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Start with an idea. Build a pitch deck. Find angels. Raise seed capital. Raise Series A, B and C. Scale rapidly. Then celebrate the IPO or billion-dollar valuation.
Venture capital is often presented as the indispensable fuel of high-growth entrepreneurship. Without it, the narrative suggests, entrepreneurs cannot build world-class companies. READ MORE
Corporate venture capital used to run on instinct, relationships, and a healthy dose of internal diplomacy. You built a thesis, flew to the conferences, shook the hands, and spent a good chunk of every quarter explaining to your business unit why a gut-microbiome startup in Estonia aligns with the core mission of making an allergy medicine.
Then AI showed up. And like every disruption before it, it arrived with both promise and confusion. Venture teams now compete not just with rival funds, but with algorithms that can source deals, run diligence, and draft a board update faster than most of us can find the right Zoom link. READ MORE
Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm punched back Tuesday at suspicions cast by a key congressional Democrat about potential "insider political influence," likely foreshadowing the political showdowns in the U.S. House if control of the chamber flips in the November elections.
In a letter shared with CBS News, the legal counsel for the president's eldest son's firm, 1789 Capital, rejected Rep. Jamie Raskin's characterizations of the firm and criticized his "spaghetti-against-the-wall approach." The firm did not provide the materials requested by Raskin. READ MORE
Middle-market M&A and venture capital are operating in a market defined by selective deployment and heightened discipline. While capital reserves remain substantial, buyers and investors are deeply scrutinizing seller fundamentals to prioritize the best companies and the best fit. Also a major factor is artificial intelligence, which has emerged as both a complex source of diligence friction and a powerful valuation catalyst, one that’s reshaping how deals are priced, built and won.
According to Brian Zuercher, a partner with The Northbound Group, today’s M&A market can be defined as a simultaneous mix of caution and rapid deal-making. READ MORE
Growth in the evergreen fund market is being driven by the largest listed alternative managers. But there are asset classes in which size is likely to be a weakness rather than a strength in catering to individual investors.
This, at least, is what venture capital and growth equity manager Fairway Capital Management is banking on. READ MORE
Town, a startup that builds AI personal assistants for businesses, is in negotiations to raise funding at a valuation of about $1 billion.
Index Ventures is leading the round, according to the industry newsletter Newcomer. The fresh financing would make Town, dubbed “Silicon Valley’s new favorite AI tool” by Inc., the second personal-assistant company in a week to achieve unicorn status in what Newcomer calls a “personal agent frenzy.” READ MORE
The U.S. venture capital industry is one of the most impressive economic growth engines this country has. Seven of the top ten companies by market capitalization today were VC-backed when they were young, innovative, and very risky. My research with Will Gornall shows that companies that received VC funding and subsequently went public now account for nearly half of the U.S. market capitalization and 94% of R&D spending among all public companies founded in the last 50 years. Today, global VC assets under management stand at nearly $3.5 trillion, spread across more than 11,000 institutional VC firms. Those firms have backed a quarter of a million companies, including almost 4,000 unicorns. READ MORE
Global assets under management of growth equity strategies exceeded $1.2 trillion in 2024, making it one of the fastest-maturing segments of private equity. Its share of total private equity fundraising has averaged around 20% since 2008. As technology, healthcare, and consumer goods companies grow beyond venture capital funding capabilities but do not yet have the cash flow maturity that traditional buyout funds seek, an intermediate layer of capital is now treated as a distinct, stand-alone category rather than a transitional stage. READ MORE
Just two years ago, 1789 Capital Management “was a struggling venture capital firm that earned consistently disappointing results by serially investing in total market flops,” but after recruiting President Donald Trump’s eldest son in the wake of the 2024 US election, it “suddenly had the Midas touch,” a key congressional Democrat highlighted this week, launching an investigation.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—a lawyer who managed the historic second impeachment of the president—revealed Thursday that the previous day he had sent a letter demanding answers from Donald Trump Jr., who is a partner at 1789 Capital, as well as company president Omeed Malik and chief investment officer Christopher Buskirk. READ MORE
Global venture capital markets delivered their second-highest quarterly total on record in Q2 2026, reaching $227.4 billion, fueled by mega-deals in artificial intelligence. U.S. AI company Anthropic led the charge with the largest single fundraising round in history at $65.3 billion, while Project Prometheus and China's DeepSeek raised $12 billion and $7.4 billion respectively. The Americas dominated with $150 billion in investment, while Asia posted its best performance since late 2021 at $50.8 billion. Corporate venture capital participation surged to $149.1 billion, underscoring major corporations' aggressive AI positioning. On the exit front, SpaceX's merger with xAI and subsequent Nasdaq IPO—the largest in history—raised $75 billion, propelling global exit values to a record $1.9 trillion. Defense and space technology also gained prominence, with Anduril and ICEYE completing substantial funding rounds. Looking ahead to Q3, AI investment is expected to expand from model development into industrial applications including robotics and embodied intelligence. READ MORE
US startups raised $19.44B across 492 companies in July 2026, a month defined by a convergence of mega-rounds in artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy, and robotics that pushed the late-stage total to $12.26B — 63% of all capital raised. The top four rounds alone accounted for more than $5.95B, led by Joulent, Atoms, Fireworks AI, and SambaNova. Beneath the headline figure, 401 Series A and early-stage deals collectively raised $4.45B, reinforcing the depth of the innovation pipeline across the country even as capital concentrated sharply at the top. READ MORE
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
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
Venture funding for nuclear energy startups — both fusion and advanced fission — is surging.
By the numbers: Global investment is over $4.5 billion for 81 companies so far this year, according to PitchBook, putting 2026 on pace to smash last year's record haul of $6.2 billion for 93 companies. READ MORE
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
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 might have a concentration problem.
The big picture: VC funds have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into a small group of frontier AI labs. READ MORE
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
Venture capital might have a concentration problem.
The big picture: VC funds have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into a small group of frontier AI labs. READ MORE
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
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