To understand how institutional capital is navigating this gap, 蹤獲弝け News recently interviewed , a partner at . Ranum has spent nearly 15 years at the firm, where he focuses on B2B enterprise software, security and industrial infrastructure. Prior to joining Sapphire, he spent 12 years as a product management and strategy executive at .

His recent investments include core infrastructure plays such as and , as well as the industrial AI platform .

In this e-mail interview, Ranum breaks down how the definition of net revenue retention is shifting, why he believes 2026 will see a historic run of major tech IPOs, and where real enterprise demand is materializing on the factory floor.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

蹤獲弝け News: You���ve been at Sapphire for 15 years. Right now, public market software multiples are at decade lows as Wall Street worries about AI disruption, while private AI valuations are hitting record highs. As a growth investor caught in the middle, how are you valuing companies today? Are traditional growth metrics like net revenue retention still the gold standard, or has the math completely changed?��

Ranum: The gap between public and private market signals right now is unlike anything I’ve seen. I think it creates a real opportunity for investors who can make sense of it. Public software multiples have come down hard, while private AI valuations are hitting record highs. Those two things can’t both be right indefinitely, but the fundamentals underneath are holding up. Gross margins, free cash flow, and NDR have actually improved. The market is broadly pricing in disruption risk, but the companies that are genuinely building enterprise value are still being built.

What that means for how I evaluate companies is that I’m spending more time on whether something is genuinely embedded in how enterprises work, not just whether the numbers look good today. NRR still matters. It tells you whether customers are finding real value. But it’s a lagging indicator. What tells me more is whether switching away from a product would meaningfully disrupt operations. If the answer is yes, that’s a more durable signal than any retention metric.

The current regulatory environment has essentially frozen large-scale tech M&A, and the IPO market is sluggish. If the traditional exit pathways are bottlenecked, how does that change the way you underwrite a Series B or C bet? Do companies just have to stay private and build to massive scale longer than they used to?��

Ranum: I���d push back a bit on the framing that M&A is frozen. Software M&A activity actually picked up meaningfully in 2025, with deal value rising 40% year over year to $334 billion across 678 transactions. We saw that in our own portfolio with over half a dozen acquisitions in the past six months. What���s changed is the pricing. The valuations are being reset, but the deals are getting done.

On IPOs, I believe 2026 is shaping up to be a historic year, with having gone public, having filed, and reportedly set to file soon. If they follow through, we’re looking at some of the largest IPOs ever over the next several months. That’s a remarkable moment. Below that tier, though, the picture is more nuanced. Companies that meet today’s higher bar will wait for more favorable conditions, likely into 2027 or beyond. That means you have to build accordingly, focusing on margin alongside revenue, so you have real optionality when the time comes. The secondary market also helps, giving companies and their investors more flexibility as they wait.

You used to love investing in what you called ���boring software,��� or tools that quietly automated mundane enterprise tasks. Today, every software company claims to be an AI company. In 2026, does traditional SaaS even exist as a viable investment category anymore, or is a software startup inherently unbackable if it isn���t AI-native from day one?

Ranum: I don���t think the narrative is AI vs. SaaS. Instead, it’s AI plus SaaS. The companies that are struggling aren’t struggling because they’re SaaS businesses. They’re struggling because investors are in a ���show me��� era, and they don’t have clear answers yet.

Show me the free cash flow. Show me the path to profitability. Show me how AI is actually helping you win. You can’t get a stock bump anymore just by claiming you’re integrating AI. The market wants evidence of monetization.

The way I think about it is whether a company is building something that fundamentally changes how work gets done, or just layering AI on top of a workflow that a human is still doing. We used to back systems of record and workflow companies where the human was doing all the work. Now we’re in a position where the system itself can come in and actually do some of those tasks. That’s a different category of value entirely, and it changes what we look for. The bar has moved, but the opportunity is very real for the companies that can clear it.

Your core thesis is that the LLM stack is fracturing into distinct, standalone billion-dollar layers, such as orchestration (LangChain) and identity (WorkOS). But we���re seeing a massive border war. Big model providers like OpenAI are building their own tools, and data giants like are buying up security tools. How do standalone startups protect their turf when giants encroach from both sides?

Ranum: Both fracturing and consolidation are happening simultaneously, and I think that’s actually the right way to think about it. The moat isn’t about being first in a category. It’s about becoming genuinely embedded in how enterprises work. The companies I’m most excited about are the ones capturing orchestrated workflows in which the enterprise’s actual processes run through the product. That makes them very hard to displace, regardless of what the giants are building around them.

Because of your background at SAP, you know how enterprise buyers think. Right now, CFOs are looking at massive AI pilot bills and demanding to see actual ROI. When a startup is pitching an enterprise on a software governance or security tool, how do they defend that line item to a cynical CFO before the enterprise has even fully figured out its core AI strategy?��

Ranum: What we consistently hear from buyers is that trust has become what actually separates the market. Security, governance, compliance, and auditability aren’t nice-to-haves anymore. They’re what make an AI deployment defensible when the CFO or the board asks hard questions.

And cost predictability is right alongside that. We’re in an era of greater focus on ROI, and enterprises want to know what this will cost them at scale before they commit. The vendors that can answer that question clearly are winning deals over the ones that can’t.

It feels like Silicon Valley is obsessed with the glamour of humanoid robots right now. Meanwhile, Sapphire���s big bets in this space, like Tractian, focus on practical, unglamorous industrial AI and predictive maintenance. Are humanoid robots an expensive venture capital distraction right now? Where is the actual, contract-signing enterprise demand on the factory floor today?��

Ranum: The near-term ROI story is in constrained, high-value industrial settings such as packing, picking, inspection, and maintenance. These environments have clear labor economics, manageable deployment risk, and real buying cycles. That’s where the contracts are getting signed today.

Our portfolio company Tractian is a good example of what that looks like in practice. Unplanned downtime costs the world’s 500 largest companies roughly 11% of their revenue annually, which is a massive, measurable problem.

Tractian addresses it directly by combining sensor hardware with AI that detects early warning signs of equipment failure. The value proposition is concrete before you sign the contract, and the platform gets smarter the longer you use it. That’s the kind of embedded, compounding value we look for.

The humanoid era will come, but the gradient approach beats the all-or-nothing bet for near-term value creation. Start with specific, well-defined tasks where the payoff is obvious and work from there. The market is ready for that today.

Heavy industry and manufacturing are notoriously slow to change. A startup can’t just plug a modern AI API into a 30-year-old machine on a factory floor. For founders trying to build in the industrial tech space, is the winning strategy to build entirely new autonomous hardware, or is the bigger venture opportunity in retrofitting the world’s existing infrastructure with smart software?��

Ranum: I believe the winning strategy is smart software layered on top of existing infrastructure rather than replacing it. Factories aren’t going to rip out 30-year-old machines because a startup has a better alternative. That’s just not how it works. The opportunity is in making those machines intelligent.

That said, the hardware-plus-software combination really does matter. You can’t get the data without the sensors. But the durable value is in the software layer that keeps learning over time. That’s where I���m focused.

In pure software, a buggy AI agent might mean a broken spreadsheet or a weird email draft ��� annoying, but fixable. In robotics and industrial tech, a mistake means a factory line shutting down or a broken multimillion-dollar asset. From a venture perspective, how much harder is it to scale a robotics startup when the cost of product failure is so high in the physical world?��

Ranum: I’d actually reframe the question. The cost of failure in physical environments is what makes the value proposition defensible. When the downside of getting it wrong is measurable, the upside of getting it right is equally concrete. You can walk into a sales conversation and show a customer exactly what prevention is worth before they sign anything. That’s a different conversation than selling software, where ROI takes quarters to show up.

From a scaling perspective, the key is discipline about where you deploy first.

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Illustration:

Within the region, U.K. startups gained significant share in Q2, raising more than $10 billion. That marked the third-largest funding quarter for the U.K. on record, and came in at less than $500 million below its peak quarter in 2021.

蹤獲弝け startup M&A activity also picked up in Q1 and continued that momentum in Q2, even as public-market exits stayed subdued.

Table of contents

• Large rounds drive gains
• H1 2026 up 50%
• UK momentum builds
• By stage
• Looking ahead
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Large rounds drive gains

Four companies raised venture fundings of a billion dollars or more last quarter, accounting for 25% of all startup investment in the region in Q2, 蹤獲弝け data shows.

Those billion-dollar-plus rounds were raised by an AI-centric group: -owned AI drug developer , which was spun out of ; green steel production manufacturer ; , which is developing robots for home and industrial applications; and , an AI lab founded by former DeepMind researchers.

However, most of the growth in funding year over year and quarter over quarter was driven by rounds of $100 million and over. The majority of funding ��� 65% �����went to a group of 42 companies that raised rounds of $100 million-plus. Sectors that stood out for these companies include�� biotech, quantum, financial services, AI labs, aerospace, semiconductor, robotics and energy.

H1 2026 up 50%

Funding to Europe-based startups in H1 was up 50% year over year to total $42 billion, 蹤獲弝け data shows. Still, the region���s startup investment for the first half of the year remained well below the 2021 H1 peak, when VC funding in Europe totaled $60 billion.

It���s also drastically lower than the $392 billion raised in North America���s record-setting H1, with that region���s funding up 158% year over year.

Europe���s funding deal count subsided last quarter, but mostly at the seed stage. Late-stage rounds were up a bit, while early-stage deals dipped slightly year over year. (It���s worth noting, seed stage rounds are often added to the 蹤獲弝け data set after the close of the quarter, so those numbers will increase over time.)

UK momentum builds

The United Kingdom widened its venture-funding lead last quarter, as startups based in the country raised $10.4 billion ��� not far from the peak in 2021 at $10.8 billion.

The region���s No. 2 startup market, Germany, trailed with $3.2 billion raised by its startups in Q2, and France followed in third place with $2.4 billion. Sweden was Europe���s fourth-largest startup market last quarter, with its companies raising $2 billion.

蹤獲弝け data shows funding to Europe���s AI-focused companies reached more than $10 billion in Q2 ��� the largest quarterly amount so far ��� but slightly below the Q1 percentage, when those companies raised more than half of the region���s startup investment.

By stage

Europe���s late-stage funding totaled $12.1 billion in Q2, up 90% year over year. Large Series C and D rounds were raised by Germany-based robotics developer Neura Robotics; Netherlands-based , which makes inspection tools for semiconductor manufacturing; U.K.-based quantum computing startup ; and Germany-based satellite launcher .

Early-stage funding reached $8.6 billion across 250-plus Europe-based startups last quarter, 蹤獲弝け data shows. Large Series A and Series B rounds were raised by London-based Isomorphic Labs, London-based AI self-learning lab , Germany-based fusion energy company , London-based semiconductor developer , and London-based quantum processor provider .

蹤獲弝け seed funding totaled $3.2 billion last quarter, with a billion dollars of that raised by just one company: Ineffable Intelligence.

Other large seed rounds were raised by , a London-based AI lab for science; Italy-based autonomous driving technology producer ; and Stockholm-based defense tech company .

M&A increase

While IPO activity for 蹤獲弝け startups was muted, M&A showed strong momentum following increased activity in Q1. A total of 154 Europe-based, venture-backed companies were acquired for a cumulative $11.5 billion or more in Q2, 蹤獲弝け data shows. That includes three companies acquired for more than $1 billion each in biotech, industrial AI and micromobility.

Looking ahead

蹤獲弝け startup investment has now steadily increased since the fourth quarter of 2024, with increased momentum in the just-ended quarter, driven by larger rounds of $100 million and over. The region���s startup ecosystem shows particular strength in deep tech and financial services as well as the formation of new AI labs, and M&A activity has fueled liquidity for the next batch of startups.

Now the question remains: Will it be enough to keep Europe competitive with the frontrunners, the U.S. and China?

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Related reading:

• 蹤獲弝け Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits
• North American Startup Funding Shattered Records In First Half Of 2026, Driven By AI

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from 蹤獲弝け, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 6, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. 蹤獲弝け converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to 蹤獲弝け long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. 蹤獲弝け also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. 蹤獲弝け includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the ���Series [Letter]��� naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a ���venture��� round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

If that introductory sentence sounds familiar, that���s because it���s the same storyline we reported for the first quarter, when drove investment to stratospheric heights with the largest venture round of all time.

Total investment for the second quarter of 2026 was comparatively lower, but still ranked as the second spendiest on record. Investors continued to pour huge sums into AI high-flyers, with a giant financing for accounting for about half of the quarterly tally.

Overall, investment in U.S. and Canadian startups totaled a staggering $392 billion for the first half of 2026, per 蹤獲弝け data, dwarfing anything we���ve seen before.

For Q2, meanwhile, investment totaled $137.2 billion. That���s also massively higher than any prior comp, with the lone exception of Q1.

Capital concentration was the name of the game. For both Q1 and Q2, historically high investment levels were the result of giant rounds, not increases in overall deal count. Deal count remained well below prior high marks for recent years, as charted below.

As usual, capital also concentrated at late stage. However, early-stage investment still rose in Q2, boosted once again by AI.

Of course, the past few months were a blowout period for giant exits as well. led in Q2 with the largest IPO of all time. It followed up with the acquisition of , which was a record-setting startup M&A deal. In addition, we saw a handful of comparatively smaller but still sizable public offerings and acquisitions.

For a more granular look at funding and exit dynamics for the second quarter, below we break down investments by stage and look at the role of AI in boosting totals. We also look at standout IPOs and M&A deals.

Table of contents

• Late stage
• Early stage
• Seed
• AI
• Exits
• IPOs
• M&A
• Uncharted territory
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Late stage

We���ll start with later stage and technology growth deals, since that���s where most of the money went.

For Q2, funding for this category totaled around $101 billion. It was the second-highest tally in five quarters, as charted below, and also the second-highest of all time.

was by far the quarter���s heftiest fundraiser, pulling in $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation. The financing included $50 billion in a May round led by , , and , as well as corporate-led rounds by ($5 billion) and ($10 billion). Anthropic followed up in June by filing confidentially for an IPO.

Defense tech unicorn also picked up a big round, securing $5 billion in a May Series H financing led by and .

Early stage

Early-stage investment hit the highest level in more than three years in Q2, offering fresh proof that megarounds aren���t only a thing for more established startups.

Overall, North American early-stage funding totaled just over $31 billion, nearly double year-ago levels and up about 15% from Q1. Deal count, however, hit the lowest point in five quarters, as charted below.

A single deal contributed more than 40% of the quarterly early-stage funding total. That was the $12 billion financing for , a startup focused on physical AI that counts as a co-founder.

The three next-largest deals were far smaller by comparison, but still quite big by early-stage standards. , an AI startup working on ���personalized intelligence,��� raised $700 million. Behind that came , a startup building an AI system based on the human brain that picked up $500 million, which was followed by , an AI robotics upstart that closed on $400 million.

Seed

While early-stage funding was up, seed investment in Q2 actually declined a bit from prior quarter and year-ago levels.

Per 蹤獲弝け data, around $4.9 billion went to seed and angel rounds in the second quarter, down 15% from the prior quarter and down 27% from a year ago. Round counts also dropped, though we expect that number to rise a bit over time as smaller seed deals commonly get added to the dataset weeks or months after they close.

Still, seed totals also got a boost from a handful of unusually large rounds. The biggest was a $200 million financing for , a foundational AI startup focused on R&D. Overall, at least five companies raised seed or angel rounds of $100 million or more in Q2, per 蹤獲弝け data.

AI

Once again, venture funding for the quarter was overwhelmingly dominated by AI.

About 80% of investment across stages went to AI-focused startups in Q2, per 蹤獲弝け data. Overall funding to AI categories was nearly triple year-ago levels, though still down from Q1, which had the record-setting $122 billion OpenAI financing.

A majority of AI-focused funding for Q2 was from three previously mentioned rounds for Anthropic, Prometheus and Anduril.

Exits

In addition to backing giant rounds, investors also scored some big returns on prior investment in the form of IPO and acquisitions.

IPOs

On the IPO front, Q2 brought us the historic public market debut of SpaceX. The rocket, satellite and AI giant raised $75 billion in the largest IPO of all time in June. With a recent market cap around $2.1 trillion, it���s currently the sixth-most valuable American public company.

While no one else will come close to topping that, the quarter did also bring us a handful of other sizable debuts by venture-backed companies. Of this, the most closely watched was AI infrastructure and chip designer , which raised $5.6 billion in its May IPO.

Quantum computing company delivered another big debut with its June IPO, followed by , a developer of modular nuclear reactors. For a broader view, below we list the largest IPOs of the quarter by venture-backed North American companies.

M&A

The second quarter also delivered the largest startup acquisition of all time: SpaceX���s $60 billion of AI coding tool Cursor and its parent company . SpaceX first announced an option to purchase the company in April and consummated the deal after its IPO.

In biotech, the largest purchase was from , which announced in April that it was acquiring , a developer of gene therapies, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash.

Other standout deals include ���s acquisition of AI chip startup for $4 billion and ���s 1��acquisition of , a provider of AI-enabled customer experience tools.

Below, we rank the largest transactions:

Uncharted territory

For those wondering where we go from here, it seems pertinent to note that startup history doesn���t give much material for case studies to compare with the first half and second quarter of 2026. Never before have we seen such massive funding rounds, such a highly valued venture-backed company debut, or a startup acquisition to rival the Cursor purchase.

Looking forward, it appears that high-flying startups and their backers expect the current unprecedented conditions to persist, with Anthropic and OpenAI both signaling their intentions to go public at valuations close to or exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, massive startup funding rounds are still happening at a steady clip, with deals in excess of $1 billion no longer an anomaly.

Will these trends persist? Who knows. At this point, however, it���s assumed in startup circles that there will be some enormous winners in the age of AI. The question still is: Who will prevail?

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Related reading:

• 蹤獲弝け Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits
• North America Q1 Funding Surges Across Stages To Record Level
• SpaceX Shares Close Up 19% After Largest IPO Of All Time
• Anthropic Nears $1T Valuation And Leapfrogs OpenAI On 蹤獲弝け With Massive Funding Round
• Lilly Acquiring Kelonia In Largest Funded Biotech Startup Purchase In Years��

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from 蹤獲弝け, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 2, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. 蹤獲弝け converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to 蹤獲弝け long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. 蹤獲弝け also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. 蹤獲弝け includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the ���Series [Letter]��� naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a ���venture��� round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration:

The data also illustrates how capital is concentrating into a handful of companies at unprecedented scale while IPOs and acquisitions have returned in force, with the second quarter notching one of the strongest periods for venture-backed exits in years.

and alone accounted for $217 billion �����43% of all startup funding in H1 �����underscoring how a small handful of frontier AI companies is reshaping venture markets. At the same time, other massive funding deals across industries including AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and healthcare ��� combined with record IPO and M&A activity ��� signal that the AI investment boom has grown well beyond a select few top foundation labs.

Q2 2026 was the second-largest quarter on record for global venture investment, following on the heels of the largest quarter in Q1. All told, investors poured $205 billion into more than 5,000 startups in Q2, following $305 billion invested in Q1.

Table of contents

• Exits peak in Q2
• Capital concentration
• Beyond Anthropic
• Late-stage funding
• Early-stage funding
• Seed
• Record exits market returns
• A new venture cycle takes shape
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Exits peak in Q2

Record funding defined the first half of the year as the period topped the previous half-year peak, reached in H2 2021, of $375 billion.

The second quarter also marked a turning point for liquidity. IPOs and startup acquisitions accelerated alongside venture investment, producing the strongest exit market since the 2021 boom, 蹤獲弝け data shows.

The largest IPO ever for a venture-backed company and the largest startup acquisition ever both took place in Q2. Both deals involved , as it went public at a value of $1.77 trillion, raising $75 billion, and less than a week later confirmed its intent to acquire , maker of the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion.

Capital concentration

Despite the resurgence in exits, the defining characteristic of venture investment in the AI boom remains its extraordinary concentration in terms of companies, industries and geography.

Close to a third of Q2 global venture funding went to just one company: Anthropic. The now-leading foundation lab raised $65 billion last quarter and became the most valuable private company on The 蹤獲弝け 蹤獲弝け as SpaceX exited and Anthropic surpassed OpenAI on the leaderboard.

The U.S. also again dominated global funding. Two-thirds of startup capital in Q2 went to U.S.-based companies, down from 83% in Q1 and in line with proportions in Q2 2025.

And more than 70% of global startup capital in Q2 was invested in AI-focused companies, up from just under 50% a year earlier.

Beyond Anthropic

Anthropic accounted for a significant share of global funding, but the quarter also produced a sizable cohort of other megarounds. A total of 16 companies raised billion-dollar rounds in the quarter, totaling�� $108.6 billion, or 53% of second-quarter funding, 蹤獲弝け data shows.

Seven of those billion-dollar fundraisers are frontier labs. They include the China-based foundation companies , and , U.K.-based , and the U.S.-based labs and .

Eight of the companies in the cohort in Q2 are U.S.-based, while Asia and Europe each have four.

Alongside foundation model companies, large funding rounds were raised by startups working on defense, AI infrastructure, robotics and healthcare.

Late-stage funding

Late-stage venture funding totaled $134 billion in Q2, down from Q1 but up 141% from Q2 2025, 蹤獲弝け data shows.

Early-stage funding

Early-stage funding totaled $589 billion in Q2, up more than 100% from a year earlier. The number of companies raising Series A and B rounds at $100 million have picked up in the past two quarters, with 91 companies on a global basis raising large rounds in Q2.

Seed

Seed investment likewise remained elevated, although the market continued to show a widening gap between a handful of exceptionally large financings and the broader population of traditional seed rounds.

All told, global seed funding totaled $12 billion in Q2, 蹤獲弝け data shows. Of that, $2.8 billion went to seed rounds of $100 million and over, with $5 billion in seed rounds at $10 million and under.

Record exits market returns

Q2 exit amounts were the highest on record for venture-backed companies for both acquisitions and IPOs, 蹤獲弝け data shows.

A total of 32 companies went public at values above $1 billion in Q2. After SpaceX, the next two largest listings were inference chipmaker and quantum company .

Twenty-four companies were also acquired at prices at or above $1 billion in Q2, totaling $113 billion in value ��� the highest quarter on record ��� per 蹤獲弝け data.

A new venture cycle takes shape

H1 2026 established a new benchmark for global venture investment, but the record comes with an important caveat: an unprecedented share of capital flowed to just two companies. OpenAI and Anthropic together attracted more than 40% of all venture funding during the first half, highlighting the extent to which the current market is centered on the biggest players in the frontier AI race.

Even so, the broader venture ecosystem is showing signs of strength. Startup funding increased across every investment stage, the public markets have reopened, and billion-dollar financings expanded beyond foundation model developers into adjacent sectors such as AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and healthcare.

Perhaps the biggest shift is the return of liquidity, via both IPOs and M&A. If those trends continue, 2026 may be remembered not only as the year venture funding reached a new high, but as the beginning of a cycle in which record private investment and a functioning exit market reinforce one another.

Related 蹤獲弝け queries:

Related reading:

• 蹤獲弝け Data: Q2 Brought The Most Billion-Dollar Startup Exits Since 2021
• Cursor Deal Puts US On Track For Record Startup M&A Year

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from 蹤獲弝け, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 1, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. 蹤獲弝け converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to 蹤獲弝け long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. 蹤獲弝け also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. 蹤獲弝け includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the ���Series [Letter]��� naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a ���venture��� round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

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That���s the trend we���re seeing for the second quarter of 2026. This period has brought us both the largest venture-backed exit of all time, with , and a bevy of other comparatively tinier but still sizable startup exits through acquisition or IPO.

Overall, we���re still well behind the prior high in terms of the number of big exits, as you can see charted below. The IPO and SPAC boom of five years ago will be hard to match for exit count.

��Bigger numbers

But while the Q2 exit deal counts may be still below peak, the actual returns are not.

For that, of course, we can thank SpaceX, which earlier this month shattered records with a historical debut that culminated in a staggering $2.1 trillion first-day market cap. Its long-awaited offering raised some $75 billion and served as an enormous liquidity event for founder .

Compared to that, every other Q2 startup exit looks pretty paltry. But by any other comparative metric, these other big exits were also very impressive.

SpaceX���s $60 billion acquisition of AI coding platform a few days after its IPO, for instance, was the priciest purchase of a private, venture-backed startup ever.

As for IPOs, made a splashy entry in May with an offering that raised at least $5.55 billion. Shares are down from the first-day closing price, but the company still maintains a sizable market cap around $38 billion.

Earlier this month, quantum computing company also had a big debut on , raising $1.7 billion and securing an initial market cap of $15.6 billion. Shares are still up sharply from the initial price.

For a broader view of big deals, below we put together a list of all the Q2 venture-backed private company exits valued at $1 billion or more.

Trend: fewer deals but larger ones

Even though the number of big deals picked up in Q2, the more noteworthy trend is the size of exits rather than the quantity. Size will likely still be the standout feature in coming months, with both and filing confidentially for IPOs that could test the trillion-dollar mark.

At the same time, however, the pace of exits in the billion-dollar-plus club, which in any prior cycle were considered considerable, is showing no signs of slowing.

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Those were the unsurprising findings of a 蹤獲弝け analysis of U.S. startup acquisition outlays in 2026. So far this year, acquirers have spent at least $119.8 billion buying private, venture-backed companies, on pace to exceed 2025���s record-setting tally.

For 2026, however, about half of total M&A spending on U.S. startups comes from a single deal: ���s $60 billion of AI coding tool Cursor and its parent company . SpaceX first announced an option to the company in April and consummated the deal after its IPO this month.

The Cursor purchase represents the largest startup acquisition of all time, nearly double the size of the prior frontrunner, ���s purchase of for $32 billion. After that, the next-biggest startup M&A deal was ���s $19 billion acquisition of in 2014.

Other big M&A deals

While other 2026 startup purchases weren���t setting records, many of them were still on the historically large size.

To illustrate, we used 蹤獲弝け data to put together a list of the 10 largest disclosed-price U.S. startup acquisitions this year.��1 The bottom nine range from $2 billion to $7 billion.

Biotech was a standout

Biotech was especially big. This is due in large part to , which announced in April that it was acquiring , a developer of gene therapies with a particular focus on cancer treatment, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash. Per 蹤獲弝け data, the high end of the purchase price represents the largest acquisition of a venture-backed biotech company in years.

Lilly was also the acquirer in two other deals in our Top 10 ranking. The pharma giant bought , a developer of RNA therapeutics, for up to $2.4 billion, and , a developer of blood cancer therapies, for up to $2.3 billion.

Overall, half of the 10 largest deals this quarter were biotech transactions. However, in most cases the number represents the maximum potential acquisition price, which will require the acquired company to meet pre-determined milestones, typically around clinical results and commercialization.

Brex, Modular and more

Outside of biotech and, of course, Cursor, the next-largest acquisition was ���s purchase of business credit card and account provider for $5.15 billion. It’s followed by ‘s acquisition, announced yesterday, of AI chip startup for $4 billion.

Further down the list is ���s 2��acquisition this month of , a provider of AI-enabled customer experience tools, and ���s purchase of , an industrial AI platform, each at $3.6 billion.

With the second quarter winding to a close, we wouldn���t rule out the likelihood of another big deal making headlines in coming days. Even if that doesn’t happen, however, it���s already clear that 2026 is shaping up as a big spending year for startup M&A.

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Globally, robotics startups have so far raised $18.8 billion in 2026, compared to $15 billion in the full year of 2025. The figure also handily surpasses the $14.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021, and we still have more than six months of fundraising left.

The impressive rise in funding reflects a marked shift in perception among venture investors about the robotics sector, which was traditionally considered an expensive, asset-heavy hardware gamble. In particular, investors appear to be drawn to startups working on embodied AI, or artificial intelligence with a physical body that interacts with the real world in real time.

Noteworthy recent rounds

The surge in funding is driven by a number of robotics-focused startups raising considerable capital from investors this year. Also, interestingly, two of the five largest raises in 2026 to date have been by Austin-based companies.

Topping the list of largest deals in 2026 so far is Austin-based , a defense tech startup focused on autonomous sea vessels. In March, the 4-year-old company raised $1.75 billion in Series D funding, bringing its total funding to around $2.6 billion. led the round, which set Saronic���s valuation at $9.25 billion ��� more than double its Series C level in 2025.

Earlier this month, Germany���s , a developer of AI infrastructure for robots to learn, collaborate and operate across real-world environments, said it secured up to $1.4 billion in Series C funding. led that raise.

In January, , a robotics company building an ���omni-bodied��� brain to operate any robot for any task, announced that it had raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion. That financing came just over seven months after Skild raised at a $4.5 billion valuation. led the startup���s latest round, which included participation from , ���s venture capital arm.

On June 15, Beijing-based , which creates water robots and intelligent unmanned equipment, raised $1 billion in a massive Series A round led by .

And in February, AI-powered robotics company raised $520 million in an extension of its $415 million Series A raise in February 2025, bringing the total round to over $935 million. Existing backers , , and joined new investors, including and manufacturing giant in participating in the extension.

Interestingly, spinout has already raised two rounds in 2026. In March, the Palo Alto, California-based startup closed on a $500 million Series A round, co-led by and . Then in May, it raised another $400 million in a financing led by . The company is developing an AI-enabled industrial robotics platform focused on automating industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale.

Exits

While mergers and acquisitions have been relatively robust with several strategic buyouts, the robotics IPO landscape is a bit quieter, particularly in the U.S.

In China, however, a number of robotics companies have recently gone public. The of , targeting a $3 billion to $7 billion valuation, was considered a milestone for the industry. In March, the company filed for an to list on the , and its IPO was widely expected to spur other startups in the space to pursue their own public-market debuts.

, a startup based in China���s Shandong province that makes lightweight industrial robots, in May listed on the , raising about $86 million. And it did not disappoint. Robotphoenix closed its first full day of trading at HK$53.75 ($6.86 U.S.), up nearly 80%, though shares have dipped to the HK$37 range more recently.

On the M&A front, a number of Big Tech and automotive giants have been aggressively acquiring embodied AI and humanoid talent to anchor their physical automation strategies.

In February, AI-powered supply chain provider acquired , an Austin-based maker of autonomous forklifts and lift trucks.

Skild AI in April that it had picked up the robotics arm of in an effort to deploy its technology to warehouses.

And in May, tech giant entered the humanoid robotics field directly by acquiring San Diego-based . The team was absorbed into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs unit to accelerate training of its foundational physical AI model.

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I sold my AI research company while I was qualifying as a lawyer in the U.K. I built with researchers from , , and who believed in the mission enough to trust a 21-year-old law student to lead the ship.

, when acquired us, it was the first time in its 170-year history it bought a company pre-revenue. Thomson Reuters acquired us for the science.

Getting there was painful, though. Our published papers put the model among the best in the world at legal reasoning, and we trained it for a fraction of what the large labs were spending. We had been a quieter version of ���the story,��� developing very capable models using novel algorithms with huge capital efficiency.

None of that counted for much in the rooms I walked into. Investors always asked about the product and the traction. U.K. investors passed, and I ended up raising most of our funding in the United States.

I back founders now, and the things I weigh have stayed consistent. As a founder, I was told again and again that science meant little until it was bolted onto a product. That test was wrong then and I believe it is fatal now.

Backing founders in the foundational layer

In the first quarter of 2026, foundational AI startups raised around $178 billion. The market is realizing that foundational AI is where the long-term value sits, and this is the year we may see the exits and IPOs that prove the bet right.

However, the capital and the conviction have also pooled around a few names that were already incumbent. , and took roughly 97% of it, and every other foundational AI company in the world shared what was left.

For a deep-tech founder starting out now, that might push them toward a tempting but dangerous read of the market: that the race is over, and that the sensible move would be to build on top of one of these giants.

I���m looking for founders who move the other way.

Most application-layer companies, built on a model they do not own, adapt to the pricing and access decided for them by the firms upstream, and compete in categories that the same firm can absorb whenever it chooses.

The more durable place to build is the layer underneath. The cost, speed, reliability, interpretability and safety of AI systems remain unsolved and genuine scientific challenges, and they decide what everything that sits above them can do.

A real advance in training efficiency, model architecture and inference cost is the work that will still matter in five years, long after most of today���s wrappers have been priced out or absorbed.

Asking the right questions

So the questions I ask AI founders are:

• Is your technical team, scientist-for-scientist, equal to or better than the team at DeepMind?
• Does the problem sit at the level of the model and the system, or is it one more thing stacked on someone else���s?
• Will the ���product��� get harder to live without over the next five years, or is it looking to reach for early revenue like every other startup?

Some of the companies that ended up mattering most in the AI era are those that survived this line of thought. DeepMind and OpenAI began as research efforts with no obvious product, and both would have looked uncomfortable to a conventional early-stage software investor. Their importance is obvious in hindsight, but the foundational problem-solvers tend to look unfundable right up until it looks inevitable.

Do not build to look fundable this quarter. Build something that the whole stack will depend on in the future. Hire the best team you can find to do it, and solve the hard, foundational problem while it is still unfashionable.

The deep-tech capital market is slow, and it will keep chasing familiar names for a while yet. The work still comes first, and the founders who dare to do it early are the ones the market eventually has to come and find.

The future lies in deep tech, not in the surface wrappers that pass for most products nowadays.

was the founder and CEO of , which was acquired by in 2024. He is an angel investor and senior director at Thomson Reuters Labs.

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The acquisition represents an enormous return on investment for Cursor���s backers. Since its founding just four years ago, parent company raised $3.4 billion from investors including , repeat backer , and and was most recently valued at roughly $30 billion in November, per 蹤獲弝け.

The acquisition gives SpaceX, which raised $75 billion in its IPO last week, a foothold into the enterprise software development market, where AI-assisted coding has taken off and led large companies to significantly pare back their reliance on human engineers. Cursor said in November last year that it had crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue.

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has in recent years expanded beyond space exploration to become something of an umbrella company for CEO ���s numerous other interests and ambitions, as the company acquired the social media platform (formerly Twitter) and the AI company . SpaceX shares jumped around 16% on Tuesday following the Cursor announcement.

This year has proven robust for M&A activity involving venture-backed startups, 蹤獲弝け data shows. Through June 16, at least 1,177 such deals altogether valued at $182.7 billion have been announced. That compares with 1,132 deals valued at $106.7 billion in the same period last year.

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Meanwhile, filed on June 1 at a $965 billion valuation, and followed on June 8, . After four years of a venture liquidity drought, the read across the industry is simple: the IPO window is finally open again.

I would be careful with that read.

Look at where the money is coming from. SpaceX’s raise alone is slated to be more than the .

that with brokerage cash balances low, retail investors may have to sell existing holdings to fund their SpaceX orders, with and Bitcoin the most likely sources, and SpaceX is reserving as much as 30% of the deal, roughly $22.5 billion, for that same risk-on crowd. Crypto’s own this year as capital rotated toward AI. These three companies could very well be the entire 2026 IPO class.

Put together, this points to a concentration event rather than a broad reopening. A small number of funds and pre-IPO sellers get liquidity, three tickers absorb the available capital and attention, and the rest of the queue waits. If you run an early-stage company, the window reopening for SpaceX does very little for you directly.

The acquisition outlook

What these listings do change is more durable, and it runs through M&A.

A public SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic become some of the best-capitalized acquirers on the planet, with liquid stock to spend. OpenAI has already closed roughly half a dozen acquisitions this year, nearly matching its full 2025 total, and AI dealmaking across the market in the first quarter. The vast majority of venture exits have always been acquisitions; these offerings deepen the pool of buyers far more than they shorten the IPO queue.

For founders, that reframes the goal. Don’t build for an IPO window that was only ever open to a handful of companies. Build to be the company a newly public AI giant needs to own: real ownership of a workflow, proprietary data that compounds, the testing and evaluation infrastructure these labs increasingly run on, or a wedge into a market one of these platforms wants to enter. At the seed stage, the exit math has always pointed toward a single meaningful acquisition, and this wave widens the set of acquirers who can write that check.

For investors, the discipline is to not mistake a concentration event for a market that has reopened. The liquidity �����and the distributions LPs have spent four years waiting on �����will land with a narrow set of names. Most portfolios still get liquid the way they always have, through M&A, and the health of that market matters more to the median fund than whether SpaceX trades up on day one.

The test comes this fall. If the retail bid holds and the next tier of the queue prices well, Friday really will be the start of a broad reopening. Watch those follow-on listings, and watch what three newly public companies do with their stock over the next year. That second part is what reaches the rest of the market.

As the co-founder and managing partner of , is committed to establishing MGV as the premier venture firm for world-class tech entrepreneurs to accelerate their visions. Under Schr繹der���s stewardship, MGV has swiftly ascended to a top-quartile firm, surpassing the performance of 95% of venture funds. The performance of MGV is driven by Schr繹der���s unique approach to venture investing ��� that providing intensive sales training, devising robust fundraising strategies and securing follow-on investments is the best way to support founders and drive the deepest return for investors. has recognized him as one of the Top 100 global seed investors, and his perspectives are published regularly in 蹤獲弝け News and other leading publications.

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