Private equity backers slam ‘runaway’ legal costs from top law firms

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An influential body of private equity investors wants to change a longstanding arrangement that leaves them paying the “runaway legal costs” involved in fundraising that have fuelled the growth of some of the world’s top law firms. The Institutional Limited Partners Association has taken aim at a protocol whereby investors in private equity funds pay the legal costs of buyout group managers as well as their own in negotiations over setting up the vehicles. READ MORE

More than the eye can VC: What’s trending in 2026

Wonders of the world include the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and a venture capitalist’s checkbook.

What makes the latter such a rare sight is that Fidelity Private Shares® notes that VCs are writing fewer (yet larger) checks, often concentrated in AI and late-stage companies. Everyone else? They’ll need to navigate a tighter, more scrutinized fundraising environment where clean equity, financial discipline, and a clear story matter more than ever. READ MORE

The 18 Largest US Funding Rounds of April 2026

April 2026 opened with a statement. A single $10B round to Project Prometheus – Jeff Bezos’s AI company targeting the physical economy – set the tone for a month. Leveraging data from CrunchBase, this report tracks the largest US startup funding rounds of April 2026, covering each company’s round type, founding team, industry focus, investor syndicate, and total equity raised to date. Beyond the headline numbers, the deals reflect a decisive shift in venture conviction: defense tech, nuclear energy, autonomous systems, and AI infrastructure are no longer emerging themes – they’re where the biggest checks are going. READ MORE

5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed

AI and software continue to draw the biggest share of startup investment, but most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month were working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen. 

They include a defense-tech startup that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the frontlines, a company working to recycle valuable raw materials from defunct solar panels at industrial scale, and a startup that wants to produce cell-based milk for the dairy supply chain. Let’s take a look. READ MORE

The Future of Venture Capital: Unlocking Liquidity and Growth

Venture capital has evolved from a niche financing mechanism into a central pillar of the global innovation economy, managing $3.5 trillion in assets and backing more than 250,000 companies over the past two decades. Today, however, the model faces a period of significant transition, marked by slowing capital recycling, an uneven global distribution of scale-ups and the rapid reshaping of venture economics by artificial intelligence. READ MORE

The Payday From These 3 Companies Would Outstrip A Decade Of VC Returns

When ride-hailing app Uber listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2019, it reset the scales for all venture capitalists. In one of the all-time largest initial public offerings in the United States, the company raised $8.1 billion on a $82 billion valuation.

Early backers like venture fund Benchmark, Google Ventures and Lowercase Capital held stakes worth over $12 billion at the time of the float. But the numbers for that deal — one of the best of the last era of startups — now look quaint. READ MORE

Economic development orgs share new paths to capital readiness

For startup founders struggling to raise venture capital, economic development orgs can help open the doors to other financing options that may be a better fit.

Realistically, a very small percentage of startups are backable by VC, and it isn’t even the best funding option for many companies, Heidi Knoblauch, founding partner at Homefield Fund, said at the 2026 Technical.ly Builders Conference. Startups can pursue partnerships or community funds, for example, that would be a better fit for a company’s model. READ MORE

This Californian start-up just shocked the haulage world with its weird, cab-less autonomous delivery bot

If you need visual proof that we are hurtling headlong into a Philip K Dick future, just take a quick look at the Humble Hauler from Californian start-up Humble Robotics.

This prototype is a highly autonomous concept that hopes to replace drivers with a blunt, cab-less design and serious computing power — all so the company can slash costs and improve efficiencies in the freight industry. READ MORE

Volatility Complicates the Rebirth of Liquidity in Private Equity

After years of tribulations, last year brought glimmers of hope for the private equity industry, with a boom in deals, capital raised, and, a fundamental piece for LPs’ liquidity needs,  company exits. However, the current landscape of volatility in global markets casts doubt on the immediate future of deals, especially considering the weakness in IPO activity and the concentration in megadeals seen in the recent past.

The global private capital market began this year with considerable optimism, according to consulting firm KPMG. “A deep pool of available capital, an improved divestment environment, and a sense that macroeconomic conditions were stabilizing gave investors cautious confidence. This continued into the beginning of 1Q 2026; however, the sudden conflict in the Middle East understandably brought an initial contraction in the market,” said Gavin Geminder, Global Head of Private Equity at the firm, in a recent report. READ MORE

AI creates a mess for private equity

It's no secret that AI has become a splitting headache for private equity, or at least for funds that bought big into enterprise software.

  • But this isn't just a backward-looking problem, which can be temporarily stemmed by Q1 equity markdowns and maturing debt renegotiations.

  • Almost every industry big that spoke to Axios at the Milken Global Conference this week said that AI has created massive modeling challenges for new deals, almost regardless of sector.

Private equity is a long-term asset class, typically holding portfolio companies for a minimum of three or four years. READ MORE

How staying in touch with investors who turned you down can lead to more wins

Tapping into your network of fellow founders is a huge asset for founders trying to raise — even if they passed on working with you before.

Working with investors is all about long-term relationships, according to serial entrepreneur Bob Moore. In his experience, even when investors ultimately choose not to back the company, it is worth maintaining those relationships for future pitches and potential introductions to other founders. READ MORE

Bootstrapping Exposes Weaknesses Venture Capital Can Hide

I don’t have anything against raising money, and in the right situation it can be a powerful tool. But after building businesses without relying on outside funding, I’ve seen a consistent pattern: When there’s too much capital too early, it tends to hide problems that should have been addressed sooner. Those problems don’t disappear, they just surface later, usually when they’re larger, more complex, and more expensive to fix. READ MORE

How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington

The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as “Billionaires’ Row,” at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the All-In podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. “And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that,” Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. “And maybe it’ll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth.” READ MORE

Robinhood’s venture fund IPO attracted 150,000+ retail investors, CEO says

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is touting the success of the fintech’s new Ventures Fund I, which allows retail investors to invest in private tech companies like Stripe, Oura, Databricks, OpenAI, and others, through a publicly traded fund listed on the NYSE. “We had something like over 150,000 retail investors participate in the IPO, so it’s quite democratized,” noted Tenev in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference this week. READ MORE

Private credit pros will take a compensation hit this year

Private credit bonuses are going to take a hit this year.

That’s according to compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates, which projects that incentive compensation for private credit professionals will end the year anywhere from 2.5% to 7.5% down from last year.

That’s a steep decline from the firm’s projected incentive funding for private credit at the end of 2025: Johnson Associates expected incentives to increase from 5% to 10% for 2026. READ MORE

Compensation in private equity (and credit) is starting to become a bit sad now

The private credit and private equity industries have not had a great few years, what with struggling exit opportunities and exploding funds. The biggest draw for professionals in the industry has always been the huge pay – but that seems to be fading away, too.

Our Compensation & Lifestyle Report 2026 surveyed almost 3,000 professionals worldwide in financial services, including those who worked in private equity and credit, a collective that we labelled as private capital. READ MORE