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

Why Amending a Venture Capital Fund LPA Is More Complicated Than It Seems: The Hidden Complexity of Limited Partner Consents

Amending the limited partnership agreement (“LPA”) of a venture capital fund is rarely a simple exercise. While LPAs are designed to provide a degree of flexibility over the life of a fund, the process of obtaining the necessary limited partner (“LP”) consents can be time-consuming, technical, and, at times, unpredictable. As investor bases become more diverse and fund structures more layered, what might appear to be a straight forward amendment can quickly devolve into a complicated coordination effort. 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

Why Retail Tech Gets So Little Venture Capital

Retail has a technology problem: venture capital investors are not putting enough money into solving retail’s technology problems.

The gap matters a lot now because AI is creating new opportunities to improve profitability in other industries. But the investment ecosystem treats retail as a forgotten stepchild and software tools and the retail industry has fallen behind in the capital available to it. READ MORE

Quarterly biotech funding continues upward in Q2 of 2026 trend with 4th straight quarter of growth

Part one: the COVID boom, then a long winter. During COVID, biotech funding shot up to $48.2 billion in one quarter (2Q20). Then it slid downhill for two years as things cooled off. By late 2022, funding had dropped all the way to $10.9 billion a quarter. People started calling this stretch the "biotech winter."

Part two: a fake spring. In January 2024, investors suddenly got excited about biotech again. Everyone who had been waiting to raise money for two years tried to do it at the same time. Funding jumped to $47.2 billion in one quarter, almost as high as the COVID peak. It wasn't one giant deal. It was just a lot of companies rushing through the door at once. 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

VC's space appetite outlives SpaceX's IPO as Blue Origin eyes $10B raise

Blue Origin is tapping outside investors for the first time, reportedly looking to raise $10 billion at a $130 billion pre-money valuation, a sign that appetite for private space companies has persisted past SpaceX's blockbuster IPO.

Blue Origin's decision to raise outside capital coincides with a rise in investor interest in space startups, not for rocket launches but as key AI infrastructure via data centers in space. In a May CNBC interview, Jeff Bezos said space data centers would become crucial as the cost of AI computing power rises. 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

We Need To Save Venture Capital From Bad Data

Investing, particularly venture capital, is 50% science and 50% art. The industry relies heavily on charisma and the founders’ “it” factor. That criteria warrants plenty of merit; one shared truth among all my investor colleagues is that the greatest founders of our generation have an unmistakable drive and dedication to their craft that is near impossible to put a finger on.

But here is how the process actually works once the charming visionaries have been identified. When an investor meets a promising founder and decides to take a closer look, they are handed a vast collection of data. 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