This report uses the Signalrank Codex and Claude agents to query internal data. It is written by the agents and read and edited by myself before publishing.
Executive Summary
September brought capital back. Startups raised $53.1B across 1,012 rounds with a disclosed size, up 31.1% from August’s $40.5B. Deal count rose 31.9% from 767 rounds. That puts September second only to June ($61.1B) in the past six months.
Ten rounds of $1B or more accounted for $20.9B, or 39.4% of the month’s capital. Take them out and the market still raised $32.2B, up 29.7% on August’s $24.8B. A handful of giant cheques did not carry this recovery on their own; the rest of the market grew almost as fast.
Not everything moved up. The median disclosed round fell to $5.55M from $6.5M in August, so the typical deal got smaller even as the total grew. AI companies took 52.8% of all capital. North America took 63.4%. Europe had its strongest month in this window, helped by Mistral AI’s $3.49B Series D. Asian capital roughly halved.
Headline capital, round counts, geography and sector views cover only rounds with a disclosed size. The stage view below also counts rounds that did not disclose a size.
Q3 2026 in Review
The third quarter deployed $145.6B across 2,756 disclosed-size rounds, up 1.3% on Q2’s $143.8B while the round count fell 10.1% from 3,067. The market raised slightly more money in fewer deals: the average disclosed round was $52.8M.
Thirty-three rounds of $1B or more took $62.8B, or 43.2% of the quarter’s capital, up from 41.3% in Q2. Strip them out and the rest of the market raised $82.8B across 2,723 rounds, down 2.0% from Q2’s $84.5B on the same basis. The quarter’s growth came entirely from the top of the market.
July raised $52.1B across 977 rounds, with 13 mega-rounds taking just over half the month’s capital (50.5%). August was the quarter’s trough at $40.5B across 767 rounds, 10 mega-rounds for 38.7% of capital. September bounced back to $53.1B across 1,012 rounds, the quarter’s strongest month on both measures, with 10 mega-rounds taking 39.4%.
Series B rounds raised $14.6B across 229 disclosed-size rounds in Q3, 10.1% of the quarter’s capital. July raised $4.45B (75 rounds), August $5.33B (71) and September $4.86B (83), and the median held around $30M all quarter.
The quarter’s largest round was Safe Superintelligence’s $5.0B corporate round in July, followed by the $4.69B Advanced Vision Semiconductor joint venture in Japan in August, Crusoe’s $3.9B Series F in September, Moonshot AI’s $3.5B Series F in July and Mistral AI’s $3.49B Series D in September.
Quarterly figures use the current data snapshot. A $10B Blue Origin round dated July 8 is not in the current data, so it is excluded from the July and Q3 totals. July and August monthly figures have been revised since their original reports as late-arriving rounds filled in.
Market Pulse
Capital deployed: $53.1B across 1,012 disclosed-size rounds at 1,010 companies, backed by 3,066 distinct investors. The average disclosed round was $52.4M; the median was $5.55M. A few very large rounds pull the average far above the typical deal.
Concentration remains extreme. All ten of the month’s largest rounds were $1B or more, and the top 50 rounds (4.9% of deals) took 65.9% of capital. The remaining 962 rounds shared $18.1B.
The $1B-plus list covers more than AI labs. Crusoe ($3.9B Series F) and Mistral AI ($3.49B Series D) led, followed by The Boring Company ($3.0B), Sandals Resorts ($3.0B corporate round), Cognition ($2.0B), SB Energy ($1.5B), and four rounds of exactly $1B each for Stoke Space, Helix Digital Infrastructure, Anderon and Instinct. Eight of the ten were U.S.-headquartered. Four were corporate rounds, mostly for energy, infrastructure and real assets rather than software.
Compared with a year ago, capital is up 6.4% on September 2025’s $49.9B, and up 23.8% excluding $1B-plus rounds. The round count is down 30.7% from 1,460. Treat that count comparison with care. Records for September 2025 have had a year to fill in, and smaller rounds are often logged late, so September 2026’s count will probably rise.
For context on the run of mega-rounds, Crunchbase News reported that July set a record for billion-dollar rounds. September shows that pattern continuing.
Stage-by-Stage View
The stage table separates every eligible round from rounds with a disclosed size. In September, 1,417 rounds met the venture definition, and 1,012 of them disclosed a size. Capital, averages and medians use disclosed amounts only.
Pre-Seed and Seed
Pre-seed had 233 rounds, 200 of them with a disclosed size, totalling $331M at a $0.5M median. Seed had 430 rounds, of which 301 disclosed a size, raising $2.54B at a $3.54M median, up from $3.11M in August. Early-stage activity is broad but the cheques are small: seed and pre-seed together accounted for 663 eligible rounds and under 6% of disclosed capital.
Series A
There were 191 Series A rounds, 158 of them with disclosed sizes, raising $5.43B. The median disclosed Series A was $16.0M, up from $15.0M. The median is steady but the top end keeps stretching. Crunchbase News counts at least 114 Series A rounds of $100M or more globally so far in 2026, most of them for AI companies.
Series B
There were 95 Series B rounds, 83 with disclosed sizes, raising $4.86B, down from $5.33B in August. The median held at $30.0M.
Series C and Later
Series C raised $7.06B across 41 disclosed-size rounds (51 in total), with the median jumping to $110M from $75M. Series D ($8.39B), Series E ($5.47B) and Series F ($5.16B, five rounds including Crusoe) carried most of the growth-stage capital. Corporate rounds raised $8.96B, but only 42 of 113 disclosed a size, and four $1B-plus rounds made up most of that total.
Series Unknown
There were 187 rounds labelled Series Unknown, 117 with disclosed sizes, raising $3.14B.
Geography View
North America took $33.6B (63.4%), up 71.1% on August. The U.S. alone raised $30.2B across 379 rounds. San Francisco led with 105 rounds and $6.2B, and New York followed with 38 rounds and $2.16B. Several single mega-rounds put unusual cities near the top of the table: Denver (Crusoe), Bastrop, Texas (The Boring Company), and Montego Bay, Jamaica (Sandals Resorts).
Europe raised $10.2B (19.1%), almost four times August’s $2.57B. Mistral AI’s round accounts for about a third of that, and Paris raised $3.8B across 21 rounds. Activity was broad as well: Germany (36 rounds), Italy (22) and France (35) all logged meaningful deal counts, and the U.K. had 75 rounds totalling $1.04B.
Asia moved the other way. It raised $8.0B (15.1%), down 48.6% from August’s $15.6B. China raised $4.38B across 69 rounds, led by Shanghai ($1.1B across 13 rounds) and Shenzhen. India logged 81 rounds but only $0.86B, so it remains a market of many small deals.
Who Is Winning
Sector Breakdown
AI-tagged companies raised $28.0B across 432 rounds, or 52.8% of all capital. Excluding $1B-plus rounds, AI’s share rises to 54.7%, so AI’s dominance does not depend on the mega-rounds. Science and Engineering ($38.0B), Software ($30.2B) and Data and Analytics ($28.4B) overlap heavily with AI because companies carry several sector tags. Hardware ($17.2B) and Energy ($7.8B) stand out this month, helped by Crusoe, The Boring Company and SB Energy. Health Care raised $7.4B across 185 rounds without a single $1B-plus deal.
Lead Investors
Of the 1,012 disclosed-size rounds, 873 named a lead investor, and 813 distinct firms led at least one round. Y Combinator led 69 rounds, far ahead of anyone else, followed by BioInnovation Institute Venture Lab (18) and Morgan Stanley Inclusive & Sustainable Ventures (16). Among the large-cheque leads, Valor Equity Partners led seven rounds totalling $5.2B, Atreides Management seven totalling $5.17B, and Andreessen Horowitz nine totalling $3.31B. Insight Partners led 11 rounds.
Repeat Investors
Of 3,066 active investors, 537 took part in two or more rounds. Y Combinator appeared in 92. Andreessen Horowitz joined 18 rounds whose combined size was $11.35B. Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Khosla Ventures and Alumni Ventures each joined 15. NVIDIA joined only nine rounds, but their combined size was $11.5B, the highest of any investor on the list.
Smart Money Flow
SignalRank scores investors on their track record. Scores are sparse, and the median score is zero at every stage, so the useful signal is how often scored investors show up, and how strong they are when they do. Scored investors made up 47.7% of pre-seed participations, 29.6% at Series A and 20.8% at Series B. Average scores peaked at Series B, then Series C and Series D. The strongest investors cluster between Series A and Series D.
SignalRank Qualifiers Snapshot
Five Series B companies met the SignalRank qualification standard in September, down from eight in August. Together they raised $495M in their Series B rounds, at a $40M median. Gimlet Labs’ $300M round was the largest. All five are U.S.-based.
What This Means For
VCs. Capital excluding $1B-plus rounds grew almost as fast as the total, so the mega-rounds did not account for the whole rebound. Still, the falling median round and the 65.9% share captured by the top 50 deals show that pricing power sits with a small set of companies. Cheques got bigger at the growth stages; the Series C median rose to $110M.
Founders. Seed and Series A medians edged up, and Series B held steady at $30M. The market is open, but the step from A to B is not getting easier: Series B capital fell even as total capital grew. Being an AI company helps, since AI took more than half of capital even without the largest rounds.
LPs. Exposure to this market increasingly means exposure to a few very large financings. Four of September’s ten $1B-plus rounds were corporate rounds in energy, infrastructure and real assets. Europe’s jump and Asia’s drop show how quickly geographic mix can swing on a few large deals.
Methodology and Data Notes
Source: the SignalRank AI Corp’s data layer, with one row per funding round. Round sizes are counted once per round, never once per investor.
Venture scope: pre-seed, seed, SAFE, Series A through I, Series Unknown, corporate and undisclosed rounds. Some rounds carry a label describing what came before them (for example, “after debt financing”). These are included only when the company’s current stage is an unknown venture stage, and they are shown under that stage. In September this added 122 rounds and $3.17B, shown under Series Unknown (117) and Undisclosed (5).
Excluded transaction types include post-IPO financings (181 rounds, $100.4B), debt (240 rounds, $59.3B), private equity (45 rounds, $9.7B), numbered follow-on stage labels (216 rounds, $5.75B) and grants (356 rounds, $4.25B).
Headline, geography, sector and concentration views use rounds with a disclosed size. The stage table also reports all eligible rounds; capital, averages and medians use disclosed amounts only.
Sector totals overlap because companies carry multiple sector tags.
The six-month trend reflects current data. A $10B Blue Origin round dated July 8 is not in the current data, so the July figure does not include it.
Quarterly figures combine the current monthly data for July, August and September. Monthly figures for July and August have been revised since their original reports as late-arriving rounds filled in.
SignalRank qualifiers are Series B companies that met the SignalRank qualification standard in the month.
Public research is cited as context only and is not combined with SignalRank totals.