Anthropic · Funding Round · OpenAI · U.S. · Crunchbase News
More Money, Fewer Checks: These 3 Charts Show The Divide Behind VC’s Record Funding Year
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Startup capital is both more abundant than ever this year and yet scarcer.
Key facts
- In Q3, reported deal counts in North America fell 16% year over year and 14% quarter over quarter, reaching the lowest quarterly total since 2023, even as North American funding dollars jumped 50%
- One of the best ways to visualize this dichotomy is by looking at how much of the record global venture funding this year went to funding rounds across different tiers: less than $100 million, $100
- Their data shows that despite record venture capital spending in 2026, nearly $680 billion through Q3, investors are writing fewer checks to seed and early-stage companies, the businesses one typically
- Anthropic, the biggest venture-backed private company of all, is slated to go public this month in a potential $2 trillion IPO, offering a prominent test of public investors’ appetite
Summary
Their data shows that despite record venture capital spending in 2026, nearly $680 billion through Q3, investors are writing fewer checks to seed and early-stage companies, the businesses one typically thinks of when they talk about startups. One of the best ways to visualize this dichotomy is by looking at how much of the record global venture funding this year went to funding rounds across different tiers: less than $100 million, $100 million to under $1 billion, and $1 billion and more. As illustrated above, the funding surge this year is concentrated in those largest rounds, while the smaller-round market has flatlined since 2023. The massive surge in billion-dollar-plus rounds in Q1 and Q2, of course, was thanks to record-setting financings for OpenAI and Anthropic.