The State of Venture Capital, Q1 2026
A quarterly review of global venture funding, exit activity and the dispersion of returns across the principal stage segments.
Global venture capital deployment crossed $86 billion in the first quarter, the strongest quarterly figure since the second quarter of 2022, but with concentration meaningfully higher than in the prior cycle.
AI-related investment accounted for roughly 41 percent of total deployment. Five companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Mistral and a stealth Chinese frontier-model developer — together absorbed close to $24 billion.
Exit activity has improved measurably. The IPO market reopened in earnest with the Stripe-comparable secondary tender, the successful listings of Cerebras and Klarna, and a continuing pipeline of late-stage candidates.
Stage dispersion has widened. Series A and B median valuations have risen sharply for AI-adjacent businesses, while non-AI growth-stage capital remains noticeably constrained — a divergence that is reshaping the addressable market for the most generalist managers.
More from Research
Real World Assets: The Institutional Thesis for Bringing Off-Chain Value On-Chain
From treasuries and private credit to real estate and commodities, the tokenization of real-world assets is moving from thought-experiment to balance-sheet reality at the largest financial institutions in the world.
Tokenized Real Estate: From Pilot Project to Recognised Asset Class
After half a decade of pilots, the legal, custodial and platform infrastructure required for institutionally credible tokenized real estate is finally arriving — and reshaping how property is owned, traded and financed.
What Is RWA? A Primer for Institutional Allocators
A working definition of Real World Assets, the categories most active today, and the operational questions allocators should be asking before committing capital.