Startups across sales, marketing and customer management have raised $7.5 billion so far this year, according to şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data. The largest rounds span everything from advertising and customer data to sales software, e-commerce and customer support — reflecting just how many companies are still trying to build a better way to market and sell.

The broad trend: Investors are making far fewer bets on sales and marketing startups than immediately before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’re still writing checks into the space.

Unsurprisingly, AI-focused companies are capturing a much larger share of funding than during the prior peak, with most sales, marketing and CRM investment going to companies in şÚÁĎłÔąĎ AI-related categories.

The numbers: So far in 2026, startups in sales, marketing and CRM have raised $7.5 billion globally across 830 funding rounds, şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data shows. At the current pace, funding could finish near the $9.3 billion raised in both 2023 and 2024, although potentially below last year’s $11.1 billion. Deal volume, meanwhile, is on track to fall for a fourth consecutive year — pointing to a market where investors are putting more money into fewer companies.

Funding in recent years remains far below past levels. In 2022, for example, funding in the sector topped $27 billion, and in 2021, it totaled nearly $41 billion.

Notable deals

The year’s largest funding recipient so far was, which raised more than $1 billion in a June Series E from , , and . The San Francisco-based marketing measurement company, whose products now include AI agents that analyze marketing data and automate tasks, was valued at $2.7 billion.

Restaurant financing and rewards platform announced $450 million in new capital in February. The Austin-based company did not identify a lead investor or disclose a valuation.

In January, AI-native customer service company raised a $350 million Series D led by . The Berlin-based company develops AI agents that handle customer conversations by phone and other channels. The financing tripled its valuation to $3 billion.

Meanwhile, , an online marketplace for digital products, communities and courses, received a $200 million strategic investment from in February. The deal valued the New York-based company at $1.6 billion.

Another larger deal went to Dubai-based property listings platform , which announced a $170 million equity investment in January. The company uses AI in products including home valuations and tools that help real estate agents improve and prioritize listings. led the deal, with participation from another UAE sovereign wealth fund and existing investor . The company did not disclose a valuation.

On Sept. 9,  AI-powered sales automation startup announced it had raised a $115 million Series D at a $7.1 billion valuation. This was more than double the $3.1 billion valuation it achieved when it raised a $100 million Series C in August 2025. Wellington led the latest round, with participation from , , ’s a16z Perennial wealth management arm, , and others. The company says the raise followed 4x revenue growth in 2025. It also told şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News that it’s on track to hit $200 million in ARR this quarter, and $240 million by the end of the fiscal year.

Exits

The sector has produced one notable public offering, but most exits are coming through acquisitions as larger companies buy specialized sales and marketing products to add to their existing platforms, şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data shows.

, a Redwood City, California-based mobile advertising and app-marketing company, began trading on the in June. It initially sold 19 million shares at $23 each, raising $437 million. The IPO valued Liftoff at $3.83 billion, based on the outstanding shares disclosed in its IPO prospectus.

There have been a number of M&A deals this year in the sector, too, though in most cases, the acquisition price was not disclosed.

The largest known deal was Dutch payments giant acquisition of , a Berlin-based loyalty and promotions platform, in July for about $880 million. Talon had previously raised over $120 million in venture funding.

Other startup M&A deals in the marketing and sales arena in 2026 include:

• In July, acquired Seattle-based sales intelligence startup to add information about prospective buyers to its sales products.
• In June, agreed to acquire , whose software helps companies identify and contact people visiting their websites.
• Sales platform acquired , which helps sales teams identify prospective customers based on product use and other signals, in March.
• acquired the Estonian startup , whose software connects sales and marketing data, in August.
• acquired India-based marketing intelligence startup in September through a team and technology deal.

Funding is down from peak years, but it’s clear investors haven’t lost interest in sales and marketing startups. However, they are putting more money into fewer of them. Companies that help businesses find customers, increase sales, or retain existing business are still landing big checks and attracting buyers. But with acquisitions far more common than IPOs, a public-market exit remains much harder to come by.

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An overwhelming majority of early venture-backed startups utilize a standard four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff. It seems like the ultimate one-size-fits-all template. Yet almost no one talks about how this default framework routinely causes bitter legal battles over founder equity, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on litigation that could have been avoided.

By the time a founder leaves or gets terminated, the damage is already done, leaving the company stuck with costly “dead weight on the cap table.”

What dead weight actually costs your company

When a co-founder with substantial ownership leaves — voluntarily or involuntarily — they often walk away with a massive, permanent piece of the company.

From a VC’s perspective, and that of the remaining partners, this is pure dead weight. You now have someone holding 15% to 20% of the equity who is no longer providing any value. Of course, contractually it’s theirs, and they’ve usually earned it.

Practically, it can break the company in three distinct ways:

• It kills motivation: The remaining team has to grind for years toward an IPO or acquisition, knowing that a fifth of the exit payout is going to someone sitting on the sidelines.

• It breaks future dilution pools: When you need to bring in new executives or raise a new VC round, your outstanding share count is artificially bloated by a departed founder. Issuing a simple 1% option pool suddenly requires 20% more shares than it otherwise should.
• It creates voting and control nightmares: If a departed founder owns 20%, you need their signature on standard investment documents and major shareholder votes. Even if they didn’t leave under bad circumstances, their risk tolerance and timeline are completely misaligned with the active team.

The shrinking threshold of tolerance

Five to 10 years ago, investors might have tolerated a departed founder holding 5%, 10% or even 20% of the company. Today, that threshold has collapsed. Many VCs will now insist that a former founder hold no more than 2.5% of the cap table.

However, because the standard four-year vesting agreement has no contractual mechanisms to claw back shares, companies start looking for alternative ways to do so when a founder leaves.

Initially, this usually involves pressuring them to give up shares “for the goodwill of the company.” When that fails, they sic investors on them, threaten their professional reputation, and sometimes resort to litigation.

I see this over and over. We frequently see litigation that is nominally about intellectual property or confidentiality, but everyone knows the real goal is simply to get the equity back. These are multi-hundred-thousand-dollar lawsuits that never would have been filed except as a desperate attempt to claw back departing founder equity.

How to fix the problem

The four-year vest, one-year cliff standard is a very lemming-like system in which founders follow the same standard as everyone else.

They often pull the language in equity agreements off automated legal platforms because it’s cheap, fast and requires minimal thought. If we want to fix this problem — and I believe every startup should — the industry needs to converge on a new, more nuanced position built into founding documents from day one.

We can split the proposed solve into two categories:

Fixing control and voting (the easy part)

Founding documents can automatically strip voting power upon departure. It’s simple enough to build in an obligation to hand over a voting proxy to the current CEO the moment a founder leaves, along with a mandatory drag-along clause that requires them to comply with future sales or investment rounds. Alternatively, a class of nonvoting shares can be created for departed founders and other service providers.

Fixing the economics (the hard part)

Four years is too short. It does not match the actual lifetime of a modern startup heading toward an exit. There are structural changes to the standard founder equity and vesting templates that could address this problem:

• Extend and back-weight vesting: Move to a five- or six-year schedule and stop using even distributions. Force back-weighting — such as 5% in year one and 10% in year two — to reward longevity and protect the cap table if someone leaves early.
• Pre-agreed buyouts and forfeiture over time: Agree upfront on a methodology and price for the company to buy back vested shares post-termination, perhaps leaving the departed founder with a permanent floor of 2%. Alternatively, tie the equity to timing: If the company sells three months after a founder leaves, they keep their 20% because they built that value. If it sells four years later, a portion of that equity should automatically forfeit back to the pool.
• Automatic share class conversion: Build a mechanism where a departing founder’s equity automatically converts into a separate class of stock with no voting rights and inferior economic rights.

A watch-out for minority founders

Minority co-founders face the highest risk of litigation aimed at clawing back their equity. They should push for pre-agreed severance, clear definitions of “cause,” and accelerated vesting protections before signing paperwork.

Even if the dominant founder refuses those terms to satisfy institutional investors, having the conversation is a critical de-risking tool. Simply observing how your co-founder reacts to these structural negotiations can provide a lot of intel. Are they hostile and defensive? Are they secretive, claiming “the lawyers said no” without CC’ing you on the emails?

How a co-founder handles the equity conversation at the outset can provide valuable insight into how they will handle conflict when the stakes are much higher.

Protecting the cap table from day one

Right now, the venture ecosystem is still operating within an outdated, broken structure. VCs want clean cap tables, remaining founders want motivated teams, and departing founders want to be fairly compensated for the early risks they took. But the current four-year vest, one-year cliff template satisfies none of them. Instead, all it does is ensure that when a founder relationship ends, companies are left hobbled by dead weight on their cap table.

Startups face high-stake, bespoke risks. Equity structures should reflect that reality. Engaging a lawyer to properly customize and document these relationships at the outset isn’t hard or expensive. What is expensive is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars later on a lawsuit, searching for leverage to claw back equity that should have been protected from the very beginning.

is a partner at and an accomplished startup lawyer and litigator specializing in corporate, transactional, intellectual property and complex commercial matters. He has advised startups on multimillion-dollar financings and acquisitions and represented clients in sophisticated intellectual property and corporate disputes. Siegel is licensed to practice in both California and New York.

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It’s been a rapid progression to get here. In the past two years, venture investors have poured more than $7 billion into legal and legal tech startups, most with an AI focus. Funding to the space hit a record level last year, with $4.6 billion invested, per şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data. So far this year, legal tech startups have pulled in more than $2.2 billion.

Top fundraisers

The biggest chunk of funding in recent quarters has gone to startups familiar to followers of the space.

, a provider of AI tools for legal professionals, is the sector’s top fundraiser with $1.2 billion in investment to date. The 4-year-old, San Francisco-based company is reportedly now another $500 million at a $15.5 billion valuation.

, an AI platform built for lawyers, is also in the midst of a massive scale-up. The Stockholm-based startup raised $600 million in Series D funding this year, securing a valuation of $5.5 billion, tripling over a six-month period.

, a 2008 vintage provider of legal practice management software that has pivoted heavily into AI, has also been attracting growth funding. While it didn’t secure a round this year, the Vancouver company closed on $1.4 billion in equity financing in 2024 and 2025.

For 2026, meanwhile, at least 12 legal tech-focused startups have secured rounds of $50 million or more. We’ve put together a list below.

Notably, there’s still quite a bit of activity at the early stage. Out of the 12 largest rounds this year, eight were Series A or Series B financings. Seed-stage dealmaking is also busy, with more than 50 legal- and legal-tech seed rounds of $1 million or more this year, per şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data.

Exits

Legal tech startups are also selling to acquirers at a steady clip.

Legora has been particularly acquisitive of late, snapping up at least five companies this year, all of which raised seed or venture funding. Harvey is also a serial buyer, acquiring at least three companies in 2026. Neither company has disclosed purchase prices.

Among publicly traded acquirers, , a Dutch legal and healthcare software provider, has made at least two sizable legal tech startup acquisitions since last year. It paid $500 million for , a provider of legal spend management tools, and $105 million for , an AI workspace for legal professionals.

We haven’t seen venture-backed legal tech companies go public lately, but the biggest names seem to be signaling the possibility. Harvey, for instance, it added over $100 million in ARR in the first quarter of this year, indicating it has the revenue and growth trajectory of a strong IPO candidate.

With high investment comes high expectations

Robust investment in legal tech comes amid high expectations for AI-delivered efficiencies among legal professionals.

A of professionals in the space this year found that 80% of respondents believe AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work within the next five years.

Early benefits look promising too, with more than half of respondents attesting that their organizations are already seeing a return on investment from investing in AI. Top use cases include document review, legal research, summarizing documents, and drafting briefs or memos.

One of the highest-impact areas for AI ahead is saving time, with tools that automate repetitive tasks. Generally speaking, that’s a welcome offering, although legal professionals do widely anticipate it could disrupt the hourly billing model.

Overall, the storyline looks similar to what we see in other industries where AI is shouldering more tasks. AI isn’t expected to replace lawyers and legal support staff. However, it could free people to spend more time on valuable tasks only a human can do, enable employers to run with a smaller staff, or both.

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has been operating in that market since 2013. The New York-based company operates a marketplace for shares of privately held companies, giving employees and other shareholders a way to sell stock before a company goes public or is acquired.

announced plans to acquire EquityZen in October 2025 and completed the deal in January 2026, bringing the company under the investment bank’s umbrella.

, who co-founded EquityZen and serves as its chief strategy officer, has had a front-row seat to the secondary market’s evolution. şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News spoke with Haslett about what secondary-market pricing says about today’s most sought-after startups, why AI companies are commanding premiums while many older startups trade at discounts, what the IPO market looks like beyond its biggest names, and why investors are taking a closer look at hard tech.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News: The second quarter was one of the strongest venture-backed IPO quarters since 2021, but drove much of that activity. If you remove SpaceX, how open is the IPO market for the typical late-stage startup?

Phil Haslett: Generally, I’d say it’s better than it was three or six months ago. If you were a private late-stage technology company, you probably were going to wait until after SpaceX anyway, so that hurdle is gone.

Tech markets are also doing well. The stock market is at an all-time high, and there’s been a strong recovery in tech stocks overall. I assume that we’re gearing up for a busier summer than usual.

Another thing to consider is IPO performance beyond SpaceX. Some have had initial enthusiasm followed by a slowdown. has come down a bit. So companies may see it as a good time to go public, while post-IPO performance has been, in a word, “meh.”

But within AI, I think we’ve seen that there’s opportunity up and down the production curve — from energy for data centers, to the technology inside them, to orchestration of compute, to efficient spending on training and inference. There are a lot of interesting companies along that spectrum, and I think that bodes well for companies in the space that want to go public.

A few companies entered your Top 20, including , , and . Does that reflect a durable shift away from traditional software, or are investors chasing a small group of scarce, high-profile hard-tech companies?

Haslett: I think it reflects a thematic shift. The companies entering that list generally fall into AI infrastructure, space tech and robotics.

If those are industries we think will have generational growth opportunities, the logical conclusion is that each sector will have winners. SpaceX gets people thinking about opportunities in space and space tech, and by extension defense tech.

The same applies to AI infrastructure. If the market is that big, and we’ve seen companies go public over the last year or so, it stands to reason investors will be interested in other companies in that space. I think that’s more important than simply chasing scarce supply.

These businesses tend to be more capital intensive and may take longer to reach predictable revenue than a traditional SaaS company. How are secondary investors underwriting them?

Haslett: If a company needs more capital, investors have to decide whether the overall opportunity is big enough to justify waiting longer and having the company raise more.

If you have to build a factory or get regulatory approval, that can delay the company’s ability to increase its valuation or reach an exit. Investors discount that into what they’re willing to pay.

Secondary investors are making the same calculus as primary venture and growth investors, so you’d imagine much of that is already baked into headline valuations from primary raises.

What’s changed is that capital-intensive companies now have more financing options. Five or six years ago, a battery company or new chip manufacturer might have had little choice but to raise equity. In 2026, more credit and asset-based financing options are available.

That matters because if one of these companies underperforms or has a distressed asset sale, creditors and lenders get paid first. Secondary investors have to factor that in, too.

EquityZen says the average transaction occurred at a 38% discount to the last funding round, while many AI transactions traded at premiums. What does that say about how bifurcated the private market has become?

Haslett: I don’t know if it’s a mispricing. There are essentially two vintages of private companies right now.

Some companies weren’t built AI-first and have had to adapt. Many raised during the go-go years of 2021, at very high valuations, and may not have raised since. They’ve had to rethink their strategies, which can slow growth and execution. That gets reflected in the discount.

Then there’s a new wave of companies, from 2023 and beyond, that were built with an AI-first mentality. They started from a clean slate, may operate more efficiently, and have a cleaner story for the market.

Some of those companies are raising rounds in quick succession at higher valuations. Secondary investors may pay a premium because they believe the company’s trajectory is clear and the next valuation increase could happen quickly.

is an example from the 2021 cohort. It raised at roughly a $10 billion-plus valuation and just sold for substantially less. It’s still a good business, but when investors compare 20% growth with newer companies going from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue in just a few years, you can understand why their appetite changes.

We may see more companies from that era sell for less than where they raised in 2021.

Over the past few years, many private companies have conducted secondaries because they weren’t ready to go public. When should founders consider establishing a company-approved secondary program?

Haslett: Historically, companies started thinking about liquidity programs after they’d been around five, six, or seven years, largely to reward employees for their patience and provide liquidity to early investors.

Now we’re seeing younger companies engage in controlled liquidity and tender offers.

One reason is talent retention. There are only so many engineers and data scientists, and companies need to compete for them. Secondary liquidity has become more normalized.

More solutions are available than before. Morgan Stanley, for example, has significantly grown its tender-offer activity as investor interest and available tools have expanded.

There’s also more investor appetite. Investors are increasingly willing to gain ownership through tender offers or secondary transactions. Five years ago, that was far less common.

Right now, it’s a very founder- and employee-friendly environment, and investors are willing to support secondary liquidity because they want access. If markets turn, that pendulum could shift back.

For investors considering private-company shares, what does a secondary-market price tell them compared with the valuation at the company’s last fundraise?

Haslett: I think it gives them the true price.

A primary valuation is a point-in-time measure of what investors were willing to pay, and those investors generally received preferred stock with additional rights and liquidation preferences.

The secondary market is more telling of what you could actually get in your pocket now. For companies that embrace secondary liquidity, those prices help employees, former employees and early investors understand what their shares are actually worth.

How does EquityZen calculate popularity and distinguish durable investor demand from curiosity or hype?

Haslett: Our platform allows investors, typically retail accredited investors, to tell us what they’re interested in. They can browse companies, review our analysis, and indicate which companies they would invest in, if shares became available, and at what size.

That gives us a real-time metric of what our user base wants to invest in and how much. It helps guide where we spend our time bringing opportunities to clients.

The last thing we want is to work with a shareholder when we can’t find a buyer, or with a buyer when we can’t find shares for sale.

What does the recent consolidation in the secondary market tell you about how the market is evolving?

Haslett: There was a lot of attention toward the end of 2025 around consolidation in the secondary-market space. went to , and EquityZen went to Morgan Stanley.

To me, that reflects market growth, increasing adoption of secondary liquidity, and the fact that the biggest financial institutions are paying attention. I don’t expect that to change.

Your data showed that some software companies began trading at premiums again in the second quarter. What separates those gaining investor confidence from those still trading at deep discounts?

Haslett: Execution. Leadership and execution.

It’s about a company’s ability to take a legacy SaaS business and turn it into something AI-enabled across the business. Are you using AI tools to improve internal tasks? Are you building AI into your product for clients?

Companies that can combine the stickiness and customer loyalty they’ve already built with their domain expertise and AI are going to do just fine. The ones that are slower to adopt are going to get pummeled.

Six months ago, there was concern that when a company like announced a cybersecurity or legal tool, companies in those sectors would immediately lose value. I think some of that was a knee-jerk reaction.

Customers already using your software have some patience, but they also expect you to keep improving the product and give them a reason not to switch. The companies that are slow to react, or too proud to react, are the ones I think will get hit hardest.

, and 1 are examples of software that is deeply ingrained in large enterprises. If companies can keep their products working well and keep adapting them, they still have a shot at being successful standalone businesses. It comes down to management execution.

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I asked him whether the company and board had started thinking about a potential M&A process. His answer was telling.

“Not really,” he said. “When my board is in the mood, I will reach out and we can discuss a process.”

What I heard was something different: When things start going south, or when the VC is stressed about liquidity (typically five years in) we will think about selling.

That is how many boards approach M&A. They treat it as a fallback plan in case growth slows, cash tightens, or strategic options narrow, and an escape route later on when liquidity is needed to pay back LPs. But by then, the company’s leverage may already be gone.

The first signal is often the most counterintuitive: Everything is going exceptionally well

When revenue is growing rapidly, customers are happy, retention is strong and the leadership team is excited about the future, selling is usually the last thing anyone wants to discuss. Yet this is often when companies command their highest valuations. Strategic acquirers pay premiums for momentum. They want businesses that are winning markets, not struggling businesses trying to survive.

Boards should periodically ask themselves a difficult question: If we are currently operating from a position of maximum strength, should we at least understand what the market might pay for the business?

A second signal emerges when the founder begins losing energy

In many growth-stage companies, the founder remains the primary driver of vision, product strategy, recruiting, customer relationships and culture. After a decade or more of building a company, it is not unusual for founders to begin thinking differently about their future.

That does not automatically mean the company should be sold. In some cases, a CEO transition may be appropriate. In others, a secondary transaction can provide liquidity to founders and reduce the pressure to pursue a full exit. However, boards should not ignore founder fatigue. If the founder’s personal objectives are changing, that reality should become part of the strategic discussion long before it begins affecting company performance.

A third signal occurs when buyers begin calling

Many CEOs dismiss inbound acquisition interest because they believe their company is still too early to sell. While that may be true, repeated inbound interest often contains valuable information. Strategic buyers spend significant resources analyzing markets, technologies and competitive dynamics. When multiple buyers independently express interest, it may signal that the company occupies a more valuable strategic position than management realizes.

This does not mean launching a formal process. It means listening. Understanding why buyers are interested, how they view the market, and what strategic value they see can help boards better assess their options. Sometimes the market identifies value before the company itself does.

Ironically, the situation that most often triggers discussions about selling may be the weakest reason to pursue it

When growth slows, competitors appear stronger, or cash reserves begin shrinking, boards frequently turn their attention toward M&A. The logic seems straightforward: If the company is struggling, perhaps it should be sold.

Unfortunately, buyers can see the same challenges.

When a company enters the market because it is running out of options, valuations typically reflect that reality. Acquirers gain negotiating leverage, and shareholders often receive less attractive outcomes than they expected. In many situations, a strategic reset may create more value than an immediate sale. A product pivot, leadership change, market repositioning or operational turnaround can restore momentum and dramatically improve future strategic options.

What I have observed from conversations with CEOs and boards is that many begin thinking about selling precisely when they should be thinking about reinventing. Meanwhile, the strongest exits often begin when nobody feels urgency to sell at all.

In my mind, the role of a board is to actively avoid inertia, and continuously evaluate whether selling, scaling, pivoting or remaining independent creates the most value for shareholders. The best time to have that conversation is usually before circumstances force it.

is a strategic adviser to tech companies, investors, CEOs and boards, specializing in strategy, growth and M&A. He is a guest contributor to şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News and a university lecturer on strategy, finance and entrepreneurship. Learn more at and connect with him on .

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The current focus on AI IPOs is largely centered on public market performance. Investors want to know whether these companies justify their valuations and how their shares will trade after listing.

But everybody is watching the wrong metric. The more consequential story begins after the bell rings, when limited partners receive distributions and decide where to deploy that capital next.

At sufficient scale, AI IPOs become a capital formation event for the broader venture ecosystem. If several of the largest AI companies reach the public markets over the next few years, those exits could reshape venture fundraising and further concentrate capital among the industry’s largest firms.

The real story begins after the IPO

The more meaningful process starts when investors receive distributions from successful exits. Pension funds, university endowments, sovereign wealth funds and family offices rarely leave that capital sitting idle for long. As portfolios are rebalanced, investment committees begin evaluating new commitments across private markets.

Venture has spent several years waiting for meaningful liquidity. Higher private valuations may improve paper returns, but they do not return capital to limited partners. Only successful exits complete that cycle.

’s $85.7 billion IPO illustrates both the potential and the limits of a single listing. One IPO alone is unlikely to transform venture fundraising. But a sustained wave of listings involving companies such as , , and could steadily return capital to investors and give limited partners fresh resources to recommit.

Liquidity drives the next fundraising cycle

The importance of the next AI IPOs lies less in their individual performance than in their combined effect on venture fundraising.

As capital flows back to limited partners, investment committees gain both the liquidity and the flexibility to make new commitments. How those commitments are distributed will shape the industry’s next phase.

Recent fundraising trends suggest capital is likely to remain concentrated. According to the , the 10 largest U.S. venture funds captured nearly one-third of all capital raised in 2025, while first-time fund formation in more than a decade. If a new wave of liquidity reaches the market, established managers with proven track records are likely to receive the largest share.

offers a useful illustration. The firm recently raised over $15 billion across five funds, an amount equivalent to more than 18% of all U.S. venture capital dollars raised during 2025. Stronger distributions could leave the industry’s largest firms in an even better position to raise successor funds.

Capital will not flow evenly

Limited partners typically increase commitments to managers with established track records before expanding relationships with emerging firms. Successful exits reinforce confidence in those managers, making them the natural destination for a disproportionate share of new allocations.

The effects extend beyond fundraising. A $15 billion fund approaches ownership, pricing and portfolio support differently from a $500 million fund. Large funds need meaningful ownership and outcomes capable of returning multibillion-dollar vehicles. They can lead larger rounds, pay higher prices, defend ownership through multiple financings, and support companies for longer.

This is not a liquidity flywheel. It is a concentration flywheel. Successful investments generate distributions. Those distributions help the industry’s largest firms raise larger successor funds, reinforcing their competitive advantages. Over time, liquidity strengthens fundraising, and fundraising strengthens market position. The market may become larger without becoming broader.

Founders will feel the effects. Large investment platforms can finance companies for longer and compete more aggressively for ownership in the relatively small number of businesses capable of producing returns at their scale. The result could be a more pronounced barbell market: a limited group of companies attracts enormous amounts of capital, while businesses outside the dominant sectors face a more constrained financing environment.

Pay attention to LP liquidity, not just IPO pricing

Public investors will remember this AI IPO cycle by its opening prices. Venture investors may remember it for something else entirely.

It may be the moment capital began concentrating around a handful of firms at a speed the industry has never experienced.

The IPOs themselves will make headlines. The redistribution of power inside venture capital will shape the next decade.

is a general partner at , a VC firm investing in early-stage startups in AI, cybersecurity and digital health, and helping them expand into the U.S. market.

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The purported deal, which has been rumored for months, is notable not just for its scale — it would be one of the largest acquisitions of a technology company in recent years — but also for its highly unusual nature. Privately held startups typically lack the cash, publicly traded shares and debt capacity to acquire their publicly listed brethren.

Of course, Stripe is not just any privately held company. The fintech startup was, until just a few short years ago, the highest valued startup based in the U.S., before being eclipsed on that metric by AI labs and . In February, the company announced it had inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation, which still ranks it as the fourth most valuable startup in the world.

With substantial private capital — it has raised some $10.4 billion since inception, — Stripe has long been one of the most acquisitive venture-backed startups. It has made since its 2010 inception, according to şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data. Only three have disclosed prices: stablecoin platform at $1.1 billion (2025), usage-based billing software startup at $1 billion (2026), and Nigerian payments startup at $200 million (2020).

Stripe’s M&A pace has also accelerated sharply since 2020, şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data shows, with 13 of its 21 acquisitions announced since then.

Its recent strategy appears to be focused on stablecoins and crypto infrastructure — Bridge, , and — as well as on billing and money movement through Metronome, payment processing startup and .

If the plan to buy PayPal does go through, it will most certainly make Stripe an even more formidable player in the crowded payments space.

It would also rank as one of the largest acquisitions of a U.S. tech company, public or private, of the past five years, according to şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data, trailing only a handful of larger deals including $61 billion purchase of in 2022 and ’s acquisition of AI coding platform Cursor and its parent, , for $60 billion last month.

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All told, fintech startups raised $28.6 billion globally in the first half of 2026, a 22.7% increase from the first half of 2025, but down 17.3% compared to the $34.6 billion raised in the second half of last year. (It’s important to note that H2 2025 marked the strongest six-month funding period for fintech startups since the second half of 2022.)

Fintech funding in the first half of 2026 also topped the sector’s investment totals in 2020 and the pre-pandemic year of 2019, though they remain lower than the peak funding year of 2021 as well as 2018.

Historically, the United States has led the globe when it comes to fintech funding, and the first half of this year was no exception. More than 52% — $15 billion — of the global fintech funding in H1 flowed into companies based in the U.S. The United Kingdom was the second-largest recipient of capital, with companies there raising a collective $2.7 billion. India came in third, with a total of $1.9 billion raised, şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data shows.

Deal count drops

Even as dollar volume climbed, deal flow into venture-backed fintech startups fell fairly significantly in H1 2026, şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data shows. The first half of the year saw 1,605 funding deals announced in the sector, a 25.7% decline from the more than 2,161 completed in H1 2025 and down 40% from H1 2024.

Where investors are placing their bets

Active fintech investors who spoke with şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News said they see a split market emerging.

In general, the startup investment market has been cleaved into two extremes, with funding either pouring into brand-new companies or concentrating into a tiny handful of larger, established giants, according to , a partner at (Google Ventures).

The fintech sector is following the same pattern, Sakach told şÚÁĎłÔąĎ News via email, but its biggest players are using their size in an unusual way. “2026 marks the definitive ‘lab-i-fication’ of the modern corporation,” she noted, with some fintech platforms using their scale and steady profits to fund experimental new divisions.

Because these companies have significant data and distribution advantages, they are becoming magnets for top-tier workers, according to Sakach. For instance, she said, is now competing directly with top AI research labs for engineering talent, while is using its dominant position to build out new products in enterprise billing and blockchain.

For early-stage startups inside the U.S., the focus is shifting away from copying legacy financial services toward creating entirely new categories.

Wealth management is seeing a massive surge, driven by an influx of assets from a younger generation demanding AI tools, Sakach pointed out.

Fintech startups are also targeting massive, hidden corporate headaches.

“A 50% reduction in global chargebacks is a ~$60 billion opportunity when accounting for both the merchant and banking overhead,” she said.

The biggest shift, however, is happening around artificial intelligence and financial services. “Coding was AI’s first killer use case; financial markets could be the second, given its extraordinarily broad corpus of data,” said Sakach, pointing to new concepts such as automated hedge funds and prediction markets.

, partner at , said the firm’s investments into the fintech sector have surged this year, as areas such as money movement infrastructure, stablecoins and tracking of real-world assets on the blockchain draw attention.

“We’ve never been busier: The quality of founders, the size of the markets they’re going after, and the maturity of the technology being built has never been more impressive,” he said.

Those trends showed up among fintech’s largest fundraisers last quarter, with companies such as New York-based , which is building an agentic decision platform for banks and insurers, and , an African payments infrastructure startup, clinching some of the period’s largest funding deals. Both raises took place in June, with Taktile raising a $110 million Series C funding round led by and Flutterwave landing a Series E round of an undisclosed amount that valued the company at $3.2 billion.

Risks and opportunities

Even with a wealth of new opportunities in the sector, investors are also wary of the risks introduced by AI and hype around businesses that don’t have a clear path toward growth or profitability.

Sakach was particularly skeptical of new stablecoin networks that lack a clear way to get users, personal credit card startups with tough profit margins, and traditional banking software.

The problem with selling software to legacy banks is that their slow buying cycles “effectively break the hypervelocity speed needed for AI-level product evolution,” she said. Instead, Sakach believes that AI tools will likely succeed by embedding highly specialized engineering teams directly into specific business units.

The era of the generic digital bank or basic payment app is largely over, in Overdorff’s view: “Without a real wedge or distribution advantage, it’s hard to build a durable business there.”

The real value of AI right now is its ability to act as the central engine for financial products rather than just a side feature, Overdorff believes. Startups are using the technology to compress complex underwriting, fraud detection and advisory workflows “that used to take teams of analysts weeks into tasks that happen in minutes.”

As a result, traditional industries such as tax and audit are being completely upended, he said.

Traditional financial institutions, which are usually the slowest to adopt new tech, are finally bringing AI into their core operations, though Overdorff cautioned “that shift is opening up as much risk as opportunity.”

He also flagged the cybersecurity risks associated with the rapid adoption of new technologies and AI into the financial system. “The compliance and governance layer becomes just as important as the AI itself,” he wrote.

Mega-valuations keep top fintechs private

While the fintech IPO market was robust in 2025, it has been markedly quieter in the U.S. so far this year. Three fintech companies went public in the first half of 2026, and they were all foreign companies opting to list in New York: Brazil’s and and Japan’s . That’s the same number of finance-related startups that went public in the first half of 2025, when , and made their debuts.

Many of the fintech companies expected to list in 2026 have remained private, often at escalating valuations. That includes fintech giants such as Stripe, , Ramp, , and others that have opted for more private financing, secondary sales or simply waiting out the public markets.

For example, in February, payments infrastructure giant Stripe announced it had inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation. That valuation represented an impressive 49% increase from the $106.7 billion Stripe was valued at in September, when it completed .

In early June, expense management startup Ramp announced a $750 million funding round at a $44 billion valuation, just a few months after raising $300 million at a $32 billion valuation.

The H2 outlook

The trend of capital concentration seen in the first half of the year will continue into H2, Overdorff predicted, with “mega-rounds for a small set of category leaders, and a tougher fundraising environment for everyone else.”

And while AI adoption will continue to deepen rather than flatten out, the industry will also be watching the stock market closely. The conversation around IPOs is heating up for mature fintech companies, though Overdorff notes that “the timing may hinge on how other high-profile tech IPOs perform this year.”

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Last month, of , the corporate venture arm it launched in 2016 and grew to more than $850 million across three funds. The company hired to explore selling portfolio stakes on the secondary market, putting positions in companies such as and in play. The news also arrived weeks after .

Two corporate venture programs shutting down inside six weeks invites speculation that corporations are retreating from venture capital, but in fact the opposite is true.

Measured in dollars, corporate venture has never been stronger. According to , corporate investors participated in — venture’s strongest funding year since 2021.

, , , , and all led billion-dollar rounds into AI companies last year, per şÚÁĎłÔąĎ data. Nvidia by itself made more than 40 startup investments and appeared in. Meta paid $14.3 billion for its stake in Scale AI. 1Ěý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ s venture arm backed Anthropic’s.

Amid this strength, though, corporate venture is also quietly splitting in two, and the proof is buried inside the record numbers. Bain attributes the elevated corporate participation , and the billion-dollar rounds trace back to the same short list of names.

Take that handful out of the data and the year looks very different. Venture capital itself went through the same sorting over the past decade, as mega-funds absorbed more and more of the capital while everyone else competed for allocation, and corporate venture is now following the same script. The people with the most at stake are the smaller funds and startups downstream.

And notice that the wind-downs are coming from serious programs. PayPal’s arm ran for a decade and , and Fidelity International manages hundreds of billions of dollars. Size never protected either one, and the dividing line runs through the mandate. For Nvidia, Alphabet, Salesforce and Cisco, startup investing is a core strategy, funded off enormous balance sheets, because their businesses depend on owning a position in the technology cycle. Nvidia backs the companies that build on its chips, and that commitment survives budget season. For most other corporations, venture is one strategic priority among several, competing for capital with the core business itself.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that. When a new chief executive commits to finding , winding down even a well-run program can be the disciplined call, and disciplined capital allocation is what shareholders ask of public companies. Corporate venture has always moved in cycles, and the waves of closures after 2000 and 2008 said far more about parent balance sheets than about the returns on offer. Individual programs are mortal, but the asset class keeps growing.

When I started my career, technology drove roughly 2% of the American economy, and today it drives a double-digit share of GDP and nearly 40% of the stock market.

Who feels it first

For smaller funds and their portfolio companies, the split is already changing the math. ‘s finds corporate funds pursuing fewer, more targeted deals, and the share using the secondary market jumped from 15% in 2024 to 22% in 2025; PayPal’s Jefferies mandate takes that same path at the scale of an entire program.

When a corporate arm winds down mid-life, its portfolio companies lose a strategic backer and a source of follow-on capital at once, the smaller funds that syndicated alongside it lose their anchor for the next round, and a secondary sale replaces a committed partner with a financial buyer.

I spend my days working with early-stage venture funds, and I’m watching this pattern develop in real time: strong companies outside AI, with a departing corporate backer on the cap table, heading into rounds their existing syndicate can’t fill alone.

The lesson for startup management teams and VC fund managers is to plan for corporate capital to come and go. The pro rata rights that funds hold in their best companies become most valuable at exactly these moments, when a strategic investor steps back and ownership in a breakout company becomes available to whoever can fund it.

Smaller funds should line up committed follow-on capacity before their winners come back to market, so a corporate partner’s exit becomes a chance to buy more of a company they already know well. Founders should run the same exercise from the other side of the table and know today which investors on their cap table can carry the next round.

Corporate venture will keep growing because the forces behind it keep growing, and programs will open and close along the way, as they always have. What’s changed is the sorting: permanent capital consolidating at the top of the market, and everyone else learning to plan around that fact. The funds and founders who prepare for it will come out the other side owning more of the companies that matter.

is the founder and managing partner of , a growth-equity firm that co-invests in venture-backed companies by leveraging the unused pro-rata rights of more than 1,000 early-stage VC partners.

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Nonetheless, amid a period of soaring , rising EV adoption rates, and accelerating progress in fusion and other fields, cleantech investment activity isn’t slowing down.

In the first half of this year, investors poured $15 billion into seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies in şÚÁĎłÔąĎ cleantech, EV and sustainability-focused categories. That puts funding on track to slightly exceed the 2025 tally, which was the lowest in several years.

On a quarterly basis, funding is also on the rise. Around $8 billion went to companies in cleantech and related categories in the second quarter of this year, the highest quarterly total since 2024.

Even taking into account recent gains, however, cleantech funding remains far below its former peak in 2021 and 2022. Given that overall venture funding has risen with the AI boom, cleantech also accounts for a smaller share of total investment.

Where funding is concentrating

That’s not to say megarounds aren’t getting done in the sector. A look at the largest funding rounds of 2026 paints a varied picture of where capital is concentrating.

Stockholm-based green steel producer scored the largest financing of 2026, securing $1.6 billion in a round led by Swedish asset manager . Stegra plans to use the money to complete the construction of its large-scale steel plant.

The next-biggest round went to , a -backed startup that has been generating buzz and reservations for a flagship electric pickup starting at around $25,000 that can be converted to an SUV. Troy, Michigan-based Slate raised $650 million in Series C funding in April and plans to deliver its first trucks to customers later this year.

The third- and fourth-largest financings were fusion deals. The latest of those went to , which raised $465 million in a June Series G funding to go toward building a fusion power plant. The -led round set a $15.5 billion post-money valuation for the Everett, Washington-based company.

A few months earlier, fusion startup picked up $450 million in Series A funding led by . The San Francisco-based company, formed around a fusion breakthrough at , plans to build the world’s most powerful laser to further its goal of grid-scale energy production.

For a broader view of where large financings are concentrating, below we put together a list of 10 of the largest cleantech-related rounds this year.

Under the circumstances, the space looks underfunded

While sums going to cleantech-related startups aren’t tiny, looking at total investment tallies does leave one with the impression that the space looks underfunded.

After all, energy is a growth sector, and clean energy is leading the way. The forecasts the share of renewables and nuclear in the world’s power mix will rise to 50% by the end of this decade. At the same time, global power demand is set to grow by more than 3.5% per year on average over the rest of this decade.

Exits of venture-backed companies are also happening, another source of encouragement for startup investors. The most recent IPO in the space was geothermal provider , which went public in May, raising $1.9 billion. The Houston-based company had a recent market cap around $8.6 billion.

On the nuclear power front, , a developer of small modular reactors, carried out its own Nasdaq IPO in April, raising $1 billion. The Rockville, Maryland, company was recently valued at a little over $5 billion.

Looking ahead, it’s not far-fetched to see myriad factors that could power clean energy, sustainability and EV sectors higher. For clean power in particular, the voracious energy demands of AI are certainly a catalyst to consider. We’ll stay tuned to see if growing energy demand ultimately translates into greater startup investment.

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