The venture secondary market’s biggest names are leaving. Now what?

SpaceX went public. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing IPOs at valuations that could clear $1 trillion. For years, these three names have dominated venture secondary volumes, and now they are all leaving the secondary market at once. This analyst note breaks down what happens when a market this concentrated loses its biggest companies, and which startups are already positioned to become the next generation of trophy names.

Growth this fast does not come without friction. Anthropic’s crackdown on special purpose vehicles (SPVs) spooked secondary investors who feared their shares had been nullified overnight. A patent lawsuit between Nasdaq Private Market and Hiive could decide who controls the trading infrastructure for the entire industry. Fraud and inflated fees, already attaching a stigma to SPVs, are about to get worse as SpaceX’s lockups expire and years of opaque dealmaking finally become clear. READ MORE

Defense Tech Investment Hits Record High as Arms Giants Ramp Up Startup Funding

Investment in defence tech start-ups has reached a record high this year as the world’s biggest arms companies step up spending on new military technology.

New figures from Dealroom show defence contractors including BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Airbus have participated in $4.1bn (£3bn) of venture capital funding rounds so far this year, the highest figure on record. READ MORE

Two-thirds of all venture capital is now flowing to AI startups and non-AI founders are feeling it

If you're raising a seed round for a non-AI startup right now, you're not just competing with other startups. Look at who else is in the room. OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo together raised $188 billion in Q1 2026, according to Crunchbase. Four rounds. That was about 65% of all global venture investment for the quarter. The market did not simply get bigger. It split.

Crunchbase put Q1 global startup funding at about $300 billion, while TechCrunch, citing the same data set, reported $297 billion. Either way, the number is absurdly large. AI companies took roughly $242 billion, or about 80% of the total, according to Crunchbase's April 1 report. That is not a broad venture recovery. It is a handful of companies pulling the oxygen out of the room. READ MORE

Venture Capital Hit $412 Billion. Most Founders Won’t See a Dollar of It. Here’s the Playbook They Need

It’s been a record year so far for venture capital. And the latest data shows that in 2026, capital is more concentrated than ever — bigger checks to fewer companies. 

U.S. startups raised $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026 — up nearly 30 percent from last year, according to data released this month by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association.   READ MORE

The VC Math Ain’t Mathin’: This Health Investor Has a Fresh Playbook

Venture capital's traditional "fund-returner" model is facing scrutiny in health tech, despite a market recovery seeing $7.4 billion raised in H1 2026. This funding is highly concentrated, with mega-rounds absorbing nearly half the capital, creating a "tale of two markets." Liquidity remains challenging, with no IPOs in H1 2026 and many mature companies facing an "exit backlog paradox." Investors like Dan Galles of Allumia Ventures note healthcare's inherent difficulties, including few new institutional customers and slow adoption. While private practices offer an entry, they are financially constrained. Self-insured employers and consumer-facing platforms prove more viable for scaling, exemplified by Hinge Health and Hims & Hers. AI offers promise but also benefits incumbents. Galles advocates for a new VC playbook, still pursuing billion-dollar exits but also enabling attractive $150M-$250M outcomes by focusing on early commercial adoption, efficient capital, and profitability, matching investment strategy to realistic exit potential. READ MORE

U.S. Venture Capital Hits $412.7B in H1 2026, Led by AI Mega-Rounds

U.S. venture capital reached a record $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, already exceeding the total raised during all of 2025. The increase was driven primarily by artificial intelligence companies and a small number of exceptionally large financings, not by a broad-based recovery across the startup market. The official PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor page describes the result as a record recovery with capital concentrated among relatively few companies and funds. READ MORE

Billionaire exodus? California drew 10 times more venture capital than any other state this year

Despite concerns that California's costs and regulations are bad for business, the state has attracted an unprecedented pile of capital this year, and no other state is even close.

The Golden State's deep pool of talent, rich investors and other tech infrastructure have made it ground zero for the artificial intelligence explosion. That has helped it attract more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, according to PitchBook's private market funding data released Thursday. READ MORE

Resolving Muddled Objectives in Corporate Venture Capital

Large companies seeking access to new technologies — as well as the high returns promised by early investments in successful startups — have been establishing corporate venture capital (CVC) units for many years. But returns on those investments can be erratic, and new technologies can be difficult for the parent company to take advantage of. Why do many companies struggle to derive adequate benefits from their CVC efforts? We think that at the heart of the issue is a persistent confusion over objectives that ultimately makes CVCs difficult to sustain. READ MORE

A Year Of Misplaced Fear (And Why It’s Time For Investors To Leave The Crowd)

We’ve spent the past 12 months navigating a relentless wall of worry: a series of macro shocks that have brought venture capital LPs into a sit-and-wait posture. When you drill down, however, the innovation economy hasn’t had a sudden collapse in fundamentals. Investors’ flight to perceived safety fundamentally misunderstands the risk profile of the moment. READ MORE

How six venture capital giants are reshaping startup financing

The venture capital landscape is becoming increasingly concentrated, with six megafirms— Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund and General Catalyst—now raising more capital than all other U.S. venture firms combined over the past two years, Inc. reports. 

Their growth has been fueled by the enormous capital requirements of AI startups, the trend of successful companies remaining private longer and institutional investors’ preference for backing a small group of established fund managers. READ MORE

Top Venture Firms Cornered 91% of Capital Raised in Q1

In a venture market increasingly dominated by a handful of giant names, the squeeze is not just on startups chasing capital. It is also hitting the investors trying to raise it.

“It’s harder than ever to raise a fund as an emerging manager,” venture capitalist Nisha Dua said, capturing a mood that many newer firms have felt since the funding boom gave way to a more selective market. PitchBook data show experienced firms captured 91% of capital raised in the first quarter of 2026, up from 74% across 2025, the highest share in the database. READ MORE

Resolving Muddled Objectives in Corporate Venture Capital

Large companies seeking access to new technologies — as well as the high returns promised by early investments in successful startups — have been establishing corporate venture capital (CVC) units for many years. But returns on those investments can be erratic, and new technologies can be difficult for the parent company to take advantage of. Why do many companies struggle to derive adequate benefits from their CVC efforts? We think that at the heart of the issue is a persistent confusion over objectives that ultimately makes CVCs difficult to sustain. READ MORE

US Venture Capital Outlook: Midyear Update

Six months into 2026, the US venture market has produced record-breaking headlines and exhibited persistent structural contradictions in equal measure. Our midyear update to the four outlooks we published in December examines both developments, tracking what has materialized and what remains unresolved as the second half of the year approaches.

The early-stage surge we anticipated has arrived ahead of schedule, driven by AI’s compression of company-building costs and the continued deepening of megafund participation at seed and Series A. First financings are on track to exceed 7,000 by year-end, a new record by more than 1,300 deals. Late-stage and venture-growth activity has been even more striking: The $274.2 billion in venture-growth capital deployed through May is already more than double the full-year 2025 total, though 86.4% of that figure traces back to four rounds from three foundation model companies. Fundraising, meanwhile, has concentrated sharply at the top, with funds over $1 billion capturing nearly 72% of capital raised YTD, while first-time managers have accounted for less than 10%. READ MORE

Robotics Startups On Fire As Venture Funding Surges To Record Numbers In 2026

Robotics startup funding hit a record high in 2025, per Crunchbase data. And that trend is continuing in 2026 so far, with funding to the sector already eclipsing 2025’s totals.

Globally, robotics startups have so far raised $18.8 billion in 2026, compared to $15 billion in the full year of 2025. The figure also handily surpasses the $14.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021, and we still have more than six months of fundraising left. READ MORE