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

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

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

Other big M&A deals

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

To illustrate, we used SA国际传媒 data to put together a list of the 10 largest disclosed-price U.S. startup acquisitions this year.聽1 The bottom nine range from $2 billion to $7 billion.

Biotech was a standout

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

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

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

Brex, Modular and more

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

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

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

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This tracker includes layoffs conducted by U.S.-based companies or those with a strong U.S. presence and is updated at least bi-weekly. We鈥檝e included both startups and publicly traded, tech-heavy companies. We鈥檝e also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as , even when it鈥檚 unclear how much of the U.S. workforce has been affected by layoffs.

Layoff and workforce figures are best estimates based on reporting. We source the layoffs from media reports, our own reporting, social media posts and , a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs.

We recently updated our layoffs tracker to reflect the most recent round of layoffs each company has conducted. This allows us to quickly and more accurately track layoff trends, which is why you might notice some changes in our most recent numbers.

If an employee headcount cannot be confirmed to our standards, we note it as 鈥渦nclear.鈥�

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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During his tenure as chair from 1987 to 2006, Greenspan was renowned for his cryptic utterances on the economy, leaving rate-watchers befuddled as to whether they presaged a likely cut or hike. His wife, veteran correspondent , famously that their marriage took time because 鈥渉e claims he proposed three times before I was able to understand. He was so oblique. It was like his testimony.鈥�

In spite of his long history of obfuscation, however, Greenspan is best known for a fairly unambiguous two-word phrase: 鈥渋rrational exuberance.鈥� He coined it in a 1996 to the聽 , a conservative-leaning think tank, titled 鈥淭he Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society.鈥�

One of the speech鈥檚 core points was the notion that pricing logic in an industrial economy dominated by durable goods and materials is far simpler than for a modern economy increasingly dominated by software and services.

鈥淲hat is the price of a unit of software or a legal opinion? How does one evaluate the price change of a cataract operation over a 10-year period when the nature of the procedure and its impact on the patient changes so radically?鈥� he mused, before turning to that most famous insight.

That insight, if I am translating Greenspan-speak correctly, was linked to the question of how one can establish long-term confidence in valuations of assets tied to fast-changing technologies and business models, like software, where prior notions of unit economics no longer applied.

鈥淗ow do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions,鈥� he wondered. It鈥檚 a conjecture that 30 years later still has no obvious answer.

Notably, Greenspan鈥檚 speech actually predated the most heated periods of the dot-com boom, bubble and implosion, which began in the late 1990s and culminated with the hitting its cyclical peak in early 2000. During and shortly after that period, money-losing e-commerce companies like online grocer and pet supply retailer famously went public at then sky-high valuations before abruptly shuttering. Internet infrastructure providers fared even worse, exemplified by networking equipment maker going from Canada鈥檚 most valuable company to penny stock in a couple years.

But while losers lost big, winners eventually eclipsed them. Dot-com-era megastars and , for instance, are now worth nearly $8 trillion combined.

That brings us to one of Greenspan鈥檚 other well-known analogies: the lottery ticket.

In Congressional testimony in early 1999, pressed for his thoughts on then fast-rising share prices of hot internet companies, the Fed chair the stock-buying frenzy to playing the lottery. He observed that people have long been willing to pay more for a lottery ticket than their chances of winning would justify, simply because they are drawn to the remote chance of a huge win.

”And undoubtedly some of these small companies, which have stock prices going through the roof, will succeed and they very well may justify even higher prices,” he said. ”The vast majority are almost sure to fail. That’s the way the markets work in this regard.”

Fast-forward to today, and one is easily drawn to apply Greenspan鈥檚 analogy to the current AI mania. Once again, we鈥檙e seeing unprecedented valuations attached to money-losing companies, many in still relatively nascent stages of development.

In other ways, however, this time it鈥檚 not a dot-com lottery ticket redo. For one thing, the companies in which a retail investor might be buying said ticket are by no means small. , at its current market cap, is the sixth-most valuable U.S. public company. It鈥檚 priced like a winner, not a wanna-be.

Same holds true for recent valuations for and , both of which have confidentially filed for public offerings likely to debut in coming months. Anthropic hit a $965 billion post-money valuation, while OpenAI鈥檚 was recently around $852 billion.

One wonders what Greenspan would say about these stratospheric asset price levels. I鈥檇 suspect there are better than lottery-ticket odds that it would be something cryptic.

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Photo: Dr. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, speaks at the Per Jacobsson Foundation Lecture, October 21, 2007, in Washington, DC. (Photo by International Monetary Fund Photograph/Stephen Jaffe used under the .)

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The company is a marketing analytics platform that acts as an independent referee of sorts to track which digital ads actually drive mobile app downloads and in-app purchases. It helps companies measure their return on ad spend while claiming to protect user privacy and block ad fraud.

While AppsFlyer CEO and co-founder declined to comment on specific deal details, he did confirm to Axios that , , and each took a minority stake in the San Francisco-based startup.

AppsFlyer鈥檚 most recent raise before this was in 2020. With the latest round, the company has now raised $1.3 billion in known funding since its 2011 inception, per .

Previous backers include , 1, , and .

鈥淭hey believe what we believe: that attribution and measurement must be independent, unbiased and trusted,鈥� Kaniel was quoted as saying of AppsFlyer鈥檚 newest investors. 鈥淎s AI takes over more of how advertising gets bought and optimized, the signals feeding those systems become the most consequential infrastructure in the industry.鈥�

He added that the company is eyeing the public markets, calling the financing 鈥渁 step on that path.”

So far in 2026, companies in sales, marketing and CRM categories have pulled in around $4.1 billion globally in seed- through growth-stage funding, per SA国际传媒 . That puts the space on track to come in roughly flat with or a bit up from the prior three years 鈥� when annual funding hovering around the $8 billion mark 鈥� though still far below boom-era levels, when sales and marketing investment topped $20 billion. Notably, many of the startups funded in recent quarters have been AI-focused, with many of them offering agentic tools and automation in areas such as sales, marketing and customer experience management.

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

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

Noteworthy recent rounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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The IPO聽caps a remarkable journey for a company that raised nearly $12 billion in private investment since its founding in 2002 to become the world鈥檚 most valuable venture-backed startup with a most recent private-market valuation of $1.25 trillion. Along the way, SpaceX helped redefine both the space industry and the late-stage venture market.

Its long-awaited offering raised some $75 billion and served as聽an enormous liquidity event for Musk, who became the as a result, as well as his close friend and confidant of , who now owns a stake valued at more than $68 billion in SpaceX. It’s also a massive and successful exit for early venture and corporate investors including , , , and .

SpaceX’s offering was unconventional along several fronts. Along with the IPO鈥檚 record-breaking nature 鈥� more than 10x larger than 鈥檚 $104 billion offering in 2012 鈥� the company also by setting a fixed price of $135 per share, rather than the traditional approach whereby investors and bookbuilders determine a range based on demand.

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX is also wildly unprofitable. The company posted a net loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up more than 700% from a year ago. Revenue totaled $4.69 billion in Q1, up 15% from a year ago. Its megacap valuation means it鈥檚 slated to trade at an aggressive premium of 94x revenue.

The SpaceX offering is the first in a lineup of at least three historic IPOs this year, with generative AI giants and openly racing to make it to the public markets in coming months. Altogether, the three IPOs transfer some $3 trillion in value from the private to public markets.

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

I would be careful with that read.

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

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

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

The acquisition outlook

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

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

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

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

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

As the co-founder and managing partner of , is committed to establishing MGV as the premier venture firm for world-class tech entrepreneurs to accelerate their visions. Under Schr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.

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Not only is a round of $100 million not remarkably large anymore, it鈥檚 not even atypical. Per SA国际传媒 data, the median U.S. late-stage round this year was exactly $100 million.

Moreover, if $100 million is supergiant, what do you call something more than 1,000x bigger, like 鈥檚 record-setting round this spring? That company鈥檚 chatbot suggests terms such as “leviathan,鈥� 鈥渃olussus鈥� or 鈥渢itan.鈥� Another option would be to recognize that what was once a legit supergiant round is today just a humdrum, everyday kind of deal.

The $100M+ round over 10 years

The rise of the $100 million-plus round hasn鈥檛 been chronologically linear, as charted below:

Initially, the category gained traction in the late 2010s, as companies such as , and scaled up late-stage financing in advance of plans for public offerings.

Around the peak of the 2021 bull market, the volume of 鈥渟upergiant鈥� rounds hit a cyclical peak. Dealmaking fell in subsequent years before picking up again with the rise of the AI funding wave.

Notably, more money than ever is now going into jumbo-sized rounds. However, as capital gets concentrated among a handful of hot names, deal volumes remain well below the prior peak.

Still, trends are looking up. So far this year, investors have backed 250 startup financings of $100 million or more. That puts 2026 on track for a year-over-year gain in deal count. Capital raised, meanwhile, is already at record-setting levels thanks to giant rounds for OpenAI, 聽and others.聽聽

Median round on the rise

In tandem, the size of the median late-stage round has also risen. Per SA国际传媒 data, the typical financing at this stage has roughly doubled since 2020, from just over $50 million to around $100 million.

And it鈥檚 not a small cohort either. So far this year, U.S. startups have secured 250 rounds of $100 million or more, per SA国际传媒 data. Of those, half were for $200 million or more. Eighteen were for $1 billion more.

Valuations moving higher too, obviously

Of course, you don鈥檛 get ginormous startup financings without rapidly escalating valuations as well. And this year has been exceptional in delivering those.

Among U.S. startups that raised $100 million or more this year, 21 had pre-money valuations of $10 billion or more, per SA国际传媒 data.1 Two of those 鈥� Anthropic and OpenAI 鈥� have filed confidentially for IPOs that could reportedly set valuations close to $1 trillion.

Bottom line: Startup investors aren鈥檛 just putting unprecedented sums into giant rounds;聽 they鈥檙e expecting record-setting returns as well. We鈥檒l see in coming months if public markets deliver.

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