Venture capital at the start of 2026: AI megadeals, selective liquidity, and uneven fundraising

Late-2025 and early-2026 evidence points to a venture market where headline investment totals rose while activity concentrated into fewer, larger financings, particularly in AI. KPMG reported global VC investment climbing from $391.9 billion in 2024 to more than $500 billion in 2025 even as deal activity declined, and the OECD said AI firms captured 61% of global venture capital in 2025. Fundraising data and commentary across sources remained downbeat, with KPMG describing the slowest pace in a decade and Preqin-reported figures showing weak fundraising in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Exits showed more constructive signs in parts of 2025, with Preqin-reported data indicating the highest total VC exit value since 2021, alongside continued selectivity. A prominent example of concentration risk and scale was TechCrunch’s report that OpenAI raised $110 billion in private funding in a round that remained open at publication.

Venture capital entering 2026 looks increasingly bifurcated: large, AI-centered financings are helping lift aggregate investment totals, while fundraising remains difficult and dealmaking is described as more selective. Across late 2025 reporting, the common thread is concentration. The market appears to be rewarding a narrower set of companies with very large rounds, while many other startups and managers face a slower capital-formation environment.

Confirmed developments KPMG reported that global VC investment increased from $391.9 billion in 2024 to more than $500 billion in 2025. At the same time, KPMG said this rise occurred despite a sharp decline in deal activity, indicating that 2025’s growth was driven by fewer, larger transactions rather than broader participation. KPMG also reported that Q4 2025 global VC investment totaled $138.1 billion across 7,981 deals, providing a snapshot of elevated dollar volume alongside high reported deal count in that quarter.

On sector drivers, KPMG stated that year-over-year growth in 2025 VC investment was fueled almost entirely by surging capital deployment into AI-focused companies. The OECD similarly reported that AI firms captured 61% of global venture capital in 2025, reinforcing the view that AI was the dominant magnet for venture dollars.

Healthcare was a notable counterpoint to the AI-heavy narrative. HSBC Innovation Banking reported that total healthcare venture investment rose to $60 billion across 2,167 deals in 2025, up from $45.4 billion in 2024. HSBC also reported that Q4 2025 was the strongest quarter for healthcare venture investment in three years and said the 2025 healthcare venture ecosystem began to stabilize after several years of constrained capital markets and heightened investor caution.

Fundraising indicators remained more negative than investment totals. KPMG reported that fundraising declined to its slowest pace in a decade. Separately, Preqin data as reported by The Business Times indicated that about $64.4 billion was raised for VC investments globally during the first three quarters of 2025, which the same report said was 48% of the total raised for full-year 2024. The Business Times summary of Preqin data also said Europe and Asia-Pacific had the weakest VC fundraising in the first three quarters of 2025. For Asia-Pacific specifically, it reported $9.5 billion raised in the first three quarters of 2025 compared with $34.2 billion for all of 2024, alongside “greater investor caution on fund commitments” in the region.

On liquidity, Preqin data as reported by The Business Times pointed to a selectively improving exit environment. The report cited 906 VC exits worth $170.5 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, described as the highest total VC exit value since 2021, and said the exit environment “seems to be improving” in 2025. These figures suggest more realized value than in recent years, although the characterization still implies unevenness rather than a full normalization of exits.

A single round captured the scale of capital concentration increasingly associated with the AI cycle. TechCrunch reported that OpenAI raised $110 billion in private funding in a round that remained open at the time of publication. Whether or not such financings become more common, the round illustrates how a small number of transactions can materially influence annual venture totals.

Points of tension and what remains uncertain Across the confirmed reporting, the data aligns on direction but not always on emphasis. KPMG’s framing that 2025 investment rose despite a sharp decline in deal activity points to concentration and fewer transactions, while its Q4 2025 figure of 7,981 deals highlights that activity levels can look different depending on the time window and metric used. Similarly, fundraising weakness is consistent across KPMG and Preqin-reported figures, but the sources capture different slices of time and geography, making it difficult to translate them into a single global fundraising trajectory for all of 2025. The exit data indicates improving value realization in the first three quarters of 2025, but the wording and context suggest that liquidity remained selective, leaving uncertainty about how broadly exit conditions improved outside the highest-quality assets and markets.