The purported deal, which has been rumored for months, is notable not just for its scale 鈥� it would be one of the largest acquisitions of a technology company in recent years 鈥� 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 鈥� it has raised some $10.4 billion since inception, 鈥斕齋tripe has long been one of the most acquisitive venture-backed startups. It has made since its 2010 inception, according to SA国际传媒 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鈥檚 M&A pace has also accelerated sharply since 2020, SA国际传媒 data shows, with 13 of its 21 acquisitions announced since then.

Its recent strategy appears to be focused on stablecoins and crypto infrastructure 鈥� Bridge, , and 鈥斕齛s 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 SA国际传媒 data, trailing only a handful of larger deals including $61 billion purchase of in 2022 and 鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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% 鈥� $15 billion 鈥� 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, SA国际传媒 data shows.

Deal count drops

Even as dollar volume climbed, deal flow into venture-backed fintech startups fell fairly significantly in H1 2026, SA国际传媒 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 SA国际传媒 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 SA国际传媒 News via email, but its biggest players are using their size in an unusual way. 鈥�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.

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

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

, partner at , said the firm鈥檚 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.

鈥淲e’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,鈥� he said.

Those trends showed up among fintech鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檛 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 鈥渆ffectively break the hypervelocity speed needed for AI-level product evolution,鈥� 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鈥檚 view: 鈥淲ithout 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 鈥渢hat used to take teams of analysts weeks into tasks that happen in minutes.鈥�

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 鈥渢hat shift is opening up as much risk as opportunity.鈥�

He also flagged the cybersecurity risks associated with the rapid adoption of new technologies and AI into the financial system. 鈥淭he compliance and governance layer becomes just as important as the AI itself,鈥� 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鈥檚 and and Japan鈥檚 . That鈥檚 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 鈥渕ega-rounds for a small set of category leaders, and a tougher fundraising environment for everyone else.鈥�

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 鈥渢he timing may hinge on how other high-profile tech IPOs perform this year.鈥�

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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 鈥� venture’s strongest funding year since 2021.

, , , , and all led billion-dollar rounds into AI companies last year, per SA国际传媒 data. Nvidia by itself made more than 40 startup investments and appeared in. Meta paid $14.3 billion for its stake in Scale AI. 1听补苍诲 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鈥檛 slowing down.

In the first half of this year, investors poured $15 billion into seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies in SA国际传媒 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鈥檚 not to say megarounds aren鈥檛 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鈥檚 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鈥檛 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檒l stay tuned to see if growing energy demand ultimately translates into greater startup investment.

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First, San Diego-based announced its of a Palo Alto, California-based software startup focused on making it easier for developers to run AI models across different types of computer chips.

At the same time, reports emerged that chip startup is finalizing an $800 million funding round led by , valuing the company at $10 billion. Together, the two deals underscore a growing reality in tech: As hardware remains scarce and expensive, the software layers that connect these chips are becoming just as valuable as the silicon itself.

Watching these shifts unfold firsthand is , a managing partner at who led early investments and holds board seats at both Modular and SambaNova.

Munichiello brings a pragmatic operational background to tech investing, having served as a captain and paratrooper in the U.S. military before transitioning to the private sector. He later worked as an early executive at , helping scale the warehouse automation company through its $775 million acquisition by .

With a background in mathematics and computer science from and an MBA from , Munichiello has spent his venture career focused on core software infrastructure, developer tools and data systems, including early backing of companies such as , and .

In this interview, he discusses the mechanics behind the Qualcomm-Modular deal, the practical realities of managing hardware scarcity, and what the current wave of consolidation means for the future of independent startups.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

SA国际传媒 News: The acquisition of Modular by Qualcomm highlights a massive push to decouple AI software from hardware fragmentation. Does this signal that the ultimate value in the AI stack is permanently shifting away from proprietary hardware architectures and toward developer-friendly software layers that can run across any compute environment?

Munichiello: The types of hardware required for AI in the future are becoming heterogeneous. Originally, it looked like it was just GPUs from , and then also GPUs from and other players. But now, the direction hardware is going is toward “disaggregated inference,” which basically means splitting apart the different compute used for different parts of answering a question when engaging with a model.

It increasingly looks like there will be three types of chips used in disaggregated inference: an AI-specific chip, a CPU and a GPU.

For a player like Qualcomm, all three of those components are present, so they need a software layer that sits across them. Everywhere else, Nvidia included, they usually sell alongside CPUs and accelerators, and there hasn鈥檛 really been a software solution that works across all of those.

When did you first start investing in this wave of AI infrastructure and semiconductors?

Munichiello: We鈥檝e been investing in AI since 2016, starting as early as a company called , which was first company, sold to , and became part of the Siri team. After that, we invested in , co-founded by , which was later sold to and became an important part of its stack. HPE actually went on to be the compute partner for and worked very closely with as well.

We also got excited about semiconductors early, long before this current wave, when we led the Series A for SambaNova. I first met that company when it was just three people and a slide deck. We led that round in December 2017 鈥� after led the seed investment 鈥� and I鈥檝e sat on the board since. That initial investment was $15 million at a $480 million valuation.

It seems like a lot of legacy chip giants and major cloud providers are aggressively buying up infrastructure startups. What does this consolidation mean for early-stage founders? Are we entering an era where standalone startups need to plan for an early acquisition, or is there still a path to an independent IPO?

Munichiello: There is definitely a path to an independent IPO. showed that trajectory beautifully, and I’m really happy for and that team. There is absolutely a trajectory to build big, standalone businesses because the demand for compute is completely off the charts. We can’t make semiconductors fast enough, nor can .

Everyone is trying to find extra capacity by making everything more efficient. Technology often emerges with a big boom in mass demand and high prices, and then we figure out how to make it cheaper. We are in that efficiency step right now. Demand for inference is everywhere, from medicine and law to coding, customer support and finance.

We are trying to squeeze every last bit of value out of chips. Squeezing that value comes from using multiple types of chips: using cheaper CPUs when we can, GPUs when we need them, and the most expensive chips only for the most complicated parts of the process.

We are also evaluating software across the stack to ensure every aspect of these queries is as efficient as possible. It鈥檚 not surprising that there are a lot of acquirers. The universe of buyers has expanded from just semiconductor companies buying other semiconductor companies to software companies, hyperscalers and model companies buying chip companies, too. Amazon has Trainium and Inferentia; has Maia; has the TPU, and every big tech company wants to be able to say it has a chip.

How does the rise of open-source models shift this dynamic?

Munichiello: The universe of potential buyers expands even larger when open-source models become prolific. In the Qualcomm announcement, they talked a lot about their enthusiasm for open source 鈥� not just keeping Modular open-source, but for models to be open-sourced. When that happens, instead of enterprise companies paying hundreds of millions of dollars to model providers to do inference, the companies themselves will own their models and run them on their own hardware.

So you firmly believe that IPOs are not totally off the table for early-stage tech and hardware companies?

Munichiello: Not at all. Look at , which is highly hardware-intensive. I think we will see many IPOs here in the next six months. I know of at least 15 or 20 companies that are planning to go public, so it is going to be a very busy period.

In a market where valuations are multiplying rapidly based on technical metrics like chip throughput, how are you able as an investor to separate real, sustainable product-market traction from early hype?

Munichiello: There are a lot of AI companies getting valuations that are disconnected from the business outcomes they are driving. True traction comes down to quarter-over-quarter execution, hitting sales demands and actually fielding physical systems for customers.

A company becomes highly attractive to investors when it delivers a massive volume of technology into production environments 鈥� like data centers for major enterprise brands and devices we use every day.

That, combined with incoming demand from “Neo-Clouds” (new data centers built specifically for inference), shows real traction. These players are looking for any chips they can get their hands on, and the concept of disaggregated inference 鈥� combining three different chip types to lower the total cost of ownership 鈥� is highly compelling. It also alters the competitive landscape; it shows that the market isn’t just a runaway race for one dominant player, but an opportunity for CPU providers to catch up as well.

GV has a track record of backing foundational tech long before the generative AI hype cycle. How has your framework adapted now that AI infrastructure capital requirements have skyrocketed? When a startup needs hundreds of millions just to compete at the frontier, how do you maintain a focus on the team and relationship without getting bogged down by the sheer scale of capital?

Munichiello: It has always been complicated to start from scratch and build a meaningful, generational company. We are not in the business of momentum investing. We don’t invest in something just because we think it will be marked up by other investors over time. We look for fundamental technologies and consequential businesses that can stand on their own.

When we met Modular, it was just Tim and Chris with an idea, and we convinced them to take our $23 million investment. At the time, we were nervous about valuing the company at more than $80 million or $90 million, and it ended up getting valued at $155 million in that first round.

We took 15% of the company right off the bat in a round that felt way out over its skis for that moment in the world. But they hired an amazing team of compiler engineers, started growing and built in a space that became the most strategic in all of AI.

We value different companies based on their specific markets. Some are incredibly capital-intensive and require billions of dollars, meaning we can’t do it alone. As an investor, we must bring our network and a syndicate of other investors who can write hundreds of millions of dollars in checks.

Software companies can move a bit faster, make more mistakes and pivot. In hardware, if you tape out a chip and it doesn’t work, you are set back for years and have to raise significantly more money. It鈥檚 much more binary when it comes to the physical world. A hundred million dollars goes a lot further in software because you can always optimize your token usage or engineering to shift directions, which is incredibly hard to do in robotics or hardware.

This acquisition represents a massive return on your initial investment. What does this success say about your broader investment philosophy?

Munichiello: It鈥檚 a fantastic outcome 鈥� a 27x return on our initial investment and roughly 10x on our total dollars invested. But we aren’t a firm that just leads a Series A and then steps back. We look to write massive checks and co-lead later rounds, especially when things get difficult.

It is inevitable that every company will hit a wall at some point 鈥� whether due to macroeconomic factors, team dynamics or customer challenges. We call these “crucible moments,” and they are what make companies truly interesting. In an internal email I sent to our team, I talked about loving curveballs. We are used to things going sideways, and that’s when we really step up and help our companies. We like to find these incredibly hard problems, back exceptional people with the character and grit to survive those moments, and help them build standalone businesses.

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The Menlo Park, California-based firm highlighted its early investment in , which last month overtook rival as the top-valued frontier lab in the world with a staggering $965 billion valuation. While Menlo Ventures鈥� investment in Anthropic鈥檚 was not its first bet on artificial intelligence, the firm described it as its 鈥渇lag-planting moment.鈥�

鈥淲e made our first investment in Anthropic in 2023, when the company was pre-product, pre-revenue. By then, ChatGPT was a household name, and many believed the LLM race was already decided. We saw it differently,鈥� the firm wrote in published Tuesday. 鈥淚n and his founding team 鈥� arguably the most accomplished researchers in the field 鈥� we saw the rare mix of technical depth and clarity of purpose that defines a category leader. We were convinced there was room for another independent foundation model company, that Anthropic was the team to build it, and that an investment in Anthropic could anchor our broader AI strategy.鈥�

The firm went on to lead Anthropic鈥檚 the following year.

鈥淭hat early relationship gave us a rare vantage point on the model layer and on the infrastructure, workflows, and application opportunities forming around it,鈥� the firm said this week.

Two new funds

The firm鈥檚 new capital is across two funds: , earmarked for seed and Series A startups, and , a growth fund for Series B and later startups that are 鈥渁lready pulling away from the pack and on their way to becoming the breakout names of the AI era.鈥�

Along with Anthropic, other notable Menlo Ventures investments over the years include , , , and . Anthropic, which has filed plans for a 2026 IPO, would be the largest exit to date for one of its portfolio companies by far, with an expected IPO target of $1 trillion or more.

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So far in 2026, U.S. companies have pulled in nearly 80% of global seed- through growth-stage financing, per SA国际传媒 data. That鈥檚 a sharp divergence from the years leading up to the AI boom, when American companies typically secured less than half of all investment.

Gap for AI is even more pronounced

The U.S. share of artificial intelligence-related investment is even greater.

So far this year, nearly 88% of AI-related startup funding, or $319 billion, went to U.S.-headquartered companies, per SA国际传媒 data. Of that, most went to just two recipients, and .

Since both Anthropic and OpenAI are on track for public market debuts later this year, it鈥檚 possible next year鈥檚 comps will be less lopsided, as they won鈥檛 be raising any more giant late-stage financings. We鈥檒l see.

Large venture hubs outperform small and mid-sized ones

Although no other country comes close to the U.S. for startup funding, a few of the larger technology investment hubs are seeing year-over-year gains.

Funding to China鈥檚 startups, in particular, is on the rise after several sluggish years. So far in 2026, startups have raised over $33 billion, per SA国际传媒 data, already surpassing the total for all of 2025.

The United Kingdom is also looking up. U.K.-based startups have pulled in $16.5 billion so far this year, compared to $19.5 billion in all of 2025. AI and fintech are the country鈥檚 leading sectors for investment.

Other mid-sized venture markets are seeing funding levels this year that are on track to be flat or moderately higher year over year, per SA国际传媒 data. In Europe, this includes France, Spain and Germany.

In Asia, India, Japan and South Korea are also neither way up nor way down. Canada and Australia, meanwhile, aren鈥檛 in a slump but also aren鈥檛 seeing any major AI-focused funding raised this year.

Maybe it鈥檚 a US bubble?

Now that more than three-fourths of startup funding is going to U.S. companies, it seems timely to note that the country is home to only a little over 4% of the global population.

On the tech startup front, it鈥檚 undoubtedly an impressive 4%. The U.S. has an unrivaled track record for building leading technology companies, along with the capital and talent to keep on doing so.

That said, certain trends do warrant some serious bubble consideration. The anomalously high concentration of startup funding into American companies is one of them.

Surely many of the countries in which the remaining 96% of people on Earth dwell possess entrepreneurial talent, infrastructure and economic might that could support more than just a measly 12% share of AI startup funding. If one was a betting type, it鈥檚 hard not to argue that the odds for that look pretty good.

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AI’s share of venture funding climbed to 80% this quarter, up from 55% a year ago. The deployment is real. The liquidity question behind it is the one founders should be paying attention to.

In 2025, SA国际传媒 roughly 2,300 venture-backed acquisitions against just 65 IPOs. In aggregate, the LPs sitting behind every venture fund have been in since 2022. Record deployment in Q1 doesn’t change the math at the LP level, and that pressure is reshaping every term sheet, follow-on decision and board conversation in venture right now.

Know what’s actually driving the firm across the table

When a partner walks you through their thesis, they’re telling you a story about your market; rarely are they telling you a story about their fund. That second story determines whether they can write your bridge in 18 months, whether they’ll fight for pro rata in your Series B, and whether their behavior in the next downturn looks like patience or anxiety.

LPs are demanding cash back. Paper markups aren鈥檛 enough. Some firms are responding well, consolidating into their best companies and being deliberate about new commitments while others are pretending it’s still 2021. Founders should know which type they’re sitting across from before signing anything.

Ask the questions founders rarely ask

Three reference calls with portfolio CEOs used to be enough due diligence on a VC. Not anymore.

Ask what vintage the partner’s current fund is and how much dry powder is left. Ask how many of their 2018 through 2020 companies have produced realized returns rather than paper markups.

Ask whether their LPs have been pushing for GP-led secondaries. If the answer is yes, the firm is operating under a cash-flow constraint that will show up in your boardroom. These aren’t rude questions. They’re the same ones serious LPs are asking that partner this quarter, and high-quality firms welcome the conversation.

Build your buyer relationships now

If you’re raising in 2026, you’re statistically far more likely to get acquired than to ring the bell at the . Q1 2026 alone produced, the third-busiest quarter since 2022. Of the 21 venture-backed exits over $1 billion globally last quarter, only four happened in the U.S. The exit window for American founders is narrower than the headline funding numbers suggest.

Smart founders design for that reality from Series A. They know which platform companies have an active corporate development team. They build product surface area that maps cleanly into someone else’s stack. They cultivate executive relationships at the most likely acquirers years before any sale conversation, so when one starts naturally the introduction is already there.

Capital is plentiful. Discipline is what separates outcomes.

Every dollar concentrated into the four AI mega-rounds is a dollar that hasn’t returned anything to LPs yet. Founders who understand the LP-to-GP-to-startup chain end up with better partners, smarter terms and companies built for more than one path to a great outcome.

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枚der鈥檚 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枚der鈥檚 unique approach to venture investing 鈥� 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 SA国际传媒 News and other leading publications.

Related reading:

• What The Record Venture Funding Quarter Actually Means For Your Startup鈥檚 Fundraise
• Q1 2026 Shatters Venture Funding Records As AI Boom Pushes Startup Investment To $300B

Every year for the past several years, the same prediction circulates: This is the year the IPO market comes back. We said it in 2025. We said it in 2026. We’ll probably say it again in 2027.

And every year, a handful of headline-grabbing offerings get held up as proof. This cycle it’s , and . The narrative writes itself: the window is open, the giants are listing, the market is back.

But here’s the catch: those aren’t IPOs for the rest of the market. They’re exceptions to a rule that has been hardening for 30 years.

The IPO market isn’t closed. It’s shrinking.

The instinct is to treat the IPO drought as cyclical, a consequence of rate hikes, market volatility or investor risk appetite. Fix the macro, the thinking goes, and the listings follow.

The data doesn’t support that story.

In 1996, more than 8,000 companies were listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Today, fewer than 4,000 are, even as the U.S. economy has tripled in size.

The bar to go public has moved in one direction.

In 1980, the median company went public with around $64 million in revenue in today’s dollars. Today, the typical IPO candidate has revenue that would have made it a mid-cap public company a generation ago.

The result: Companies are staying private far longer, and the liquidity that shareholders were counting on keeps getting pushed out.

Every time the IPO window 鈥渞eopens,鈥� it reopens at a higher threshold than before. Waiting for conditions to return to historical norms isn’t a strategy. It’s a bet against a structural trend that has outlasted every rate cycle, bull market and recovery in recent memory.

The companies left behind

When the bar rises high enough, it doesn’t just delay IPOs. It eliminates them.

There are thousands of private companies in the United States today with $50 million, $100 million, $200 million in annual revenue, with continued growth. Previously, companies at that scale formed the backbone of the public markets. Today they’re still private, and most will stay that way.

Not all of them are great businesses. Some raised at 2021 peak valuations and are quietly running out of runway. But a real subset has grown past the early venture stage. They have revenue, margins and years of operating history. The IPO was supposed to be the exit. For most of them, it won’t be.

Who’s actually suffering

Employees at these companies made a bet: below-market salaries, equity instead of cash, years of building. Their equity was supposed to be liquid by now. It isn’t. Meanwhile, life has continued: mortgages, children, aging parents, career crossroads.

I lived this at . When I left, exercising my options triggered a tax bill I couldn’t afford without finding liquidity for shares I didn’t know how to sell. The market for these shares exists in theory. In practice it’s opaque, fragmented and slow. A transaction that should take weeks can take months, if it closes at all.

Venture general partners are in a different bind. Their funds are locked in companies with no exit path. Distributed to Paid-In capital is near historic lows. Limited partners who expected returns from prior vintage funds are still waiting, either holding back re-commitments or concentrating capital into the megafunds that can generate deal flow regardless of exit conditions. The mid-tier manager without DPI is struggling to raise.

A small number of the most prominent companies can run tender offers, giving employees a company-sponsored, structured opportunity to sell their shares.

For everyone else, there are brokered secondary marketplaces that work, slowly and imperfectly, for a narrow slice of the most in-demand names. According to , 90% of all venture secondary volume was concentrated in just 15 companies last quarter. For the rest, the market barely functions.

We’ve been here before

This situation has a historical parallel most people in finance have forgotten.

In the late 1800s, the was the only legitimate listing venue, and it was selective. Hundreds of real companies couldn’t meet the requirements, so brokers took matters into their own hands. They gathered on Broad Street, outside the NYSE, and began trading unlisted stocks on the curb. Literally on the sidewalk. It was chaotic, informal, fragmented. No centralized pricing. No standardized process. No real infrastructure.

But the companies were real. And the demand was real.

Over time, the curb traders organized. They moved indoors. They built rules and infrastructure. The Curb Market became the . The companies that traded there weren’t defective, the system was.

The private secondary market today looks a lot like that sidewalk. Fragmented brokers. Inconsistent pricing. Transactions that depend on who you know. The companies being traded are real. The demand is real. The infrastructure doesn’t exist yet, but it’s coming. Markets that serve real economic needs don’t stay informal forever.

The original Curb Market didn’t fail. It grew up. What’s happening in private secondaries today will do the same. The only variable is timing, and the shareholders waiting on liquidity are the ones absorbing the cost of that delay.

听 is the founder of and managing partner of Earlyasset Capital, where he is building infrastructure for and investing in the venture secondary market. Earlier in his career, he was part of the original founding team at .

Related SA国际传媒 query:

Related reading:

• The IPO Window Won鈥檛 Stay Open On Its Own
• Forecast: 2024 Was Slow For Tech IPOs, But 2025 Could Be Different
• SA国际传媒 Predicts: IPOs Picked Up In 2025 And The Outlook For 2026 Is Even More Optimistic

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Notably, the valuation represents an impressive 49% increase from the $106.7 billion Stripe was valued at in September, when it completed . That deal marked the first time that Stripe had surpassed its previous peak that it achieved in March 2021.

Stripe declined to comment on the latest secondary sale beyond , in which it noted that the majority of funds for the tender offer are being provided by investors, including , , and others. Stripe said it will also use a portion of its own capital to repurchase shares, but did not specify how much.

The company, which counts the likes of , , , , and as customers, says that businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume, up 34% from 2024. Beyond payments, Stripe says its revenue products, including billing, invoicing and tax, are on track to collectively hit an annual run rate of $1 billion in 2026.

Tender offers have become more common as an increasing number of startups choose to stay private longer. Generative AI company is also believed to be working on its own at a valuation of at least $350 billion.

Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $51.8 billion for 2025, per SA国际传媒 . That鈥檚 a fairly significant 鈥� 27% 鈥� increase from 2024鈥檚 total of $40.8 billion raised.

Related SA国际传媒 Pro query:

Related reading:

• Q&A: Why Deep Tech Investors Are Turning To The Secondary Market For Liquidity
• Secondary Financings Offer Lifeline In A Slow Exit Market
• 鈥榃hy Not?鈥� How Sales Automation Unicorn Clay Uses Tender Offers To Reward Employees Without An Exit In Sight

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