Q2 2026 VC Market Update

July 24, 2026

By The Artemis Fund
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
US venture capital deployed $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, already ahead of the full-year 2025 total. Q2 US deal activity totaled roughly 3,653 transactions and $143.8 billion dollars concentrated into fewer deals and funds.

Get The Artemis Fund’s stories in your inbox.

Global context: Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in H1 2026, according to Crunchbase data, surpassing the $440 billion invested in all of 2025. Q2 alone brought in $205 billion, the second highest quarter on record after Q1's $305 billion, per Crunchbase; CB Insights puts the Q2 figure at $212.9 billion. OpenAI and Anthropic together accounted for more than 40% of all H1 global funding. The US captured roughly two thirds of global venture dollars in Q2, down from 83% in Q1. All figures below reflect the US market unless otherwise noted. 
The Deals That Defined the Quarter
Seven US companies raised rounds of $1 billion or more in Q2: Anthropic, Prometheus Industries, Anduril Industries, Baseten, MiRus, Kalshi, and Cognition. Together they raised $87.2 billion, and five of the seven were AI companies. Anthropic alone raised $65 billion, a 157.1% step-up in pre-money valuation to $900 billion from $350 billion just three months earlier. The round lifted Anthropic's post-money valuation to $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI.
AI accounted for $355.9 billion of the $412.7 billion deployed across US venture in H1 2026, or 86% of every dollar invested, up from 65.5% in 2025.
Source: PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q2 2026
Fund & Capital Concentration
Funds over $1 billion raked in almost 72% of all capital raised in 2026 so far. Three firms alone (Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Founders Fund) raised $34.8 billion combined, or 48.1% of every dollar committed to US venture funds in the first half of the year.
First-time managers are being squeezed. First-time funds raised just $3.4 billion across 53 vehicles in H1, putting the year on pace for the lowest first-time fund count since 2016.
Crossover investors are pulling back on breadth even as dollars grow. Asset managers, hedge funds, mutual funds, and sovereign wealth funds that buy into private companies just before an exit participated in $325.1 billion of H1 deal value, more than double 2025's total. The count of deals involving crossover investors fell to its lowest level since 2019, meaning they are making fewer, larger, more selective bets.
Secondaries are becoming the other way investors and founders staying private longer are finding liquidity. LPs are increasingly asking managers whether they have a practical plan for secondaries and DPI, even before there's pressure to sell.
When fundraising gets this lopsided, so does pricing power. 
Kyle Stanford, PitchBook Director of US Venture Capital Research
Valuations Are Rising Across Every Stage
Median pre-money valuations have pushed past their 2021 highs at every stage, and the disconnect is clearest at seed. Seed pre-money valuations have more than doubled since 2021, but median seed deal size has stayed flat near $3 million. Two things are clearly driving this. 
First, large multi stage funds with significant fresh capital are piling into AI at the early stages. Big rounds and valuations abound in headlines. The expectation is for enormous outcomes to return enormous funds. 
Second, excitement about the potential for AI is pervasive. Everyone wants in, and it's driving up the cost of participation. Everyone is looking for the next SpaceX, Anthropic, or Cursor. We agree AI has incredible potential. However, big valuations and big rounds don't guarantee success.

The Exit Picture
Q2 US exit value hit $1.8 trillion, the highest quarter ever recorded due almost entirely to one company.
SpaceX's IPO priced at a $1.77 trillion valuation, raising $75 billion; it is the largest IPO of any kind on record.
Weeks later, SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor for $60 billion in an all-stock deal, the second largest VC-backed acquisition ever, behind SpaceX's own $250 billion purchase of xAI in Q1.
Cerebras priced its IPO at a $34.3 billion valuation, five times higher than a year earlier, after canceling a planned 2025 listing. Its stock opened at more than double its IPO price and has since fallen back below it.
Active unicorn count hit a record 945 companies, up 9.4% from year-end 2025, with aggregate unicorn value now at $5.3 trillion.
OpenAI and Anthropic have both confidentially filed for IPOs, which would potentially add two more trillion-dollar exits and generate more value than every US VC-backed exit since 2000, combined. Anthropic appears to be moving first, with reports pointing to a listing as early as October 2026, while OpenAI has reportedly leaned toward pushing its own IPO to 2027.
Healthcare Seeing the Light
Healthcare was an exciting bright spot in the Q2 M&A data. Healthcare M&A value rose 71.6% year over year, and deal count climbed 13% over the same period, evidence of buying activity spread across many transactions rather than concentrated in a handful of large ones. We back founders building care as a data-driven, patient-led, affordable system, with defensible, scalable distribution.
Female Founders: Record Headline, Narrower Base
Companies with at least one female founder captured $235.9 billion in H1 2026 deal value, a record, driven overwhelmingly by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Kalshi, according to PitchBook-NVCA.
78.2% of first-time financings in H1 went to all-male founding teams.
The share of US deals going to companies with at least one female founder fell to 13.8% from 16.2% in 2025.
All-female founding teams raised just 0.7% of total US deal value in H1 2026, down from 1.1% in 2025.
Venture-growth-stage deals captured 94.3% of H1 deal value for female-founded companies, meaning there may be fewer early stage deals, but female founders are increasingly making it to later rounds.
What This Means for Artemis
Market concentration and the hunt for outsized returns is resetting expectations across the market. Growth benchmarks have hit new highs. Series A investors used to get excited about $1M ARR, but in 2026, 3 to 5x revenue growth is no longer good enough. Investors are now asking how a company goes from $4M to $100M ARR in a single year, with mega funds continuing to pour cash into the market to subsidize AI adoption.
Category concentration is now a bigger risk factor than company quality. However, at Artemis we believe durable companies get built by founders solving problems that are actually painful, not by founders operating in whatever category has the most capital chasing it this year.
We believe once in a generation companies will be built by unexpected founders. If that sounds like you, pitch us here!
Sources
PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor Q2 2026 (July 2026), primary source for US deal, valuation, exit, fundraising, investor, and female founder data
CB Insights, State of Venture Q2 2026
Crunchbase, Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 (July 2, 2026)
PitchBook, Q2 2026 Global M&A Report (July 9, 2026)
Fortune Term Sheet, "As mega-funds grab 72% of all capital raised" (June 24, 2026)
Reporting on Federal Reserve rate outlook and OpenAI/Anthropic IPO timing reflects developments after this report's original data cutoff and was gathered via subsequent web research, not the four primary source reports listed above
Note: Carta's Q2 2026 State of Private Markets report and CB Insights' Q2 2026 State of Fintech report were not yet published at the time of writing and are not cited in this brief

Newsletter Signup