The SignalRank Index is designed to reflect top Series Bs in terms of MOIC potential. As such, understanding the Series B ecosystem is critical to our business model.

In this post, we will consider key trends in the Series B ecosystem in H1 2026.

We hope you enjoy the report.

Executive summary

• Series B resurgence: the number & size of Series Bs is almost 20% higher than in H1 2025.

• Bifurcated market: most of the 2026 Series Bs we have seen from our seed partner network are at $150-200m pre-money. A tiny subset of AI rocket ships (which are attracting all the attention) are raising at $1bn+ pre-money at Series B.

• Key sectors: AI, defense, FinTech and robotics are the sectors driving the highest quality Series Bs. The US continues to be the dominant market for Series Bs.

• Series C graduation: Series Cs are also starting to pick up, albeit still somewhat muted relative to pre-Covid period. Ditto IPOs.

• SignalRank operating at scale: SignalRank invested in 16 Series Bs (of which 11 have been announced) in H1 2026, making SignalRank one of the most active Series B investors globally. We are on track to invest in 30 Series Bs this year.

1. Aggregate Series B data

The AI boom is driving growth at Series Bs. We are seeing a rise in the monthly number of Series Bs (Figure 1), as well as in the median round size (Figure 2).

Figure 1. # of Series Bs globally per month (2012-26)

Figure 2. Median Series B round size (2012-26, $m, Crunchbase data)

As a result, the aggregate capital invested into Series B has increased (Figure 3). Even without the $12bn Series B raised by Prometheus this year, the amount raised is on course to surpass 2025 levels easily.

Figure 3. Aggregate capital raised at Series B (2012-26 YTD, Crunchbase data)

2. Bifurcated market

The aggregate data masks a highly divided market: most companies are raising Series Bs at less than $200m pre. A tiny subset of AI companies is raising at $1bn+.

Figures 4 shows the distribution of pre-money valuations for all Series Bs seen by SignalRank in 2026 (shared by 89 unique seed partners).

Figure 4. 2026 Series B distribution of pre-money valuations ($m)

3. Series B conversion: Series C market data

The Series C market is also growing again. Yet it remains subdued relative to pre-Covid levels. Only ~12% of Series Bs are raising a Series C within 24 months (compared to ~30% prior to Covid, Figure 5).

Figure 5. Series B conversion: time to raise a Series C (2016-25)

3. Most active investors

Y Combinator was the most active Series B investor in H1 2026 with 16 announced rounds, followed by Accel and Sequoia Capital.

Figure 6. Top 10 most active Series B investors in H1 2026 (announced rounds)

4. SignalRank performance

SignalRank continues to have high network centrality within the Series B ecosystem, demonstrating that our systematic approach is delivering consistent access to companies backed by high quality active investors (Figure 7).

Figure 7. All investors with 5+ 2026 Series B investments, with edges showing 2+ co-investments

Figure 8. SignalRank completed 16 investments in H1 2026

SignalRank completed 16 investments in H1 2026 (Figure 8). Of these five are ranked in the top 20 for all Series Bs this year (per our methodology, Figure 9).

Figure 9. Top 20 ranked Series Bs in H1 2026

We are accessing high quality Series Bs at scale. We are on track to make 30 qualifying investments in 2026, delivering on the promise of an index-like Series B investment product.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

June 2026 recorded $53.7B across 939 disclosed rounds. The top 10 rounds captured 48.3% of capital, led by Semiconductor Manufacturing North China Corporation at $9.6B.

Summary

June 2026 was not a simple slowdown. It was a narrower market with larger year-over-year capital, fewer disclosed rounds, and a heavy concentration of dollars in the largest financings. Capital was +36.1% versus June 2025, but round count was -17.1%.

Three facts define the month: first, the top 10 rounds absorbed 48.3% of all disclosed capital; second, Series A carried the most capital while Seed carried the most deal count.

The month was active but selective. Stage percentiles mattered more than headline dollars, quality remained concentrated in the strongest stages, and breadth was still the constraint.

What Happened in June 2026

Round count was +24.0% versus the prior-two-month average, while capital was +55.0%. The median disclosed round was $5.5M, far below the average round of $57.1M, which shows how much the largest financings pulled up the month.

What Changed From May 2026

Compared with May 2026, capital was +89.5% and round count was +30.8%. Compared with June 2025, capital was +36.1% and round count was -17.1%.

The comparison table shows the core tension: capital was higher than a year earlier even as disclosed round count fell sharply.

The Top 10 Rounds Drove the Month

The top 10 rounds represented 48.3% of disclosed capital. The outlier-adjusted view shows how much market activity remains after excluding the top 1, top 3, and top 10 rounds.

After the top 10 rounds, the month looks more concentrated than broad-based.

For Founders

For founders, stage percentiles matter more than headline capital. Seed had the most rounds, with a median round of $4.0M and a 75th percentile round of $7.8M. A credible plan for this market shows how the round clears the stage median, why the company belongs above the 75th percentile, or why a smaller round is the better strategic choice.

For Investors

For investors, concentration and quality moved together. Series A led capital with $13.4B, while Series A had the strongest average investor-quality signal. The open question is not whether dollars came back, but whether high-quality investors are widening participation across stages or staying clustered.

For LPs

For LPs and public-market readers, headline capital overstates market breadth. The month had more capital than the same month last year, but far fewer rounds, so the signal is selective financing rather than a broad reopening. Ex-top-10 capital and qualifier rate carry the cleaner signal.

Which Stages Led

Stage health shows where activity was broad and where capital was concentrated. Series A led capital, Seed led round count, and Series A led the investor-quality read. Those are different signals, so no single stage summarizes the market.

Early, Venture, and Growth

The aggregate market hides three different jobs: early-stage company formation, venture-stage breakout filtering, and growth-stage capacity. Early-stage rounds totaled 736, Venture - Series B totaled 78, and growth totaled 69. Early - Pre-Seed to Series A carried the most disclosed capital at $19.4B. Top-five share means the share of segment capital captured by its five largest rounds.

Capital and breadth moved differently enough that each segment needs its own view.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Round Sizes by Stage

Round-size percentiles show what typical, strong, and outlier financings looked like by stage. The median is the practical founder benchmark, the 75th percentile is the strong-round benchmark, and the 90th percentile identifies rounds that can distort market perception.

How to read this table: P25 means one quarter of rounds were smaller, median means half were smaller, P75 marks the upper quartile, and P90 is the outlier boundary. Stages are ordered by median round size so a new reader can move from early-stage norms to later-stage norms.

Stage-by-Stage Pricing

The pricing question is whether a round is typical for its stage, or whether the market is being pulled upward by the top quartile. Each stage view separates the median from the 75th and 95th percentiles, showing where typical pricing ends and outlier pricing begins.

Pre-Seed Monthly Raise Percentiles

Pre-Seed narrowed sharply: 234 companies raised, with a $0.5M median and $1.0M 75th percentile. Median pricing declined -30.2% from the prior three-month average, while company count increased +24.9%. The 95th percentile was 8.0 times the median, a clear outlier gap.

Seed Monthly Raise Percentiles

Seed remained the broadest market with 280 companies, but breadth was still down -6.3% from the recent average. The median was $4.0M and the 75th percentile was $7.8M; median pricing increased +21.4%. A 7.0x 95th-to-median spread shows a large separation between typical seed rounds and the top of the market.

Series A Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series A showed stronger pricing with weaker volume. The stage had 193 companies, a $18.0M median, and a $30.0M 75th percentile. Median pricing increased +12.6% against the prior three-month average, while company count increased +10.7%. The 95th percentile was 5.6 times the median.

Series B Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series B was the clearest quality-over-volume stage. The median round reached $32.2M, the 75th percentile reached $68.1M, and only 78 companies raised. Median pricing was roughly flat -1.6% from the recent baseline, while company count declined -8.9%. The 95th percentile was 9.3 times the median.

Series C Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series C looked flat on price and weak on breadth. The stage had 47 companies, a $59.7M median, and a $105.0M 75th percentile. Median pricing was roughly flat +2.3%, but company count increased +17.5%. The 95th percentile was 6.9 times the median.

Series D Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series D weakened on price. The median fell to $147.2M across 15 companies, while the 75th percentile held at $345.8M. Median pricing increased +100.9% from the prior three-month average, and company count increased +12.5%. The 95th percentile was 3.0 times the median.

Series E Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series E was small but large-round driven: 7 companies, a $100.0M median, and a $182.2M 75th percentile. Median pricing increased +21.6%, while company count increased +10.5%. The 95th percentile was 7.6 times the median, so the stage was large but thin.

Science and Engineering Led Sector Capital

Science and Engineering was the largest disclosed sector group, with $38.7B across 489 rounds. The sector story was not only about one large financing: capital and round count both pointed to the same category.

Software, Science and Engineering, and Software Led Different Stage Bands

Software led early-stage activity with 429 rounds. Science and Engineering led Series B with 43 rounds. Software led growth with 32 rounds. May’s sector mix split early company formation from later-stage capital demand.

The stage split matters because the leading early market was not the same as the leading growth market.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

San Francisco Had the Most Visible Activity

San Francisco had 148 disclosed rounds with an average round of $33.1M. That made it the most visible geography by activity, not just by the size of a single financing.

Different Cities Led Different Stage Bands

Early was led by San Francisco, Series B by San Francisco, and growth by New York. The leaders changed by stage, so the market was not concentrated in one city across the maturity curve.

The tables keep round count visible next to dollars, which is why repeat activity matters here.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Y Combinator, Bessemer Venture Partners, and General Catalyst Stayed Active

Y Combinator appeared in 150 early-stage rounds. Bessemer Venture Partners led Series B with 4 rounds. General Catalyst led growth with 7 rounds. Those firms stayed visible even as overall round count weakened.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Series A Had the Strongest Investor-Quality Signal

Series A had the strongest average investor-quality signal, with 181 high-score investor appearances.

3.8% of Series B Rounds Met the Quality Bar

3 Series B companies qualified from 78 Series B rounds. This is an aggregate market-quality measure, not investment advice.

SignalRank disclosed B activity is shown separately from public investor-history appearances. By purchase date, SignalRank had 2 disclosed B investments in June 2026. The all-time portfolio count in this dataset is 61 investments. These are activity counts, not a disclosure of private pipeline or allocation decisions.

What Would Make July Better

June needs broader round count, lower top-10 concentration, and a stronger Series B qualifier rate to look healthier than May. Without those changes, May reads less like a one-month pause and more like a weaker run-rate.

• Breadth recovery: next month rounds exceed the prior-two-month baseline.

• Concentration easing: top-10 share falls below 45.0% of capital.

• Series B quality: qualifier rate rises above 15.0%.

Interpretation Guardrails

All figures are based on disclosed public funding-round records. Sector groups are non-exclusive category tags, so a company can appear in more than one sector group. Sector totals are momentum indicators, not a market-size sum.

Geography reflects company headquarters or disclosed company location, not where capital was deployed. Investor tables reflect public round participation and lead-investor flags, not private holdings, private investment activity, or recommendations.

Methodology

Figures are based on public funding-round records and are reconciled against internal analytical dashboards before publication. Tables and charts are published as interactive views. Ask follow-up questions at

https://agent.signalrank.com

.

Each fund prospectus has a standardized section on fees & expenses which allows for a read across for each fund.1

The average management fee is 2.0%, plus an additional ~1.5% of other fees, bringing the total average fee load to ~3.5%. This is higher than the standard 2/20 private VC model, although note that closed-end funds cannot have carry or incentive structures.

PVC managers have launched first generation products. It is early in this asset class. We should expect fee compression as the products mature.

Expected cumulative fees after 10 years

Each prospectus includes a table with a hypothetical example which assumes a $1,000 is invested for a 5% annual return. It is this table we have used to create Figure 1 to consider the expected cumulative fees per manager over 10 years.

Figure 1. Expected cumulative fees over 10 years from a $1,000 investment

Source: public filings based on standard hypothetical example which assumes $1,000 invested over 10 years and 5% annual return

This chart is based on the 10 year data from Figure 2, which also shows the cumulative fees per manager for 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years.

Figure 2. Cumulative fees over different time periods for $1,000 investment ($)

Source: public filings based on standard hypothetical example which assumes $1,000 invested over 10 years and 5% annual return

Fee breakdown

The annual fee tables in the prospectuses consist of management fees and other fees. Figure 3 shows the total annual fees for each manager from their prospectuses.

Figure 3. Annual fees & expenses per manager

This table is on a gross basis. Some managers are currently offering discounts (with USVC currently offering a 1.11% discount to bring the net fee down to 2.50% per year).

The table above does take into account any management fees in underlying vehicles (“Acquired Fund Fees & Expenses” in the prospectuses). USVC, for example, is an LP in emerging managers, so needs to take into account the 2% management fees for the VC funds.

However, this fee load does not take into account the multi-layer SPV carry load. Any carry is presumably netted from exit proceeds before distributed to the PVC vehicles.

Note that these US closed-end funds do not have carry structures themselves (even if carry is paid in the underlying SPVs). This is a major structural & regulatory difference compared to private VC funds with 2/20 models.

Each prospectus also splits out any sales load for raising capital for these funds. The average is ~3.5%. See Figure 4. This sales load is in addition to the ongoing fees in Figure 3.

Figure 4. Sales load per manager

Concluding thoughts

It is the first innings of PVCs. Many of these funds are still sub-scale and gathering assets at pace. DXYZ, for example, started with NAV of <$50m in 2024 and has raised ~$250m per quarter for the last two quarters.

Nevertheless, the optics of fees in the 3-4% range are not good, especially as these are essentially passive funds.

If we look at analogous asset classes, we should anticipate fees to compress with greater product development and greater competition.

The story of the public markets in the last sixty years is really the triumph of passive over active. Passive AUM is now greater than active AUM (Figure 6). This is in part due to performance and in part due to fees. According to SPIVA, 90% of active US large-cap managers underperformed the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. And passive funds outperformed with substantially lower fees (Figure 7).

Figure 6 % of long-term funds’ total net assets

Source: Investment Company Institute

Figure 7. Average expense ratios for active & index mutual funds

Source: Investment Company Institute, Lipper & Morningstar

The current PVCs do not claim to be indexes, as they tend to be more concentrated bets on a handful of late stage private companies. So the comparison with index mutual funds is perhaps somewhat unfair.

Nevertheless, the mutual fund story is illustrative of a broader trend.

In the longer term, we should anticipate that fees in private market passive vehicles to mimic public market passive vehicles. This could also have a knock-on effect of lowering active VC manager fees. Fees should compress over time.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

It is a concentrated portfolio of private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. The NAV as at 13 May 2026 was $604m. As at 5 June 2026, it trades at a 25% premium to NAV (compared to 69% for DXYZ and 51% for RVI). The annual management fee is 2.5%.

This post compares Powerlaw’s top 10 NAV positions to the rest of the public VC market.

Figure 1 shows Powerlaw’s top 10 positions and compares it to other public VC funds. Powerlaw’s largest positions are in SpaceX (19% of NAV), OpenAI (8%) and Kalshi (6%).

This table does not take into account structure, which can materially impact returns if a holding is held within a multi-layer SPV.

Figure 1. Top 10 portfolio positions as % of NAV for select public VC funds

Source: public filings

Powerlaw’s top ten positions are closest to DXYZ and VCX. RVI is relatively underweight AI and is more focused on consumer facing companies (such as Oura) which might appeal to the Robinhood customer base. The Private Shares Fund also appears to be underweight AI relative to peers and more exposed to older companies from prior cycles.

The most commonly shared portfolio companies across this set are SpaceX, OpenAI and Databricks, which are each in six of the PVCs (Figure 2).

Figure 2. # of PVCs holding a shared portfolio company as a top 10 position

This set of public VCs has relative high levels of portfolio concentration. The aggregate % of total NAV held within the top 10 positions is 58% on average (Figure 3).

Figure 3. % of NAV held within the top ten positions

5 of the Powerlaw top ten positions (50%) are unique to Powerlaw relative to the top ten positions in the rest of the PVC set (Deel, Kraken, Vast Data, Colossal and Tether). These five companies represent 31% of the aggregate % of NAV held by the top ten positions in Powerlaw. Robinhood Ventures and Private Shares Fund have the most unique portfolio based on weight of positions in their respective top ten holdings (Figure 4).

Figure 4. % of top 10 NAV unique to each PVC by number & weight of positions

In sum, Powerlaw is another strong entrant into the PVC group. There are now enough entities within this growing asset class to start to tease out key differentiators between the managers and their respective holdings.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

AI is the next platform shift and it is here. Private companies are already an order of magnitude larger than in prior cycles.

The vast majority of VC dollars are being deployed into AI. These dollars are increasingly concentrated in a small number of companies, backed by a small number of funds, backed by a small number of LPs.

The democratization of alternatives has the promise of broadening access to more investors, including retail. Asset managers, from BlackRock down, are building retail-focused products to solve this problem.

Public VC (“PVC”) in a closed-end fund wrapper is the right structure to enable retail investors to benefit from the AI boom.

The problem today is that public VC managers are predominantly buying late stage positions in companies where a significant proportion of value has already been captured. These products also run the perception risk of retail becoming the “bag holders” for institutional investors offloading their late stage positions.

What if there was a product that invested at Series B to enable retail investors to capture more of the upside?

Enter Public VC

Destiny (ticker: DXYZ) was the first of the current generation of public VCs, offering access to SpaceX and other companies, in a publicly traded closed-end fund wrapper. The listing was in early 2024. DXYZ has subsequently raised $500m+ in the public markets and continues to trade at a significant premium to NAV. There is clear demand from retail for high quality private assets.

Yet the longer term sustainability of trading at a premia to NAV for late stage PVCs is unclear. The SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs are upon us. Retail will soon be able to buy these names direct at par.

Destiny, and similar products such as Fundrise (ticker: VCX) & Robinhood Ventures (ticker: RVI), has only been in existence since the three marquee assets were already at mature valuations. They have bought these assets at a late stage.

Companies are staying private longer and at higher valuations. SpaceX is 20+ years old. Figure 1 is an old Pitchbook slide which shows how 100% of the first $20bn of value is now captured in private markets prior to an IPO, which is a big change from prior cycles. You could add Figma, Cerebras and others to this chart. As well as the three upcoming IPOs.

Figure 1. Proportion of first $20bn in value captured as of IPO (%, select IPOs)

In addition, the quality of the security that PVCs own in these late stage entities can be subpar. Many of the positions are in multi-layer SPVs where the underlying asset is a forward contract that the companies are disputing. See Anthropic’s latest position on SPVs.

A Series B vehicle can capture more value

SignalRank is not available to retail today. But our product offers our own investors the opportunity to buy today the power law companies of tomorrow in a diversified structure that only owns pristine direct on cap table preferred Series B stock. (Technically, we own positions through our own SPVs which are direct on cap table, structured this way to allow for the profit share to our seed partners).

What if you had invested in this fashion in the Series Bs of SpaceX / Anthropic / OpenAI? Let’s take a look at each one in turn:

• OpenAI has of course had an unusual funding history, whose rounds are not so legible. Hard to calculate with public information.

• SpaceX raised a $20m Series B at ~$160m post-money in 2005, according to Preqin. At an IPO valuation of $1.7tn, the valuation has increased over 10,000x. The actual returns will be substantially lower due to dilution (and with any liquidity in the meantime). 2005 was another time.

• Anthropic is the more relevant example if we want to understand what potential Series B returns could be for future AI power law companies. Anthropic’s Series B was in 2022, backed by FTX amongst others. According to Preqin, this was a ~$600m round at ~$3.8bn post-money. At a rumored $1tn valuation, this is a 250x increase in valuation. Again, the returns to investors will be lower due to dilution.

What if retail investors could have invested in Anthropic at the Series B? What would an investment product look like holding these types of future power law companies?

This is the exam question that SignalRank seeks to solve.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

More Capital, Fewer Rounds

May 2026 recorded $22.2B across 482 disclosed rounds. The top 10 rounds captured 54.0% of capital, led by Anduril Industries at $5.0B.

Monthly Thesis

May was not a simple slowdown. It was a narrower market with larger year-over-year capital, fewer disclosed rounds, and a heavy concentration of dollars in the largest financings. Capital was +27.4% versus May 2025, but round count was -52.1%.

Three facts define the month: first, the top 10 rounds absorbed 54.0% of all disclosed capital; second, Series B carried the most capital while Seed carried the most deal count; third, the Series B qualifier rate was 11.3%, which keeps the quality read separate from raw volume.

The month was active but selective. Stage percentiles mattered more than headline dollars, quality remained concentrated in the strongest stages, and breadth was still the constraint.

What Happened in May

Round count was -46.5% versus the prior-two-month average, while capital was -37.4%. The median disclosed round was $8.0M, far below the average round of $46.0M, which shows how much the largest financings pulled up the month.

What Changed From April

Compared with April 2026, capital was -41.9% and round count was -34.3%. Compared with May 2025, capital was +27.4% and round count was -52.1%.

The comparison table shows the core tension: capital was higher than a year earlier even as disclosed round count fell sharply.

The Top 10 Rounds Drove the Month

The top 10 rounds represented 54.0% of disclosed capital. The outlier-adjusted view shows how much market activity remains after excluding the top 1, top 3, and top 10 rounds.

After the top 10 rounds, the month looks more concentrated than broad-based.

For Founders

For founders, stage percentiles matter more than headline capital. Seed had the most rounds, with a median round of $3.5M and a 75th percentile round of $8.5M. A credible plan for this market shows how the round clears the stage median, why the company belongs above the 75th percentile, or why a smaller round is the better strategic choice.

For Investors

For investors, concentration and quality moved together. Series B led capital with $5.7B, while Series C had the strongest average investor-quality signal. The open question is not whether dollars came back, but whether high-quality investors are widening participation across stages or staying clustered.

For LPs

For LPs and public-market readers, headline capital overstates market breadth. The month had more capital than the same month last year, but far fewer rounds, so the signal is selective financing rather than a broad reopening. Ex-top-10 capital and qualifier rate carry the cleaner signal.

Which Stages Led

Stage health shows where activity was broad and where capital was concentrated. Series B led capital, Seed led round count, and Series C led the investor-quality read. Those are different signals, so no single stage summarizes the market.

Early, Venture, and Growth

The aggregate market hides three different jobs: early-stage company formation, venture-stage breakout filtering, and growth-stage capacity. Early-stage rounds totaled 371, Venture - Series B totaled 53, and growth totaled 36. Series B carried the most disclosed capital at $5.7B. Top-five share means the share of segment capital captured by its five largest rounds.

Capital and breadth moved differently enough that each segment needs its own view.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Round Sizes by Stage

Round-size percentiles show what typical, strong, and outlier financings looked like by stage. The median is the practical founder benchmark, the 75th percentile is the strong-round benchmark, and the 90th percentile identifies rounds that can distort market perception.

How to read this table: P25 means one quarter of rounds were smaller, median means half were smaller, P75 marks the upper quartile, and P90 is the outlier boundary. Stages are ordered by median round size so a new reader can move from early-stage norms to later-stage norms.

Stage-by-Stage Pricing

The pricing question is whether a round is typical for its stage, or whether the market is being pulled upward by the top quartile. Each stage view separates the median from the 75th and 95th percentiles, showing where typical pricing ends and outlier pricing begins.

Pre-Seed Monthly Raise Percentiles

Pre-Seed narrowed sharply: 65 companies raised, with a $1.3M median and $2.1M 75th percentile. Median pricing increased +44.6% from the prior three-month average, while company count declined -64.7%. The 95th percentile was 4.3 times the median, a clear outlier gap.

Seed Monthly Raise Percentiles

Seed remained the broadest market with 180 companies, but breadth was still down -42.9% from the recent average. The median was $3.5M and the 75th percentile was $8.5M; median pricing increased +7.1%. A 4.6x 95th-to-median spread shows a large separation between typical seed rounds and the top of the market.

Series A Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series A showed stronger pricing with weaker volume. The stage had 106 companies, a $17.0M median, and a $27.5M 75th percentile. Median pricing increased +8.5% against the prior three-month average, while company count declined -43.1%. The 95th percentile was 4.4 times the median.

Series B Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series B was the clearest quality-over-volume stage. The median round reached $40.0M, the 75th percentile reached $100.0M, and only 53 companies raised. Median pricing increased +31.9% from the recent baseline, while company count declined -38.6%. The 95th percentile was 6.4 times the median.

Series C Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series C looked flat on price and weak on breadth. The stage had 22 companies, a $60.0M median, and a $100.0M 75th percentile. Median pricing was roughly flat -2.7%, but company count declined -40.0%. The 95th percentile was 4.1 times the median.

Series D Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series D weakened on price. The median fell to $41.0M across 11 companies, while the 75th percentile held at $135.0M. Median pricing declined -60.7% from the prior three-month average, and company count declined -19.5%. The 95th percentile was 5.1 times the median.

Series E Monthly Raise Percentiles

Series E was small but large-round driven: 3 companies, a $300.0M median, and a $625.0M 75th percentile. Median pricing increased +87.8%, while company count declined -55.0%. The 95th percentile was 2.9 times the median, so the stage was large but thin.

Science and Engineering Led Sector Capital

Science and Engineering was the largest disclosed sector group, with $15.6B across 186 rounds. The sector story was not only about one large financing: capital and round count both pointed to the same category.

Software, Science and Engineering, and Health Care Led Different Stage Bands

Software led early-stage activity with 160 rounds. Science and Engineering led Series B with 33 rounds. Health Care led growth with 12 rounds. May’s sector mix split early company formation from later-stage capital demand.

The stage split matters because the leading early market was not the same as the leading growth market.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

San Francisco Had the Most Visible Activity

San Francisco had 39 disclosed rounds with an average round of $72.4M. That made it the most visible geography by activity, not just by the size of a single financing.

San Francisco Led Every Stage Band

Early was led by San Francisco, Series B by San Francisco, and growth by San Francisco. San Francisco led all three, so May’s visible market was geographically concentrated across the maturity curve.

The tables keep round count visible next to dollars, which is why repeat activity matters here.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Y Combinator, Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz Stayed Active

Y Combinator appeared in 10 early-stage rounds. Founders Fund led Series B with 5 rounds. Andreessen Horowitz led growth with 5 rounds. Those firms stayed visible even as overall round count weakened.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

Series C Had the Strongest Investor-Quality Signal

Series C had the strongest average investor-quality signal, with 28 high-score investor appearances.

11.3% of Series B Rounds Met the Quality Bar

6 Series B companies qualified from 53 Series B rounds. This is an aggregate market-quality measure, not investment advice.

SignalRank disclosed B activity is shown separately from public investor-history appearances. By purchase date, SignalRank had 2 disclosed B investments in May 2026. The all-time portfolio count in this dataset is 56 investments. These are activity counts, not a disclosure of private pipeline or allocation decisions.

What Would Show Improvement by Stage

June improves if early-stage round count broadens, Series B quality rises, and growth capital becomes less concentrated. Those are separate tests because each part of the market weakened in a different way.

Early Stage - Pre-Seed to Series A

Venture - Series B

Growth - Series C to E

What Would Make June Better

June needs broader round count, lower top-10 concentration, and a stronger Series B qualifier rate to look healthier than May. Without those changes, May reads less like a one-month pause and more like a weaker run-rate.

• Breadth recovery: next month rounds exceed the prior-two-month baseline.

• Concentration easing: top-10 share falls below 45.0% of capital.

• Series B quality: qualifier rate rises above 15.0%.

Interpretation Guardrails

All figures are based on disclosed public funding-round records. Sector groups are non-exclusive category tags, so a company can appear in more than one sector group. Sector totals are momentum indicators, not a market-size sum.

Geography reflects company headquarters or disclosed company location, not where capital was deployed. Investor tables reflect public round participation and lead-investor flags, not private holdings, private investment activity, or recommendations.

Methodology

Figures are based on public funding-round records and are reconciled against internal analytical dashboards before publication. Tables and charts are published as interactive views. Ask follow-up questions at

https://agent.signalrank.com

.

AI is clearly the dominant theme. As your favorite LLM might say, “it’s not just a trend, it’s a structural shift.”

Beyond AI, the sectors of focus for the highest-ranked Series B investors in our methodology are defense, robotics, and FinTech. These four sectors account for over 85% of SignalRank’s Series B investments in 2026 (13 out of 15 investments).

Crunchbase data on Series B sectors

If we look at the Crunchbase dataset, we see this sectoral trend for all 2026 Series Bs to date.

One caveat: the Crunchbase sector designation can be somewhat vague. The “AI” category, at least with the Crunchbase definition, can be so broad as to be somewhat meaningless, from data centers and infrastructure to vertical applications and neolabs. And indeed you could argue that almost all of the other sectors are themselves leveraging AI.

“Manufacturing” and “Hardware” sectors include many defense companies and many robotics companies.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of Series B per sector for 2026 Series Bs (using the Crunchbase sector designation).

Figure 1. % of 2026 Series Bs per sector

Source: Crunchbase

SignalRank only seeks to invest in high quality Series Bs which have also raised high quality seed & Series A rounds based on their investor syndicates. We call these high quality post Series A / pre Series B companies “Candidates” for our product. This Candidate list gives a good indication of where we anticipate capital being deployed at Series B in the next 2-3 years.

Figure 2 shows the percentage of current Candidates per sector.

The themes within the “Other” section increasingly include emerging sectors such as space, nuclear, fusion, and quantum. Note how few and far between the consumer companies are.

Figure 2. % of post Series A /pre Series B candidates per sector

Source: SignalRank; Crunchbase

Where is SignalRank deploying capital?

SignalRank is in many ways a mirror on where the top ranked investors are deploying capital, given that 100% of our Series B investments are alongside the highest ranked investors in the ecosystem. As such, we are also deploying into AI, defense, robotics and FinTech.

Here is a list of announced Series B rounds in the SignalRank Index in these four sectors since we started investing in mid 2023:

1. AI

• Consensus (2026 Series B): AI search engine for scientific research

• Cowboy Space (2026): data centers in space

• Deepset (2023): semantic search for enterprises

• Earth AI (2024): AI for mineral exploration

• HappyRobot (2025): operating system for managing AI workforce

• Mercor (2025): data-labeling for foundational models

• Pika (2024): generative AI for images & video

• Sesame (2025): voice AI assistants

• Solve Intelligence (2026): generative AI for patent law

• Squint (2025): AI training for factory operators

• Together AI (2025): open-source AI infrastructure

2. Defense

• Amca (2026 Series B): designs hardware & subsystems for aircraft

• Armada (2026): data centers for the edge

• Cambium (2025): AI for biomaterial development

• Cybertoka (2023): cyber defense for governments

• Nominal (2025): testing platform for hardware engineers

• Northwood Space (2025): hardware for ground to satellite communications

• Saronic (2024): autonomous naval vessels

3. Robotics

• Hyphen (2024 Series B): automatic culinary operations

• Machina Labs (2023): robotics for sheet metal manufacturing

• Mendaera (2024): surgical robots

• Nomagic (2025): robotic solutions for order fulfillment

• Skild AI (2025): operating system for robots

4. FinTech

• Aleph (2025 Series B): FP&A AI solution

• Anrok (2024): sales tax solution

• Cents (2024): payments for laundromats

• Monarch Money (2025): personal finance app

• Navro (2025): simplifies international payments

• Nitra (2025): healthcare payments

• Simetrik (2024): no-code solution for CFOs

• Tabs (2025): AI revenue automation platform

• Wingspan (2025): freelancer payments platform

Concluding thoughts

There is an ongoing conversation within VC about the pros/cons of whether companies need to be “legible” to capital.

The YC “request for startups” list even starts this legibility topic from inception.

Yet outlier outcomes often come from seemingly weird ideas at seed & Series A (think Airbnb, and even Anthropic which was rejected by 20+ VCs initially).

However, by the time a company is at Series B, it starts to become increasingly important to be legible to capital.

In part, this is because investors have one eye on what growth stage & pre-IPO investors are looking for:

Series Bs represent the first round where growth & pre-IPO investors start to take notice. The sectors backed at Series B today will be the IPO candidates of the future.

Public VCs (“PVCs”, such as DXYZ, VCX and RVI) have all benefited from this clamor for access to the major three private AI players (SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic). A momentum trade is well underway, where each PVC could potentially be considered a proxy stock for the underlying AI companies.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of NAV for each PVC in the big three private AI companies (based on latest public filings).

Figure 1. % of NAV in top three private AI companies (per latest public filings)

The market response to this portfolio construction has been strong. Since 1 May 2026 alone (just 10 days ago), VCX (with a slim float) has risen over 150%, while DXYZ is up 88% and RVI is up 42%. The S&P (which itself is on fire) is up a measly 3%. See Figure 2.

Figure 2 Select PVC share prices vs S&P 500 from 1 May 2026 (re-based to 100)

Each PVC is trading at a significant premium to NAV as retail investors seek ownership of these companies prior to their respective rumored listings. These three PVCs are trading at an average share price to NAV multiple of 5.9x (premium to NAV of 490%).

Figure 3 Share price to NAV multiple for select PVCs since listing (as at 11 May)

What happens after the AI companies go public?

The key question is whether these premiums are sustainable once the underlying assets themselves become publicly traded. Are PVCs permanent access platforms deserving structural premia, or temporary scarcity vehicles whose premiums disappear once the underlying assets become liquid?

You could argue that each of these private AI assets are experiencing such strong revenue growth that each continues to be undervalued. Anthropic is approaching a valuation in the secondary markets of $1 trillion, based on spectacular reported revenue growth to $30bn annualized run-rate by April 2026. Revenue guidance continues to be revised upwards.

Under this framework, it may make sense for PVCs to retain positions post listing rather than immediately distributing or exiting them.

The mandates of the PVCs are primarily focused on private assets, but the CEOs of DXYZ and VCX respectively have publicly stated that they have some discretion to hold on to public assets:

Sohail Prasad (DXYZ CEO):

“Our mandate is to provide exposure to what we believe to be 100 of the top venture-backed *private* technology companies. That said, especially as we’ll own larger positions in some companies, we maintain discretion to manage this. With that in mind, as portfolio companies go public we generally hold on to their shares and systematically divest over time.”

Ben Miller (VCX CEO):

The private companies want long-term holders. Investors want us giving them exposure to private tech, which otherwise they can’t usually get access to. After ServiceTitan went public, we sold the majority of our shares.

Nevertheless, there is a strong argument that the scarcity premium currently embedded in these vehicles could compress materially once investors are able to access the underlying assets directly in public markets.

Retail investors will simply be able to buy SpaceX in the open market, so why do you need the PVC wrapper? And why pay a premium in the PVC wrapper?

The obvious counterargument is that PVCs could continue to command premiums if investors believe they will repeatedly gain access to future generations of high demand private companies prior to IPO. In that sense, the vehicles themselves become perpetual access platforms rather than simple holding companies.

Indeed, the IPOs of the three AI companies will generate significant liquidity for the PVCs who will then be looking to reinvest any undistributed cash into the next generation of power law companies.

Concluding thoughts: SPV ownership

One additional consideration is the growing use of SPV structures to gain exposure to highly competitive private deals. In many cases, PVC exposure to companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic is indirect, layered through various SPV arrangements.

This structure is increasingly attracting scrutiny, particularly as leading private companies seek tighter control over their cap tables and secondary trading activity.

Anthropic today updated their policy to address this exact point:

Any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock, or any interest in Anthropic stock, that has not been approved by our Board of Directors is void and will not be recognized on our books and records.

None of this necessarily implies wrongdoing or misrepresentation by PVCs. However, it does highlight the complexity of indirect ownership structures in late stage private markets. Investors may ultimately discover that their economic exposure differs materially from their assumptions regarding direct ownership, transferability, governance rights or liquidity.

The eventual transition of these assets into public markets will therefore be an important test, not only for the valuations of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX themselves, but also for the durability of the premium investors are currently willing to pay for private market access (especially investments held in opaque SPV structures).

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

Executive Summary

April 2026 saw $33.7 billion deployed across 652 funding rounds involving 2,170 distinct investors. Capital concentration remained pronounced: the ten largest deals accounted for 57.2% of all capital, led by two Anthropic corporate rounds totaling $15 billion. Excluding the top ten, the remaining 642 rounds deployed $14.4 billion.

Series A rounds led priced activity with 157 deals totaling $4.3 billion, while seed rounds were the most numerous at 222 deals worth $2.5 billion. Series B activity came in at 66 rounds and $3.9 billion. The US captured 72.8% of total capital ($24.5 billion across 239 rounds), with Asia ($4.7 billion, 179 rounds) and Europe ($3.7 billion, 167 rounds) filling out the picture.

Y Combinator led deal participation with 18 rounds, while Khosla Ventures led the most rounds as lead investor with 6. Software, Science & Engineering, and AI remained the dominant sector categories by capital deployed. Five Series B companies qualified under SignalRank’s v4 model.

Market Pulse

652 rounds closed in April 2026, deploying $33.7 billion in total capital. 649 distinct companies raised, backed by 2,170 investors.

The headline number carries heavy skew: Anthropic’s two corporate rounds ($10 billion and $5 billion) together represent 44.4% of the month’s total. The top 10 deals captured 57.2% of all capital deployed — $19.3 billion across just 1.5% of all rounds.

Adjusting for that concentration, the remaining 642 rounds split $14.4 billion. Pre-seed rounds landed at a $1.4 million median, seed at $3.5 million, Series A at $14.6 million, and Series B at $36.6 million.

6-Month Capital Trend

Over the trailing six months (November 2025 through April 2026), monthly round counts ranged from 652 to 1,019. February 2026 remained the outlier at $193.7 billion (driven by exceptionally large mega-rounds). April’s $33.7 billion across 652 rounds sits in a normalized range alongside November ($25.4 billion) and December ($24.6 billion).

Round counts dropped from a March peak of 1,019 to April’s 652 — a 36% month-over-month decline. This likely reflects seasonal patterns and data lag rather than structural contraction.

Stage-by-Stage View

Pre-Seed: 99 rounds deployed $167.5 million at a median of $1.4 million. Activity remains steady at the earliest stage.

Seed: The most active stage by volume with 222 rounds and $2.5 billion in total capital. The median seed round came in at $3.5 million, with an average of $11.0 million reflecting a long tail of larger seed rounds. Ineffable Intelligence’s $1.1 billion seed round was a standout.

Series A: 157 rounds deployed $4.3 billion at a median of $14.6 million. Series A continues to be the largest priced-round category by deal count among lettered stages.

Series B: 66 rounds at $3.9 billion, with a median of $36.6 million. Valar Atomics ($340 million) led the stage.

Series C: 34 rounds deploying $3.7 billion at a $76.0 million median. Slate Auto’s $650 million round led the stage.

Series D+: 18 rounds across Series D through I, collectively deploying $2.8 billion. True Anomaly’s $600 million Series D and SiFive’s $400 million Series G anchored the late-stage activity.

Corporate/SAFE/Other: 55 rounds deployed $16.5 billion, dominated by Anthropic’s $10 billion and $5 billion corporate rounds.

Top 10 Deals

The ten largest rounds ranged from $300 million (Volant Aerotech, Series C) to $10 billion (Anthropic, corporate). Seven of the top ten were US-based. London placed two deals in the top ten: Ineffable Intelligence ($1.1 billion seed) and Recursive Superintelligence ($500 million Series A). Mexico City entered with Plata’s $405 million Series C. China’s Volant Aerotech ($300 million Series C) rounded out the list.

Geography

United States

The US accounted for 239 rounds and $24.5 billion (72.8% of global capital). San Francisco dominated with 49 rounds and $16.5 billion — heavily driven by Anthropic. New York followed with 31 rounds and $1.0 billion. Cambridge ($578 million, 10 rounds), El Segundo ($540 million, 2 rounds), and San Diego ($538 million, 6 rounds) rounded out the top five US cities.

Global

Beyond the US, Europe posted 167 rounds totaling $3.7 billion, with London ($1.8 billion, 28 rounds) driving the continent. Asia recorded 179 rounds and $4.7 billion, with Shenzhen ($581 million, 7 rounds) and Beijing ($571 million, 9 rounds) as top markets. Bangalore ($342 million, 4 rounds) represented India’s activity, while Tel Aviv ($208 million, 5 rounds) led for Israel.

Who Is Winning

Sector Breakdown

Science and Engineering led all sector categories at $26.4 billion across 273 rounds, followed by Software ($24.7 billion, 291 rounds) and Data and Analytics ($23.0 billion, 209 rounds). AI ($22.6 billion, 196 rounds) and Information Technology ($18.8 billion, 115 rounds) continued to dominate. These categories overlap significantly — many AI companies tag under multiple sector groups. Manufacturing ($4.6 billion, 84 rounds) and Health Care ($3.2 billion, 103 rounds) were the largest non-software verticals.

Lead Investor Activity

Khosla Ventures led 6 rounds in April, deploying $656 million in lead capital. Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Peak XV Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz each led 4 rounds. Lightspeed Venture Partners led 3 rounds worth $1.2 billion — the highest capital among 3-round leads, driven by large growth-stage deals.

Repeat Investors

Y Combinator appeared in 18 rounds — the most active investor in April by participation. General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures each participated in 8 rounds. First Round Capital and Bpifrance each appeared in 7 rounds, reflecting continued European public-sector VC activity from the latter. Among later-stage specialists, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Andreessen Horowitz each participated in 6 rounds.

Smart Money Flow

Investor quality varied by stage. Series B attracted the highest average investor scores, followed by Series D and Series C — consistent with experienced investors concentrating at growth stages. Pre-seed had the lowest average scores, reflecting the wider range of investors active at the earliest stages.

Among Series B rounds, 67 high-score investors (85th percentile or above) participated, out of 370 total. Series A drew 102 high-score investors from 675. Seed rounds attracted 92 high-score investors from 859, a notable volume given the stage’s breadth.

SignalRank Qualifiers Snapshot

5 Series B companies qualified in April under the SignalRank v4 model. By score at Series B, Mintlify (669,762), Avoca (586,131), and Parallel (533,429) led the cohort. By disclosed round size, Avoca ($125 million) and Parallel ($100 million) were the largest. Sona ($45 million) and Sahi ($33 million) rounded out the qualifier set.

Series B rounds did drop, but not proportionately.

From March to April:

• Total Series B rounds fell 34%: 100 -> 66

• SignalRank qualifiers fell 75%: 20 -> 5

• Qualifier rate fell from 20.0% to 7.6%

This is a function of SignalRank algorithms becoming stricter in volatile market conditions - driven by its dynamic thresholding system.

What This Means For

VCs

Capital concentration intensified further in April — 57.2% of all capital flowed to just 10 deals. For funds outside the mega-round bracket, the competitive landscape is moderate: 642 rounds split $14.4 billion. Series A pricing held with a $14.6 million median, and Series B median round sizes remained healthy at $36.6 million.

Founders

Seed-stage founders saw solid activity with 222 rounds closing in April. Pre-seed remained accessible at a $1.4 million median. The month-over-month drop in round count from March’s 1,019 to April’s 652 warrants monitoring, though it may partially reflect data reporting lag. London emerged as a strong alternative hub with 28 rounds and $1.8 billion deployed.

LPs

The trailing 6-month trend shows persistent volatility driven by mega-rounds (February’s $193.7 billion spike remains the outlier). Underlying round counts have fluctuated between 652 and 1,019. Investor quality data shows experienced investors continuing to concentrate at Series B and C — a signal that smart money sees the strongest risk-adjusted opportunity at growth stages.

Trailing trend data covers November 2025 through April 2026.

USVC is part of the wave of products seeking to democratize VC. USVC is a credible new entrant, backed by one of the strongest brands in the VC ecosystem.

But structure still matters. The illiquidity of the product differentiates USVC from other Public Venture Capital funds (PVCs) such as Destiny & Fundrise.

This post will highlight the key features of USVC, as well as some of its differentiating factors. This is most certainly not investment advice.

What is USVC

USVC is a closed-end fund focused on venture capital.

Key features:

• Structure: Closed-end interval fund (limited quarterly liquidity, up to 5%)

• Fees: 2.5% management fee, no carry

• Minimum: $500 (clearly retail targeted)

• Valuation: Marked at NAV daily (no public market premium/discount dynamics)

The NAV as at December 2025 was $8m. Within 24 hours from public launch last week, Ankur Nagpal (GP of USVC) tweeted that “thousands of people ended up subscribing for literally tens of millions of dollars.”

The portfolio today consists of seven assets (xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel, Crusoe, Legora & Sierra). xAI is roughly 50% of the private asset base today. The strategy is to invest across all stages, including early stage via funds and later stage to provide liquidity to shareholders.

The initial assets make it look like USVC is creating another galactico portfolio of hero assets rather than seeking to focus on earlier stage companies with potential for NAV growth. In that sense, it is akin to DXYZ and VCX.

Three things stand out compared to other PVCs

1. AngelList is the real asset

• USVC will benefit from the brand halo effect of AngelList, and the involvement of Naval Ravikant as chairman (as well as Cyan Banister as an advisor) to accelerate distribution.

• Naval can push USVC to his 3m+ followers on X, supporting dealflow and fundraising alike.

• AngelList already has relationships with 4,500+ fund managers, including from AngelList’s fund administration business.

2. Limited liquidity

• USVC is not listed and the starting position is potential for 5% liquidity each quarter. By contrast, exchange-traded closed-end funds, such as DXYZ and VCX, allow investors daily liquidity via public markets (assuming the trading volume is there).

• The CEO of DXYZ has already tweeted the lyrics of Hotel California at USVC.

• We have previously written about why the asset-liability mismatch for these types of interval funds is problematic. Venture assets are long-duration and illiquid.

• The corollary of not listing the fund is that share price is set at NAV. This does not allow for the fund to trade at a premium to NAV when there is sufficient demand.

• Nevertheless, ARK VC, which has a similar interval fund structure, has been successful in driving NAV growth and in raising capital. In Q1 2026 alone, ARK’s AUM grew by $207m to $711m.

3. Indirect strategy

• The investment strategy lacks definition (and is potentially expensive). USVC positions itself as BOTH early and late stage, BOTH direct and indirect (via funds), and delivering BOTH brand-name exposure and future growth.

• In practice, USVC will initially invest via other traditional VC funds. The positions today are via two vehicles (Acquired Capital Fund LP and NB Ventures XAI II LP). The plan in the future is to make more direct investments.

• The indirect strategy of investing via funds will increase fee load as USVC will likely be paying management fees and carry to the underlying managers.

In short, USVC is a strong entrant into the PVC stable, offering a new product on top of the AngelList platform and network. The pull of Naval / AngelList is not to be discounted. Retail investors will surely flock to this product, in spite of questions to be answered about illiquidity and investment strategy.

We are aware of at least two other PVCs who have filed N-2s who will be launching publicly soon. It is exciting to see the emergence of this new financial product, especially as different managers are selecting different structures and strategies to achieve the same goal: providing retail capital with early access to the next power law companies.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

The current PVC products are trading well, typically above Net Asset Value. This flies in the face of received wisdom which until recently accepted that listed entities with private assets trade at discounts to NAV.

And in many ways the premia/discount to NAV debate is a red herring to the core question of whether NAV itself is growing. It is this NAV growth that is core to SignalRank’s own model (given our focus on Series Bs, not pre-IPO stocks), not the premium/discount to NAV.

Nevertheless, what are the key factors in driving share price to trade at a premium to NAV? And how do these impact the current stable of PVCs?

Factors driving share price

Public funds of private assets typically trade at a discount to NAV. The main reasons are as follows:

• Liquidity discount: investors apply a discount to a portfolio due to the fact that the underlying assets (private companies, real estate, some crypto) cannot be instantly sold. The more illiquid the assets, the greater the discount.

• Valuation skepticism: internal valuations are set by managers, leading investors to question a NAV number that hasn’t been stress-tested in an actual sale.

• Higher fees: managers of private assets typically charge higher fees (and carry) than their public market colleagues, which has a negative impact on NAV.

• Thin demand: trading volumes in these assets tend to be somewhat low, leading to greater bid/ask spreads.

And yet. The newer models of PVCs are overcoming these factors to trade at premia to NAV, not discounts. This is primarily due to:

• Brand awareness: portfolios with assets such as OpenAI & SpaceX benefit from high retail awareness of the underlying assets.

• Asset scarcity: investors pay to access quality assets which are unavailable elsewhere, such as Anthropic.

• Thin float: PVCs operating within lock-up periods have smaller floats which will artificially impact the movement of shares, given limited access to the shares.

Some secondary components also come into play such as the listing location (with US public investors valuing growth more than in Europe), market sentiment (especially the AI frenzy today), first mover advantage (as the market does not understand PVCs yet) and portfolio concentration (with some PVCs being so concentrated as to be proxies for single assets).

But it is worth noting that these premia historically tend to compress, as new supply eventually meets demands (rights issues, competing vehicles, eventual IPOs of the underlying companies that remove the exclusivity premium).

Again, NAV growth itself should be more important than premia/discounts to NAV.

Premia/discount to NAV for existing PVCs

Listed VCs are not a new phenomenon in Europe. Government / public-funded capital remains the largest source of LP capital in Europe. It has historically been challenging for non-Tier 1 European managers to raise commercial capital, forcing some to resort to the public markets as a source of capital.

These platforms have typically underperformed. This is perhaps of no surprise, given these GPs’ inability to access generational companies, combined with thin European capital markets and a conservative European public market investor base.

Covid-mania led Molten Ventures (Figure 1) and Augmentum (Figure 2), which are two listed VCs in the UK, to briefly trade above NAV. The norm today is more like a 35%+ discount to NAV.

Figure 1. Molten Ventures share price & NAV evolution since 2016

Source: Hargreaves Lansdown

Figure 2. Augmentum’s share price & NAV evolution since 2018

Source: Hargreaves Lansdown

It is not all bad news in Europe. Flat Capital, run by Klarna CEO (Sebastian Siemiatkowski), has significant positions in OpenAI as well as Klarna itself. This has led Flat Capital to trade at a premium to NAV since Q3 2024 (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Flat Capital’s share price & NAV evolution since 2022

Source: Claude

Turning to the more recent US PVCs, DXYZ has consistently traded at a premium to NAV (Figure 4) since listing in 2024.

This spiked at 20x+ at the initial listing and jumped again with Trump’s 2024 re-election (which benefited SpaceX which was 50%+ of the portfolio at the time), before stabilizing at an average of 380% premium to NAV for 2025. This subsequently reduced further as DXYZ raised almost $250m in Q4 2025, bringing the average premium to NAV for 2026 to 40%.

Figure 4. DXYZ’s share price & NAV evolution since listing

Source: Yahoo Finance

There is less history for Robinhood Ventures and Fundrise which both listed in Q1 2026.

Robinhood Ventures (RVI), underwritten by Goldman Sachs, has seen a more stable trading pattern (Figure 5). The lack of a initial pop probably speaks to a portfolio that is underweight AI, focused more on winners from the prior cycle and consumer-facing products that will appeal to their 27m account holders. The success of the Fundrise listing did drag the RVI share price above NAV, and RVI currently trades at a 7% premium to NAV.

Figure 5. Robinhood Ventures’ share price & NAV evolution since listing

Source: Yahoo Finance

By contrast, Fundrise’s share price evolution is much more in-line with DXYZ (Figure 6). The combination of a portfolio with prized assets and a very thin float has led VCX to trade wildly in initial sessions. Current share price as at 3/31/26 is above 600% premium to NAV.

Figure 6. Fundrise’s VCX share price & NAV evolution since listing

Source: Yahoo Finance

Closing thoughts

We have previously written about why fund structure matters. In the US, the closed-end fund model allows the share price to diverge from NAV (like DXYZ), while other structures, including the interval fund structure that ARK Ventures selected, are tied exactly to NAV.

This led to a public spat between DXYZ’s CEO, Sohail Prasad, and ARK’s Cathie Wood.

In the long term, this is noise. As more and more PVCs come to market offering similar products, the premia to NAV will likely compress, unless tied directly to expected NV growth.

Indeed, what will differentiate managers is those whose products can deliver consistent NAV growth and those who cannot.

The information contained in this document has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty expressed or implied is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of this information or opinions contained herein. Certain statements contained in this document may be statements of future expectations and other forward looking statements that are based on management’s current view and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. None of Signal Rank Corp or any of its affiliates, advisors or representatives shall have any liability whatsoever (in negligence or otherwise) for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this document or its content or otherwise arising in connection with this document. This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to purchase or subscribe for any shares. For further details, please refer to the Offering Documents describing Signal Rank Corp. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as tax, accounting or legal advice. Signal Rank Corp does not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any such statement herein was written to support the marketing or promotion of the transaction(s) or matter(s) to which the statement relates. Each taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

March 2026 saw $35.5 billion deployed across 695 funding rounds involving 2,321 distinct investors. Capital concentration remained elevated: the ten largest deals accounted for 52.1% of all capital, led by OpenAI’s $10 billion corporate follow-on. Excluding the top ten, the remaining 685 rounds deployed $17.0 billion — a more grounded view of core venture activity.

Series A rounds led by dollar volume with 158 deals totaling $5.0 billion, while seed rounds were the most numerous at 261 deals worth $2.6 billion. Series B activity held steady at 78 rounds and $4.3 billion. The US captured 72.5% of total capital ($25.7 billion across 277 rounds), with Europe ($4.2 billion, 185 rounds) and Asia ($3.3 billion, 166 rounds) filling out the picture.

On the investor side, Y Combinator led deal participation with 30 rounds, while Andreessen Horowitz led 8 rounds — the most of any investor in March. Software, Science & Engineering, and AI remained the dominant sector categories by capital deployed.

Market Pulse

695 rounds closed in March 2026, deploying $35.5 billion in total capital. 695 distinct companies raised, backed by 2,321 investors.

The headline number carries a significant skew: OpenAI’s $10 billion after-corporate round alone represents 28.2% of the month’s total. The top 10 deals captured 52.1% of all capital deployed — $18.5 billion across just 1.4% of all rounds.

Adjusting for that concentration, the median round across stages varied widely: pre-seed rounds landed at $1.0 million, seed at $4.1 million, Series A at $17.3 million, and Series B at $34.9 million.

6-Month Capital Trend

Over the trailing six months (October 2025 through March 2026), monthly round counts ranged from 695 to 1,085. January 2026 saw $51.3 billion deployed across 875 rounds, and February spiked to $180.6 billion (driven by exceptionally large mega-rounds). March’s $35.5 billion across 695 rounds represents a return to a more typical range.

Round counts have declined steadily from the October 2025 peak of 1,085 to March’s 695 — a 36% drop over six months. This likely reflects seasonal patterns combined with ongoing market selectivity.

Stage-by-Stage View

Pre-Seed: 81 rounds deployed $153.1 million at a median of $1.0 million. Activity remains robust at the earliest stage, though round sizes stay compressed.

Seed: The most active stage by volume with 261 rounds and $2.6 billion in total capital. The median seed round came in at $4.1 million, with an average of $9.9 million reflecting a long tail of larger seed rounds.

Series A: 158 rounds deployed $5.0 billion at a median of $17.3 million. Series A continues to be the largest priced-round category by total capital.

Series B: 78 rounds at $4.3 billion, with a median of $34.9 million. Nexthop AI ($500 million) and Cloaked ($375 million) anchored the largest B rounds.

Series C: 42 rounds deploying $3.1 billion at a $44.5 million median. Sierra Space’s $550 million round led the stage.

Series D+: 23 rounds across Series D through G, collectively deploying $5.2 billion. Shield AI’s $2.0 billion Series G was the largest late-stage deal.

Corporate/SAFE/Other: 52 rounds deployed $15.2 billion, dominated by OpenAI’s $10 billion after-corporate round and PT Chandra Asri Alkali’s $800 million SAFE.

Top 10 Deals

The ten largest rounds ranged from $500 million (Mind Robotics, Series A) to $10 billion (OpenAI, after-corporate). Seven of the top ten were US-based. Notable non-US entries include Advanced Machine Intelligence (Paris, $1.03 billion seed) and Legora (Stockholm, $550 million Series D).

Geography

United States

The US accounted for 277 rounds and $25.7 billion (72.5% of global capital). San Francisco dominated with 54 rounds and $11.7 billion — much of that driven by OpenAI. New York followed with 49 rounds and $2.5 billion, establishing itself as a clear second hub. San Diego ($2.1 billion, 6 rounds) and Palo Alto ($1.4 billion, 9 rounds) rounded out the top four.

Global

Beyond the US, Europe posted 185 rounds totaling $4.2 billion, with Paris ($1.2 billion, 16 rounds) and London ($830 million, 38 rounds) leading the continent. Asia recorded 166 rounds and $3.3 billion, with Beijing ($698 million) and Shanghai ($294 million) as the top markets. Stockholm ($687 million, 8 rounds) punched above its weight among European cities.

Who Is Winning

Sector Breakdown

Software led all sector categories at $26.4 billion across 339 rounds, followed by Science & Engineering ($25.1 billion, 286 rounds) and AI ($22.8 billion, 207 rounds). These categories overlap significantly — many AI companies also tag under Software and Data. Financial Services ($4.3 billion, 86 rounds) and Health Care ($2.7 billion, 114 rounds) were the largest non-tech verticals.

Lead Investor Activity

Andreessen Horowitz led 8 rounds in March, deploying $11.1 billion in lead capital (heavily weighted by OpenAI). NEXEA also led 8 rounds, though at the other end of the size spectrum. General Catalyst led 7 rounds worth $496 million, and Accel led 6 rounds deploying $1.1 billion.

Repeat Investors

Y Combinator appeared in 30 rounds — the most active investor in March by participation. General Catalyst (16 rounds), Andreessen Horowitz (15), and Accel (10) followed. Coatue appeared in 9 rounds, concentrating on later-stage deals. Among European firms, Balderton Capital (5 rounds) and Speedinvest (5 rounds) were the most prolific.

SignalRank Qualifiers Snapshot

17 Series B rounds in March featured qualified for SignalRank Series B pro-rata underwriting. Nexthop AI ($500 million), Sunday ($165 million) and Wonderful ($150 million) topped the list. The qualifier set spanned sectors from AI infrastructure to biotech, with the majority of companies headquartered in the US.

What This Means For

VCs

Capital concentration remains a defining feature: half of all capital flows to just 10 deals. For funds outside the mega-round bracket, the competitive landscape is actually more moderate — 685 rounds split $17.0 billion, offering plenty of deployment opportunity. Series A pricing held steady with a $17.3 million median, but the gap between median and average ($31.6 million) signals a growing bifurcation in round sizes.

Founders

Seed-stage founders saw healthy activity with 261 rounds closing in March. Pre-seed remained accessible at a $1.0 million median. For Series A-stage companies, the 158 rounds completed suggest steady but selective investor behavior. The decline in total round count from October’s 1,085 to March’s 695 indicates rising selectivity — founders should prepare for longer processes.

LPs

The trailing 6-month trend shows month-to-month volatility driven by mega-rounds (February’s $180.6 billion spike). Underlying round counts have softened, dropping 36% from October. The investor quality data shows experienced investors continuing to concentrate at Series B and C — a signal that smart money sees value in growth-stage opportunities even as early-stage volume contracts.

It isn’t.

I have long thought of venture capital as having become three distinct asset approaches: broadly seed, venture, and growth. Kyle Harrison suggests four, and I think he is directionally right.

In “Venture Capital Doesn’t Exist”, he argues that what we keep calling “venture capital” is really a conflation of four different things: seed stage investing, traditional venture, supercharged growth investing, and what used to be small-cap growth tech stocks. That feels right to me. I would add a fifth: the emergence of secondary buying being packaged for retail investors as something like public venture capital.

The changing nature of venture capital is the most important unifying theme in the recent run of excellent essays on venture. All are worth reading:

• Kyle Harrison’s “Venture Capital Doesn’t Exist” ( )

• Dan Gray at Credistick’s “Diseconomies of Scale”

• Jeff Becker’s “Why You Should Never Go Into VC” ( )

• Nicolai Rasmussen’s “The Math on Venture Capital Is Broken” ( )

• And, in a slightly different but highly relevant direction for early-stage investing, Dan Gray’s “The Reformation Will Be Funded”

While venture capital does not exist in the singular, concentration very much does. And that concentration is symbolic of the changes. It is happening at all stages, but perhaps most surprisingly at the earliest stages.

Concentration At Seed And Series A

That is what the numbers show.

The cleanest lens is the top 5 investors, measured by SignalRank’s Seed and Series A investor scores.

On that basis, both Seed and Series A are concentrating into fewer hands.

At Seed, the top 5 firms by the latest Seed Rank accounted for 3.11% of all seed dollars in 2020. In 2025, they accounted for 14.35%. In 2026 year-to-date, they are at 16.43%. These numbers represent the amount raised int he rounds, not the amount each firm contributed. If two of the top five invested the amount raised will still be accurate.

At Series A, the top 5 firms accounted for 10.83% of all dollars in 2020. In 2024, they were at 14.74%. In 2026 year-to-date, they are at 15.16%.

That alone should change the conversation.

Here is the simplest picture of what is happening.

The thing that jumps out is not just that Series A starts more concentrated than Seed. It is that Seed is catching up fast. Five investors are approaching 20% of all early-stage investment dollars, out of more than 7,000 active seed investors and more than 10,000 Series A investors.

That matters because it intersects with another argument that has become harder to ignore: the underlying math of venture looks increasingly broken.

Nicolai Rasmussen makes that case in “The Math on Venture Capital Is Broken”. If the required return for venture is in the low 20s, but many funds are delivering something materially below that after years of lock-up and illiquidity, then the asset class has a structural problem.

His conclusion is sharp:

“The funds that will win the next cycle are the ones willing to concentrate, get their hands dirty, and earn their returns through involvement, not just capital deployment.”

Concentration as strategy is clearly happening.

And if the biggest five firms absorb the best startups by writing the largest checks, then, ipso facto, the other 10,000 firms will struggle to deliver strong returns of any kind.

One response is the Rasmussen response: larger ownership, fewer bets, deeper involvement, more control, more work. In other words, stop pretending that passive capital deployment is enough and move closer to a model where you can actually influence outcomes. That may be right, but it also projects the death of many realistic early-stage venture business models.

This is really about market power. A small number of firms can become better at winning access, winning allocation, and winning distribution even if the asset class itself is not becoming more attractive. Megafunds may not deliver outsized power-law returns, but they will still contain the winners. Gross multiples may be lower, but deployed at great scale. And LPs will continue to fund that strategy.

For years, the central critique of venture has been scale. In “Diseconomies of Scale”, Dan Gray says it plainly: “venture capital does not scale.” I think that is basically right. Big funds are not naturally designed to maximize venture-style outcomes.

But a business can fail to scale economically and still scale institutionally.

That is what the current market looks like.

At Seed, the top 5 firms touched just 1.01% of rounds in 2020 but captured 3.11% of dollars. In 2025, they touched 1.56% of rounds and captured 14.35% of dollars. In 2026 year-to-date, they are at 1.73% of rounds and 16.43% of dollars.

That is not a story about doing a lot more deals. It is a story about controlling a larger share of the important ones.

This is the Seed view.

The Seed top 5 are:

• Andreessen Horowitz

• SV Angel

• Sequoia Capital

• Lightspeed Venture Partners

• Menlo Ventures

That list has a logic to it. It is about brand, access, network density, and founder pull. But what is most striking is the slope. Seed used to look more diffuse. It no longer does.

Series A is a different kind of market.

It was already concentrated in 2020. The top 5 firms accounted for 10.83% of dollars then, compared with Seed’s 3.11%. It dipped, then rebuilt. By 2024 it was 14.74%. By 2026 year-to-date it is 15.16%.

So Seed is an accelerating concentration story. Series A is an entrenched and accelerating concentration story.

This is the Series A view.

The Series A top 5 are:

• Lightspeed Venture Partners

• SV Angel

• Sequoia Capital

• Andreessen Horowitz

• General Catalyst

Again, not random.

This is where the phrase “venture capital doesn’t exist” becomes genuinely useful. It does not just mean there are different stages and styles of investing. It means there are different market structures hiding under the same label.

Seed is still closer to company formation, experimentation, and access creation. Series A is much closer to a gated signaling market. One is becoming more concentrated. The other has been concentrated for a long time. But both only prosper if early-stage funds continue to discover the best founders and the best ideas. Capital concentration at these stages is a bit like a parent eating its children. The future of the entire value chain relies on great Seed and Series A investors.

That is also why the current reformation language resonates. In “Protestant Capital”, Dan Gray describes the alternative model as “arrive first, invest early, let the market catch up.” That is a very different business from running a large multistage platform. It implies conviction, asymmetry, and real differentiation. It is not just a smaller version of the incumbent model.

And that is the real strategic implication of the data.

The market is not simply bifurcating between large and small. It is squeezing the middle. At the same time, it is struggling for liquidity and opening up to secondary exits to retail investors as one possible solution. “Rome is burning” feels more apt than any obviously positive message.

The firms that look safest from the outside are consolidating market share. But if the diseconomies-of-scale argument is right, that does not automatically mean they are restoring the return profile LPs actually need. Meanwhile, the firms that might produce true outlier returns can no longer survive by being generically early-stage. They need a genuine edge. And LPs need to back them.

This is where Jeff Becker’s line in “Why You Should Never Go Into VC” hits hard: “the market is concentrating against you.”

Against whom? Against generic founders raising without elite access. Against generic GPs trying to build generic funds. Against LPs who confuse institutional safety with economic adequacy.

That is the tension at the center of venture right now.

The category is fragmenting. The capital is consolidating.

For founders, that means there is no single fundraising market anymore. There is a hierarchy. If you can access the top firms, the value of that access is rising. If you cannot, you need to be realistic about which market you are in and what kind of syndicate can actually help you.

For LPs, the implication is even sharper. If the market keeps concentrating into a handful of firms, manager selection matters more than ever. But if the same firms winning that concentration battle are doing so in a business whose economics are deteriorating with scale, then the obvious allocation path may not be the right one.

For emerging managers, the message is brutal. There is less and less room for the generic venture fund. You need either genuine structural differentiation or the ability to drive outcomes through access, ownership, and involvement. Probably all three.

This is the broader context across both markets.

So the conclusion is simple. Venture capital does not exist.

What exists are several different capital businesses, each with different economics, different forms of edge, and different market structures.

But across those businesses, one trend is now unmistakable: more of the money is being controlled by fewer firms. And retail investors are being lined up via public secondary vehicles to supply liquidity to those who need it.

That will not solve venture’s return problem. It may, in fact, be one of the clearest signs of it. And retail investors in Robinhood’s $25 a share RVI have already experienced that valuations of later stage secondary assets are potentially flaky and subject to not holding up.

My own focus is to channel capital to early-stage funds by doing pro-rata investments into their best companies. That is SignalRank’s purpose. It channels capital from investors to seed managers and their Series B-stage companies. These companies still have significant future growth and can be attractive to retail investors looking for venture returns. Happy retail investors and happy seed stage managers is a winning combination. The impact of these flows is to counter the concentration impact.

The flywheel of capital channelled into the seed ecosystem, producing greater capital by investing at Series B, can live in that virtuous cycle. I think the health of the early-stage ecosystem, and thereby the whole ecosystem, needs that flywheel.

Three rounds broke the venture capital market in February. OpenAI raised $110 billion in a corporate round. Anthropic raised $30 billion in a Series G. Waymo raised $16 billion in a Series D. Combined, those three companies absorbed $156 billion -- 88% of all venture capital deployed globally during the month. Strip them out and February was a $21 billion month with 751 other rounds. That underlying number is roughly in line with November and December 2025.

Executive summary

February saw $177.4 billion deployed across 754 rounds into 753 companies, with 2,602 active investors. The numbers are historically unprecedented, but the story is really about three companies, not the broader market.

• Total capital deployed: $177.4 billion

• Total excluding OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo: $21.4 billion

• Deal volume: 754 rounds across 753 companies

• Active investors: 2,602

• Average round size: $235.2 million

• Median round size: $7.0 million

The gap between average ($235M) and median ($7M) is the widest we have recorded. It tells you everything about how concentrated February was.

6-month capital trend

The trailing six months show what February looked like in context. September through December 2025 settled into a $23-46 billion range. January 2026 spiked to $50.3 billion (mostly xAI’s $20B). February then tripled January.

The question going forward: are we entering a regime where one or two mega-rounds per month define the totals, or was February an anomaly? The honest answer is that nobody knows. What is clear is that AI foundation model companies now raise at a scale that used to be reserved for sovereign debt issuances.

Investment by stage

The stage breakdown is dominated by three categories that each carried a single outlier. Corporate rounds ($110.9B) means OpenAI. Series G ($30B) means Anthropic. Series D ($19.2B) is mostly Waymo with ElevenLabs and Wayve adding $1.7B between them.

Below the outliers, the early-stage market looks normal. Series A produced 184 rounds at $5.4 billion total, with a $15.9M median. Seed had 276 rounds at $1.4 billion with a $3M median. Pre-Seed added 106 rounds. Together, Seed and Pre-Seed represented 50.7% of all deal volume -- a healthy early-stage pipeline.

Series B activity was solid: 75 rounds totaling $4.5 billion, with a $30M median. MatX ($500M for AI chip hardware) was the standout. Series C had 27 rounds at $2.1B, with Skyryse ($300M for flight automation) and other companies contributing.

Geographic distribution

US capital by state

California’s share of US venture capital reached 95.9% in February, driven almost entirely by San Francisco and Mountain View (where OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo are headquartered). This is the highest concentration we have seen. New York was a distant second at 1.5%, with Texas, Washington, and Massachusetts each capturing less than half a percent.

Global capital by city

San Francisco absorbed $142.5 billion across 66 rounds -- OpenAI and Anthropic alone account for $140 billion of that. Mountain View (Waymo, plus several others) added $16.7 billion. After those two cities, New York ($2.5B, 49 rounds) and London ($1.9B, 35 rounds) led the global table.

The US captured $169.2 billion total, followed by China ($2.0B), the UK ($2.0B), India ($0.8B), and Germany ($0.4B). Mexico appeared in the top ten for the first time in recent months thanks to Kavak’s $300M Series F.

Who is winning

Sector breakdown

The raw sector numbers are misleading because the top four categories (AI, Software, Data and Analytics, Science and Engineering) all appear on OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo’s tags. With those three removed, the more informative sectors are Health Care ($3.1B), Hardware ($2.8B standalone), Manufacturing ($2.6B), Internet Services ($2.5B), and Financial Services ($2.4B).

Health Care’s $3.1 billion spread across 110 rounds, making it the most diversified sector by deal count. Financial Services had 107 rounds -- significant breadth, though lower total capital. AI remains the dominant theme, but the non-AI economy is raising money too.

Lead investor analysis

Accel led 9 rounds in February, more than any traditional VC firm, ranging from Anthropic to early-stage deals in India. Andreessen Horowitz led 8 rounds including Waymo and ElevenLabs. Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India) led 7, reflecting continued India-focused activity.

A note on the data: Exel by Merak (18 leads) and AlphaLab (14) are accelerator programs that lead small rounds at volume. Their presence at the top of the lead count reflects the mechanics of accelerator batch investing, not the same kind of capital deployment as a Sequoia or Andreessen lead.

Repeat investors

Y Combinator appeared in 19 rounds during February, the most of any investor. Accel appeared in 12, Andreessen Horowitz in 12, General Catalyst in 11, Lightspeed in 11, and Bessemer in 10. This overlap cluster represents the firms that show up everywhere in February’s deal flow.

Bessemer, Sequoia, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Accel, and Andreessen Horowitz all appeared in the Anthropic and/or Waymo cap tables, which inflates their total capital deployed. But their presence in 8-12 rounds each, including seed and Series A deals, reflects genuine breadth.

Smart money flow

Investor quality (measured by SignalRank’s percentile scoring) concentrated at Series B and Series C. Series B rounds attracted investors with an average score of 3,578 and 68 high-score (85th+ percentile) investors. Series C averaged 5,897 and had 29 high-score investors. Series A had 152 high-score investors -- the largest absolute count -- reflecting the volume of deals that attract experienced backers.

Pre-Seed investor scores remain low (average 50), which is expected: these rounds are led by angels, micro-funds, and first-time managers who have not yet built scoring track records.

Top 10 deals of the month

1. OpenAI (USA) - Corporate Round: $110.0B -- SoftBank, Amazon, and NVIDIA co-led

2. Anthropic (USA) - Series G: $30.0B -- Coatue, D.E. Shaw, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, GIC, ICONIQ, MGX co-led

3. Waymo (USA) - Series D: $16.0B -- Alphabet, DST Global, Dragoneer, Sequoia co-led

4. Wayve (UK) - Series D: $1.2B -- Balderton, Eclipse, SoftBank Vision Fund co-led

5. Cerebras Systems (USA) - Series H: $1.0B -- AI chip company

6. MatX (USA) - Series B: $500M -- AI hardware

7. Ayar Labs (USA) - Series E: $500M -- Optical I/O chips

8. ElevenLabs (USA) - Series D: $500M -- AI voice synthesis

9. Inertia (USA) - Series A: $450M -- Energy infrastructure

10. Vestwell (USA) - Series E: $385M -- Retirement savings platform

Capital concentration analysis

Concentration was extreme across every late-stage category. Corporate rounds: OpenAI alone was 99.2% of the category. Series G: Anthropic was 100%. Series D: the top three rounds (Waymo, Wayve, ElevenLabs) captured 92.2%. Even at Series E, the top three (Ayar Labs, Vestwell, SambaNova) captured 78.6%.

The earlier stages were more diffuse. Seed’s top three rounds captured only 12% of seed capital. Series A’s top three captured 19.7%. This is the normal shape of a functioning venture market -- concentration increases with stage.

SignalRank qualifiers snapshot

February produced 33 SignalRank-qualifying Series B companies(investor score at or above the 85th percentile). The top scorers were Heron Power (energy/manufacturing, $140M) and Braintrust (AI/software, $80M), both backed by Andreessen Horowitz.

The qualifying companies span AI hardware (MatX, Positron, Code Metal), AI software (Braintrust, Goodfire, Basis, Letter AI), robotics (Bedrock Robotics, Gather AI, Overland AI), security (VulnCheck, Reco), energy (Heron Power, Andercore), fintech (Bretton AI, Ownwell, Jump, Novig), legal (Lawhive), biotech (Turbine, Altesa, BreezeBio, Alaffia Health), and defense (Forerunner). 33 qualifiers is the highest single-month count we have reported since launching this newsletter.

What this means for

VCs

The mega-round syndicate list for Anthropic reads like a who’s-who: Coatue, D.E. Shaw, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, GIC, ICONIQ, MGX, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Blackstone, BlackRock. Waymo’s cap table includes Sequoia, Andreessen, Tiger Global, Silver Lake, Kleiner Perkins. These are no longer traditional venture syndicates -- they are blended allocations combining VC, crossover, sovereign, and PE capital. The practical effect for smaller VCs: Series D+ is increasingly closed to firms without existing board positions or strategic leverage.

The opportunity for smaller funds is the 751 rounds that were not OpenAI, Anthropic, or Waymo. The early-stage market (382 seed and pre-seed rounds) is where most VCs can still compete on sourcing, conviction, and speed.

Founders

February’s data shows that the capital markets are wide open for AI companies at any stage. MatX raised a $500M Series B. Inertia raised a $450M Series A for energy. Heron Power raised $140M at Series B for manufacturing. If your company touches AI or energy infrastructure, investor appetite is high and round sizes are growing.

For everyone else: the market is functional but selective. Health Care, Financial Services, and Commerce each produced dozens of rounds. You can raise, but round sizes at seed and Series A remain concentrated around $3M and $16M respectively, and you will compete for attention in a month where AI consumed most of the headlines.

LPs

The concentration numbers demand attention. Three rounds absorbed 88% of all capital deployed in February. An LP’s vintage-year returns now depend heavily on whether their GPs had allocation in OpenAI, Anthropic, or Waymo. Funds that participated in even one of those rounds will report dramatically different gross returns than funds that did not.

The broader question is whether this concentration is sustainable. These rounds are priced as if the AI foundation model market will produce multiple trillion-dollar companies. That might be correct. But the capital at risk is large enough that a single valuation reset could ripple across LP portfolios.

Methodology and data notes

Data sourced from SignalRank with help from Crunchbase and Preqin. Analysis covers announced rounds from February 1-28, 2026. Stage classifications follow Crunchbase categories (Pre-Seed, Seed, SAFE, Series A through Series H, Corporate Round, Undisclosed). Only rounds with disclosed amounts above zero are included. Post-IPO debt and equity rounds are excluded. Geographic data uses company headquarters location. Investor scoring uses SignalRank’s percentile-based system where 85th percentile and above indicates high-signal backers.

The trailing 6-month trend covers September 2025 through February 2026. All capital figures are in USD.

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A resource for all stakeholders to discuss the state of venture capital

By Signal Rank Corporation

The FT pointed to this chart (Figure 1) to show that retail now represents 20%+ of trading volumes in the US public markets, back to % levels not seen since the 1980s.

Figure 1. Retail share of US trading volume

Similarly, the AUM for retail assets in the private markets is expected to scale rapidly. Deloitte anticipates exponential growth ahead, with $2.4 trillion allocated by US retail investors in private assets by 2030 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. US retail allocation to private capital to 2030 (AUM, $ trillions)

US policymakers seeking to open up 401(k)s to crypto and private markets alike will certainly help in achieving these numbers. This trend does have some echoes with history. To use the modern parlance, the “democratization of credit” helped fuel a speculative frenzy in the 1920s. Will the “democratization of alternatives” have a similar impact?

Institutional actors are paying attention. The ILPA warned its members that retail vehicles have distinct governance and regulatory requirements from institutional funds, as well differences in liquidity, valuations, fees and transparency. Similarly, Moody’s argues that selling funds to retail introduces new risks to GPs including “reputation loss, heightened regulatory scrutiny and higher costs” and potentially “systemic consequences.”

Nevertheless, the key point is that retail will be competing with institutional LPs for allocation into the same underlying companies.

This is most visible today in the pre-IPO companies (especially with the launch of the new Public Venture Capital models like Robinhood & Destiny).

Subject to regulatory considerations and appropriate structuring, SignalRank intends to explore making elements of its Series B strategy available to a broader investor base.

More broadly, we anticipate retail vehicles to deploy capital at earlier stages in the capital stack than has historically been the case.

This article was written in collaboration with my OpenClaw Agent. It was not written by it. I take all responsibility for the content. Just FYI.

PitchBook published its 2025 Annual US VC Secondary Market Watch this week. The headline number: $106.3 billion traded through US venture secondaries in 2025. That figure deserves context, and scrutiny. It accompanies the Thomasz Tunguz piece from last week.

For the first time, venture secondaries are operating at a scale comparable to the two traditional exit channels. Acquisitions delivered $140.7 billion. Public listings produced $119.6 billion. Secondaries - a market that barely registered as an institutional category five years ago - hit $106.3 billion ($91.7B direct + $14.6B GP-led).

As Tunguz acknowledged, this is the third pillar of venture liquidity. It arrived faster than most people expected.

How fast it grew

Annualized direct secondary value went from $50 billion in Q4 2024 to $91.7 billion by Q4 2025. That is an 83% increase in five quarters.

Much of this acceleration was driven by valuation surges at the top end. SpaceX moved from $350 billion to $1.25 trillion in twelve months. OpenAI’s $6.6 billion tender offer alone accounted for 6.2% of annual secondary volume. When a single transaction represents more than 6% of an entire market, that market has a concentration problem.

Concentration

On Hiive, the top 20 startups accounted for 86.4% of secondary trading value in Q4 2025. The top five alone represented 55.6%. SpaceX was the most actively traded name on Augment, representing 12.5% of total platform activity.

The vast majority of the $106 billion secondary market is a handful of mega-cap names trading among sophisticated participants. The long tail - the other 13.6% - is where price discovery is weakest, information asymmetry is greatest, and the risk of adverse selection is highest.

This has direct implications for the emerging Public Venture Capital (PVC) category. The funds now listing on public exchanges - Robinhood Ventures (RVI), Powerlaw (PWRL), Fundrise (VCX), Destiny Tech100 (DXYZ) - are overwhelmingly concentrated in the same top-20 names that dominate secondary volume. They are not diversifying beyond this concentration. They are repackaging it for retail.

$22 billion in acquisitions: who is buying the plumbing

PitchBook documents an institutional buying spree, but the full picture is bigger than their report covers. Over $22 billion in acquisitions in under a decade, the largest financial institutions in the world have been assembling private market infrastructure piece by piece.

Goldman Sachs bought Industry Ventures (~$965M), a secondary fund manager. Morgan Stanley took EquityZen, a secondary marketplace, and Shareworks for equity management. Schwab bought Forge Global (~$660M), another marketplace. JPMorgan acquired Aumni, Global Shares (EUR665M), and First Republic ($10.6B) - cap table intelligence, equity administration, and banking in one sweep. Capital One is acquiring Brex ($5.15B) for startup banking and spend management. Carta has made at least eight acquisitions (Accelex, Capdesk, Sirvatus, SVB Analytics, Tactyc, Vauban, ZenEquity) to own the equity lifecycle from the inside. Piper Sandler launched private markets trading, hiring senior talent from Forge. Nasdaq Private Market partnered with G Squared for priority access to tender offers.

And then there is BlackRock. They acquired Preqin for $3.2 billion and eFront for $1.3 billion. Preqin is the dominant private markets data and analytics provider. eFront is the operating system that alternatives managers use to run their portfolios. Together they give BlackRock the information layer and the operating infrastructure beneath all private markets - the valuations, fund performance benchmarks, deal flow data, and LP intelligence that determine how private assets are priced, compared, and allocated. When the world’s largest allocator of capital owns the definitive pricing and benchmarking infrastructure for private markets, the information advantage that has historically favored private market insiders starts to erode. At least for BlackRock’s institutional clients.

One detail that has not gotten enough attention: several of these acquisitions were European companies. eFront was French. Preqin and Global Shares were British. SVB UK was absorbed in the First Republic deal. American financial giants have been quietly absorbing European-built private market infrastructure.

The common thread across all of it is intermediation: transaction fees, fund management revenues, data subscriptions, and the ability to offer wealth management and institutional clients private market exposure through institutional-grade channels.

What does this mean for PVC funds?

The competitive threat is not deal flow. It is distribution. When Goldman’s wealth advisors can offer clients access to secondary venture through Industry Ventures’ managed funds at NAV, the case for buying DXYZ at a 46% premium or Powerlaw at a 2/20 fee structure gets hard to make. The banks are not competing with PVC funds for SpaceX shares. They are competing for the same investor dollars, and offering a product that is cheaper, better governed, and available without a public market premium.

Tender offers are becoming standard

One of PitchBook’s most consequential findings: company-led tender offers are becoming the default liquidity mechanism. Rather than employees and early investors selling ad hoc on secondary platforms, leading startups are running structured, recurring liquidity programs.

This is healthy. It gives companies control over their cap tables and reduces unauthorized transactions. But it also means the best secondary access is increasingly gated. You get into a tender offer because the company invites you, not because you found a willing seller on a platform.

For PVC funds relying on secondary market access as their core strategy, this is a structural headwind. As companies formalize their liquidity programs, the window for uninvited secondary buyers narrows.

The temporary vacuum ahead

PitchBook projects a decline in secondary volume if SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic go public in 2026, as all three are actively preparing to do. These three companies likely represent 30-40% of current secondary volume, so the short-term impact would be real.

But the medium-term effect is positive. More IPOs mean fresher pricing benchmarks, since public market prices reduce the bid-ask spread problem in private secondaries. They mean an expanded universe - 70 new companies saw their first secondary trade in 2025 ($492M), and IPO exits free up capital to flow toward this broader market. And better price discovery attracts more buyers and sellers, growing the market beyond its current top-20 concentration.

Structural, not cyclical

PitchBook’s core thesis - that secondaries are structural, not cyclical - appears correct. The market grew during the 2021 boom (driven by access demand) and grew again during the 2022-2024 drought (driven by liquidity need). A market that is relevant at both extremes of the cycle is not going away.

The question is not whether secondaries will persist. They will. The question is who benefits from the institutionalization of this market, and who bears the risk.

When Goldman Sachs acquires a secondary fund manager to offer its wealth clients managed venture exposure at NAV, the value proposition is straightforward. When a PVC fund packages similar secondary positions into a retail-facing vehicle trading at a premium to NAV with higher fees and weaker governance, the value proposition for the retail buyer is harder to defend.

US venture secondary dry powder reached $11.8 billion as of June 2025, up 2.8x since 2022. But that still represents only 3.9% of primary venture capital. The secondary market is growing fast, but it is still small relative to the primary market it serves. And 86% of its volume is concentrated in 20 companies.

The structural shift is real. The distribution of its benefits is not yet determined. That is the most important question in the emerging PVC category.

Who benefits?

The infrastructure builders are winning. Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Schwab, BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Carta did not acquire these platforms and data companies out of generosity. They acquired them because secondary transactions generate fees - management fees on fund products, commissions on marketplace trades, advisory fees on structured tender offers, data subscriptions on analytics platforms.

The more the secondary market grows, the more these institutions earn. Their incentives are aligned with market expansion regardless of whether the underlying assets perform.

The sophisticated sellers are also winning. Employees at SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic who access company-led tender offers are getting liquidity at prices set by informed buyers in competitive processes. Early-stage VCs selling LP stakes in top-decile funds are getting fair value because the buyer pool now includes institutional secondary funds with $11.8 billion in dry powder. These are participants with information, leverage, and alternatives.

And this is, on balance, a good thing. The venture ecosystem has suffered for years from a liquidity bottleneck.

Companies are now staying private for a decade or more. Employees unable to access the value they helped create. Early investors locked into positions long past the point where portfolio management would dictate a sale. Secondaries relieve that pressure. They give founders an alternative to premature IPOs. They give employees real money instead of paper wealth.

They give early-stage VCs the ability to return capital to LPs without waiting for an exit that may be years away. More liquidity, flowing more freely, through more channels, is net positive for the health of the venture ecosystem.

Some institutional buyers on the secondary market are doing this well. They build diversified portfolios through disciplined entry-point selection while providing genuine liquidity to sellers who need it. Funds like Dave McClure’s Practical Venture Capital and OnePrime Capital are good examples: rigorous on price, systematic about portfolio construction, and performing a real economic function by giving sellers a bid when they need one. Informed buyers, willing sellers, fair prices, value creation on both sides. That is what a healthy secondary market looks like.

The problems can begin when this dynamic gets repackaged for a different audience. Are retail participants - the end buyers of PVC fund shares - winning too, or are they simply the last link in a chain that extracts value at every prior step?

Consider the path a secondary share takes before it reaches a retail investor through a PVC fund. A seller (often an insider with superior information) sells to a secondary buyer (often the PVC fund itself, paying a negotiated price), who packages it into a fund (adding management fees, performance fees, and operating expenses), which lists on a public exchange (where market dynamics can push the share price to a premium over the fund’s already-marked-up NAV). Each step adds cost. Each intermediary takes margin. The retail investor at the end of this chain is paying the cumulative markup of every participant who touched the asset before them, and is driven by brand recognition from fully priced assets.

This is not inherently predatory. Intermediation has costs, and access has value. The question is whether the total cost of that intermediation is proportionate to the access provided. When that underlying asset value is itself derived from secondary market prices that may reflect optimistic marks rather than realized exits, the effective premium to realizable value could be substantially higher.

The institutional channels opening up through Goldman’s Industry Ventures, Morgan Stanley’s EquityZen integration, Schwab’s Forge Global platform, Nasdaq Private Markets, and BlackRock’s Preqin-powered private markets intelligence offer a comparison worth examining.

These channels provide secondary venture exposure to HNW and institutional clients at or near NAV, with institutional governance, audited valuations, and transparent fee structures. They are not democratizing access - they are reserved for clients who meet wealth thresholds. But they demonstrate what fairly priced secondary access looks like. The gap between that price and the price a retail PVC investor pays is the cost of “democratization,” and investors should know exactly what that cost is before they celebrate being invited to the table.

The structural shift in venture secondaries is real and durable. A $106 billion market that functions at both ends of the cycle is not going away. But structural shifts are morally neutral. What matters is not the existence of the shift but the terms on which different participants access it, and whether the people bearing the most risk are the ones with the least information.

A Better Model

There is a different model. BlackRock acquired Preqin for its breadth - fund performance benchmarks, LP data, deal flow aggregation across all private market asset classes. It is a horizontal data play. But Preqin’s venture coverage is, by design, retrospective. It tells you how funds performed, not which companies will perform. It catalogs the past.

A data platform that does something Preqin cannot would have future predictive potential. It would score each private venture backed company in real time, based on the quality, concentration, and track record of their early-stage backers. That is not a database of what happened. It is a predictive filter for what is likely to happen - a quantitative signal that identifies which companies, at the moment they reach scale, have the backer profiles most correlated with outlier outcomes.

The difference between cataloging 100,000 private companies and algorithmically identifying the top decile at a specific inflection point is the difference between a library and a lens.

This matters for the secondary market because the core problem PitchBook’s data reveals - 86% concentration in 20 names, information asymmetry favoring insiders, retail investors at the end of the markup chain - is fundamentally a selection problem. Most participants in the secondary market are buying names they recognize. A systematic scoring model that evaluates every company against the same quantitative criteria offers something the secondary market currently lacks: a basis for selection that is neither brand-driven nor insider-dependent.

The infrastructure build in venture secondaries is being fought on four layers: transaction execution, data and benchmarking, distribution, and selection/access. The first three are increasingly dominated by the largest financial institutions in the world. The fourth - the ability to systematically distinguish which companies have the highest probability of outlier outcomes and access them early - remains open.

In a $106 billion market where 86% of volume chases the same 20 names, the investors who can identify the next 20 before they become consensus will capture most of the value. Everyone else is paying for the privilege of arriving last.

Keith Teare is founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. This analysis is based on PitchBook’s 2025 Annual US VC Secondary Market Watch (published February 20, 2026) and reflects his views on the venture secondary market. It should not be construed as investment advice.

The State of Venture has a monthly reporting agent. The agent produces this report, which is then edited by humans prior to sending.

January 2026 was defined by a single number: $20 billion. Elon Musk’s xAI raised the largest venture round in history, representing 46% of all capital deployed globally during the month. This gravitational pull reshaped every metric. Remove xAI from the data and January looks like a normal month. Include it and the record books need rewriting.

Executive Summary

January delivered $43.1 billion across 639 rounds, shattering monthly records. But the headline number misleads without context: xAI’s $20B Series E alone exceeds most quarterly totals. Excluding xAI, the month deployed $23.1 billion, a strong start to 2026 but not historic. AI and robotics dominated deal flow. Autonomous vehicle companies (Waabi, Skild AI), AI infrastructure plays (xAI, humans&, Ricursive Intelligence), and enterprise AI (Decagon, Parloa, ClickHouse) captured the largest rounds.

• Total Capital Deployed: $43.1 Billion

• Total Excluding xAI: $23.1 Billion

• Deal Volume: 639 Companies / Rounds

• Active Investors: 2,333

• Average Round Size: $67.4 Million

• Median Round Size: $8.5 Million

Investment by stage

Late Stage (E+) rounds captured an astonishing $21.3 billion due to xAI, making stage comparisons meaningless. More instructive: Series C saw $6.8 billion across just 39 companies, driven by Singapore’s DayOne ($2B) and Pittsburgh-based Skild AI ($1.4B). Series A maintained healthy activity with 157 rounds totaling $4.4 billion, suggesting the early-stage pipeline is still working.

The gap between average and median round sizes tells the concentration story. At Series C, the average round was $174M while the median was $70M. A handful of mega-rounds pulled up every stage average.

Geographic distribution

US capital by state

California captured 78.2% of US startup capital in January, the highest concentration we have recorded. Palo Alto, where xAI is headquartered, drove almost all of it. Pennsylvania emerged as the surprise second-place state at 9.7%, thanks to Skild AI’s $1.4B round in Pittsburgh. Massachusetts (5.6%) and New York (2.6%) rounded out the top four.

Global capital by city

Palo Alto dominated global funding with $204.9 billion, entirely attributable to xAI. Remove that outlier and San Francisco ($20.6B) leads, followed by Toronto ($13B from Waabi’s $750M) and Cambridge, MA ($12.6B, mostly biotech). Singapore’s $4.2B reflects DayOne’s emergence as a regional heavyweight. The Bay Area’s combined total (Palo Alto + San Francisco + Redwood City + Mountain View + South San Francisco + San Mateo + Santa Clara) exceeded $238 billion.

Key trends and observations

1. The sovereign wealth surge

xAI’s $20B round brought sovereign wealth funds into venture at a scale we haven’t seen before. Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and strategic investors like NVIDIA and Tesla participated alongside traditional funds like Fidelity. The same pattern showed up at Waabi ($750M), where Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock, and sovereign-adjacent entities like Export Development Canada joined the cap table. Sovereign wealth has arrived as a venture asset class.

2. The “mega-seed” phenomenon continues

Following December’s $475M Unconventional AI round, January produced two more mega-seeds: humans& ($480M) and Merge Labs ($252M). The humans& syndicate reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley: SV Angel, Georges Harik, Jeff Bezos, Google Ventures, NVIDIA, Felicis, DCVC, CRV. Merge Labs, a gaming/metaverse infrastructure play, was led by OpenAI with participation from Gabe Newell (Valve) and Bain Capital. These are not seed rounds in any traditional sense. They are Series A or B rounds labeled as seeds.

3. Autonomous everything

Skild AI ($1.4B Series C, led by SoftBank) is building a “foundation model for robotics.” SignalRank is an investor in Skild’s B round. Waabi ($750M Series C) is Uber’s bet on autonomous trucking. DayOne ($2B Series C, led by Coatue) is applying autonomy to vertical-specific problems in Singapore. What connects them: investors believe general-purpose AI models will unlock autonomous systems across industries. The valuations imply conviction that these companies will capture meaningful chunks of trillion-dollar markets.

4. Enterprise AI hits hypergrowth

Decagon ($250M Series D) for AI customer service, Parloa ($350M Series D) for contact center AI, ClickHouse ($400M Series D) for real-time analytics, and OpenEvidence ($250M Series D) for clinical AI all raised growth rounds. The same investor names keep appearing (Coatue, General Catalyst, Index, Thrive), which suggests a coordinated thesis: enterprise AI is now proven enough for scale-up capital.

Top 10 deals of the month by capital raised

Capital concentration analysis

Capital concentration was extreme in January. Single deals dominated entire stages.

xAI represented 93.9% of all Late Stage capital. At Series C, DayOne and Skild AI together captured 50% of stage capital. Even at Seed, humans& and Merge Labs combined for nearly 30% of all seed investment. The portfolio construction implication is stark: missing a single mega-round can define fund performance for a vintage.

Investor analysis: the repeat players

Several investors appeared across multiple January mega-rounds:

• NVIDIA / NVentures: xAI, humans&, Waabi, Skild AI, OpenEvidence, Ricursive Intelligence

• Coatue: DayOne, Skild AI, Decagon, OpenEvidence

• Lightspeed Venture Partners: Skild AI, ClickHouse, Rain, Ricursive Intelligence, Orca Bio

• Sequoia Capital: Skild AI, OpenEvidence, Ricursive Intelligence

• Felicis: Skild AI, humans&, Ricursive Intelligence

• Google Ventures: humans&, Parabilis Medicines, OpenEvidence

NVIDIA’s venture arm has become the common denominator in AI infrastructure deals, appearing in six of the top 20 rounds. This reflects both NVIDIA’s strategic interest in AI ecosystem companies and their access advantage through customer relationships.

SignalRank Series B analysis

In the SignalRank methodology, a company “qualifies” not just by revenue or hype, but by the quality of its backers across all rounds to Series B. The core thesis: top-tier Seed and Series A investors have persistent access to the best outliers and Series B investors concentrate into the best.

January produced 11 SignalRank-qualifying Series B companies. Northwood Space achieved a perfect 100th percentile score with its $100M round for spacecraft ground infrastructure.

SignalRank invested in Northwood Space and Cambium.

Summary of trends

1. The “xAI effect”

One company’s $20B round distorted every January metric. This is the new reality of venture: a single company can represent nearly half of global deployment in a given month. For data analysis, medians and xAI-adjusted figures are now more instructive than raw totals.

2. Sovereign wealth goes mainstream

QIA, ADIA, MGX, GIC, and various sovereign-adjacent entities appeared across the largest January rounds. These are not one-off investments. They represent a structural shift. Sovereign wealth funds are now direct participants in venture at scale, competing with rather than through traditional VCs.

3. The robotics moment

Skild AI ($1.4B), Waabi ($750M), humans& ($480M), and DayOne ($2B) all bet on some form of autonomous systems. January 2026 may mark the inflection point where robotics and autonomy moved from speculative to fundable at growth-stage scale. The foundation model thesis that transformed software is now being applied to the physical world.

Data sourced from SignalRank with help from Crunchbase and Preqin. Analysis covers announced rounds from January 1-29, 2026.

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The State of Venture

A resource for all stakeholders to discuss the state of venture capital

By Signal Rank Corporation

The narrative was written by a highly trained agent with access to SignalRank’s data. This agent will produce a report each month and can also do quarterly and annual reports.

December 2025 closed the year with a striking pattern: massive capital concentrated at the extremes. A $475M seed round and multiple $300M+ Series B rounds dominated headlines, while Series C capital was captured by two Chinese mega-deals. The “hollow middle” persists - companies without AI or defense theses face an increasingly selective capital environment.

Executive Summary

December delivered $18.1 billion across 733 rounds, marking a strong close to 2025. The defining characteristic was extreme capital concentration: the top 10 deals accounted for over $4.8 billion (27% of total capital). AI infrastructure, defense technology, and Chinese EV/mobility dominated the largest rounds.

• Total Capital Deployed: $18.1 Billion

• Deal Volume: 733 Companies / Rounds

• Active Investors: 2,273

• Average Round Size: $24.7 Million

• Median Round Size: $5.0 Million

Investment by Stage

Series B dominated total capital allocation with $5.45 billion across 90 companies, while Pre-Seed and Seed together accounted for 432 companies - nearly 60% of all deal activity. The gap between average and median round sizes reveals the power law at work: a few mega-rounds pull up stage averages dramatically.

The data shows Late Stage (E+) rounds maintaining the highest average size at $172.7M, driven by growth rounds in geothermal energy (Fervo), cybersecurity (Cyera), and fintech (Airwallex). Series A averaged a healthy $24.1M, suggesting strong conviction capital remains available for post-seed companies with demonstrated traction.

Geographic Distribution

US Capital by State

California dominated US startup funding in December with 47% of total capital, followed by New York (17.2%) and Texas (15.5%). Texas’s strong showing was driven by a single outlier - Houston-based Unconventional AI’s $475M seed round. Delaware’s 6.7% share reflects the state’s role as corporate domicile for VC-backed companies.

Global Capital by City

San Francisco and New York led global funding with $16.1B and $12.9B respectively, but December’s geographic story was one of dispersion. Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany emerged as an unexpected hotspot with $10.2B in funding, driven by Black Forest Labs’ continued AI image generation dominance. Chinese cities collectively captured over $20B when aggregating Beijing, Jiading, Haidian, Changning, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Wuxi Shi - underscoring China’s continued domestic venture activity despite geopolitical headwinds.

Key Trends and Observations

1. The “Mega-Seed” Phenomenon

Unconventional AI’s $475M seed round - led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed - represents the largest seed investment ever recorded. With participation from Jeff Bezos, Sequoia, DCVC, Lux Capital, and Databricks, this round signals that for AI infrastructure plays, the distinction between seed and growth rounds has collapsed entirely. The investor syndicate reads like an all-star team betting on compute infrastructure.

2. Defense Tech Ascendant

Castelion ($350M Series B), Radiant ($300M Series D for nuclear microreactors), and HawkEye 360 ($150M Series E for space-based RF intelligence) demonstrate continued institutional appetite for dual-use and defense-focused technology. The “Accelerationist Alliance” of a16z, Founders Fund, and Lux Capital appears repeatedly across these deals.

3. China’s Parallel Universe

Chinese startups raised significant capital in December despite US-China tensions. DeepBlue Auto ($873M Series C for autonomous driving), Moonshot AI ($500M Series C for AI), SIMIC Holdings($367M Series B for semiconductors), and Aipuqiang ($143M Series B for robotics) reveal a robust domestic funding ecosystem. These rounds are largely funded by state-backed or domestic Chinese investors.

4. AI Infrastructure Everything

From Black Forest Labs (image generation) to Chai Discovery(drug discovery) to Lovable (code generation) to Fal (inference infrastructure), AI-native companies commanded premium valuations and attracted the most competitive investor syndicates. The common thread: infrastructure enabling others to build with AI.

Top 10 Deals of the Month

1. DeepBlue Auto (China) - Series C: $873.5M - Autonomous driving

2. Saviynt (USA) - Series B: $700M - Identity governance

3. Moonshot AI (China) - Series C: $500M - AI foundation models

4. Unconventional AI (USA) - Seed: $475M - AI infrastructure

5. Fervo Energy (USA) - Series E: $462M - Geothermal energy

6. Cyera (USA) - Series F: $400M - Data security

7. SIMIC Holdings (China) - Series B: $366.8M - Semiconductors

8. Castelion (USA) - Series B: $350M - Defense technology

9. Lovable (USA) - Series B: $330M - AI code generation

10. Airwallex (Singapore) - Series G: $330M - Cross-border payments

Capital Concentration Analysis

The power law was pronounced in December. Single outlier deals captured significant percentages of total stage capital.

At the Seed stage, Unconventional AI alone represented 23.3% of all seed capital deployed in December. At Series C, two Chinese deals - DeepBlue Auto and Moonshot AI - combined for 44.5% of total Series C capital. This concentration underscores that for LPs, being in the right funds with access to these outliers is increasingly the only path to top-quartile returns.

Investor Analysis: The Overlapping Elite

December’s mega-rounds revealed a familiar pattern: the same elite investors appearing across multiple deals. Andreessen Horowitzled or participated in four of the five largest non-Chinese deals. Lightspeed Venture Partners co-led both the largest seed (Unconventional AI) and a top Series B (Castelion). Sequoia Capitalmaintained its presence across stages.

This “club deal” dynamic means access to elite rounds is increasingly gated by relationships. Funds outside this network face structural disadvantage in accessing the deals that drive returns.

SignalRank Series B Analysis

In the SignalRank methodology, a company “qualifies” not just by revenue or hype, but by the quality of its early backers. The core thesis is that top-tier Seed and Series A investors (the “Signal”) have persistent access to the best outliers.

December produced 13 SignalRank-qualifying Series B companies. Castelion achieved a perfect 100th percentile score, with its pedigree extending from Andreessen Horowitz at seed through its $350M Series B. Black Forest Labs (99.9th percentile) demonstrated the value of stacking elite investors: a16z, General Catalyst, NVIDIA, and Salesforce Ventures all participated.

The qualifying companies span AI infrastructure (Black Forest Labs, Lovable, Chai Discovery), cybersecurity (Adaptive Security, Vega), defense (Castelion), and enterprise software (Serval, PermitFlow). This diversity suggests signal quality transcends sector focus.

Summary of Trends

1. The “Infrastructure Thesis” Dominance

Whether AI compute (Unconventional AI), energy infrastructure (Fervo, Radiant), or software infrastructure (Fal, Lovable), the largest December rounds went to companies building fundamental capability layers. This pattern suggests investors are betting on pickaxe-sellers rather than gold miners.

2. The Club Deal Effect Intensifies

a16z, Lightspeed, Sequoia, General Catalyst, and a handful of other elite funds appear repeatedly across December’s mega-rounds. For emerging managers and outsider funds, access to these deals has become the binding constraint on returns.

3. Geographic Bifurcation

The US and China are developing parallel venture ecosystems with minimal capital flow between them. Chinese mega-rounds are funded domestically; US AI and defense rounds are funded by the usual suspects. Singapore (Airwallex), Israel (Syremis, Vega), and Germany (Black Forest Labs) emerge as the primary alternative destinations for US-aligned capital.

Data sourced from SignalRank with help from Crunchbase and Preqin. Analysis covers announced rounds from December 1-31, 2025.

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The State of Venture

A resource for all stakeholders to discuss the state of venture capital

By Signal Rank Corporation

This post instead looks “downstream” founder talent, specifically the alumni of power law companies who go on to found notable startups. Certain companies, like Fairchild & PayPal, act as founder schools, spawning “mafia” of early employees who seek to recreate their prior company’s talent density, culture & philosophy in new startups.

A company can enter the pantheon of greats when former employees go on to have greater success still with new ventures. Brex is now bragging how they want to attract “quitters”, with 100 alumni already becoming founders. This feels like Brex doth protest too much; the “mafia” epithet is bestowed upon a company by the ecosystem, not self-designated.

Many investors specifically seek out founders who have experience as employees at hyper growth companies. We will see that this founder profile is adroit at raising capital, especially right now for anyone who has worked at a premier AI lab. The billion dollar seed round era is upon us.

The challenge of course is establishing which employees were indeed critical to the success of their alma mater. And, even then, a great employee does not necessarily a great founder make.

This post will leverage SignalRank’s data & algorithms to review startups founded by alumni of OpenAI, Google DeepMind & Meta AI alumni.

The OG tech mafia

Silicon Valley startup genealogy provides important connective tissue across generations in the ecosystem.

Fairchild, created by the “traitorous eight” in 1957, is probably the original Silicon Valley tech mafia. Its former employees became future founders of many so-called “Fairchildren” including little known companies like AMD, Intel & SanDisk. The chart below from here shows the corporate genealogy from Fairchild onwards.

More recently, the most successful group of former founders & employees is the PayPal mafia.

Cantos’ Grant Gregory created this chart here to show how many of the most successful companies in the 2010s had a PayPal fingerprint.

Which AI companies today are becoming the mafia of tomorrow?

Large established AI labs, specifically OpenAI, Meta AI, DeepMind & GoogleBrain, have started to generate founders at a decent clip. An illustrative list of notable AI start-ups from these labs is at the end of this post (Figure 3).

DeepMind & OpenAI have been the most prolific in ex employees spinning up new venture-backed AI companies (Figure 1).

The unicorn hit-rate for OpenAI spin-outs is particularly noteworthy, probably demonstrating the depth of risk capital in Silicon Valley vs London (where DeepMind is primarily based). Indeed, the aggregate capital raised in the last rounds of just four OpenAI alumni companies totals over $20bn: Anthropic ($13bn), xAI ($5bn), Thinking Machines ($2bn) and SSI ($2bn).

It should be of no surprise that the most active Series A investor (by far) for these spin-outs is a16z, followed by NVIDIA.

Figure 1. Comparing alumni companies from select AI labs

Of all the alumni companies from these labs, SignalRank is currently tracking three candidates which have raised a quality Series A but not yet raised a Series B. We would be keen to support the pro rata of existing investors in any upcoming high quality Series B of these companies.

Figure 2. Potential AI mafia candidates for SignalRank’s Series B product

Concluding thoughts

It is probably too early to talk of AI “mafia” but we are already starting to see employees from senior leadership positions at the best labs spin out on their own (despite Meta’s best efforts to attract AI talent by lavishing them with professional sports’ level of pay packets). PitchBook recently conducted research to show that OpenAI has already lost 25% of its key research talent in the last two years alone.

Capital is actively seeking these founders, meaning this trend is likely to accelerate.

Figure 3. Illustrative list of notable companies founded by AI lab alumni (adapted from here)