ MORE
When Jared Kushner formed Affinity Partners in 2021, and then raised most of his first fund from Middle Eastern sovereigns, he took great pains to say that the endeavor was conceived after he left the White House.
He bristled at suggestions of quid pro quo, but also understood that the whiff was strong enough that it had to be addressed.
Kushner also insisted that his government days were in the past, even if his father-in-law regained power. Full-time private equity guy in Miami, not a D.C. denizen hoping to boomerang.
But it hasn't quite worked out that way, ressurecting old questions as Affinity begins premarketing its second fund. READ MORE
The private capital industry’s problems are far worse than Wall Street has acknowledged, as traditional metrics obscure weaknesses in the leveraged buyout market, according to a top credit hedge fund. A “substantial portion” of the private equity industry is already “stressed or distressed”, said Tony Yoseloff, managing partner and chief investment officer at credit hedge fund Davidson Kempner Capital Management. READ MORE