Donald Trump Jr.'s VC Firm Jumped From $200 Million To $3.5 Billion In A Year

1789 Capital, the venture capital firm with Donald Trump Jr. as a partner, has seen its assets under management skyrocket from $200 million to $3.5 billion in just one year by leveraging an America-first investment strategy.

The Palm Beach, Florida-based firm's explosive growth follows a massive dealmaking spree focused on leading privately held companies in artificial intelligence (AI) and defense technology.

The VC is capitalizing on shifting geopolitical dynamics and policies favoring domestic tech manufacturing. READ MORE

Venture Capital Is Concentrating Faster Than Ever. What Happens To Everyone Else?

Capital concentration in the private markets is accelerating. Companies with breakout growth or experienced founders in compelling sectors are raising funding at a faster clip, while the rest of the market is increasingly left behind.

In 2025, 70% of U.S. funding — more than $200 billion — was invested in 389 companies that raised rounds of $100 million and over, Crunchbase data shows. Of that, $90 billion went to just six companies that each raised more than $5 billion last year. READ MORE

How private equity changed the world

The 50th birthday of New York private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – founded with $120,000 by the cousins George Roberts and Henry Kravis and now holding $758 billion of assets under management – is a moment to ask whether the modus operandi the firm pioneered has been good or bad for the world. Private-equity buyouts of underperforming public companies have certainly been a catalyst for sharper corporate performance across every western economy. But with what impact on society? READ MORE

Why are banks cooling on the idea of CVC funds?

Fidelity International Strategic Investments, set up seven years ago by Alokik Advani, has become the latest corporate venture unit to be sold off to become part of a private equity investment company, in this case 7Ridge.  

For a CVC unit, this is about as dignified a parting of ways with a parent corporation as can be hoped for — the alternative is seeing the team disbanded and the portfolio sold off in piecemeal secondary transactions for pennies on the dollar. There’s still a discount in this kind of whole portfolio transaction — any secondary deal has that — but it is heartening to see whole CVC teams being taken on by PE in this way. It feels like a vote of confidence in their skills and sector knowledge. Many private equity companies are looking to expand into earlier-stage investments, and this is a good way for them to pick up the talent they need to make that transition. READ MORE

Nine founder red flags that are keeping VCs from investing in your AI company

AI may be attracting billions in venture capital, but money is not flowing to every founder with a chatbot demo and a slick deck. In fact, as AI makes building a great product faster and more accessible, founder behavior, judgment, and credibility become even more important. In a crowded market where every pitch claims “category-defining AI,” red flags can surface fast. READ MORE

Why Smart Entrepreneurs Are Skipping Venture Capital

When I first met Bryan Papé, co-founder and CEO of MiiR, the reusable water bottle and lifestyle company, in 2016, a lot of direct-to-consumer brands were raising massive amounts of venture capital. By 2018, footwear maker Allbirds had raised over $75 million. Athletic apparel startup Outdoor Voices had raised nearly $57 million. Bryan and his wife, Rebecca, had built their Seattle-based startup differently. READ MORE

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