Four senior VCs surveyed by Crunchbase project global venture deployment to rise 10–25% in 2026, building on a 2025 that was on pace for the third-highest annual total on record (~$400B+), driven almost entirely by AI. Funding is expected to bifurcate sharply: megarounds for frontier AI infrastructure and foundation models continue to grow, while categories 3–8 in any given vertical face M&A or shut-down pressure, and AI-wrapper companies without deep workflow integration are seen as largely unfundable. For financial institutions, the structural signal is that private-market capital is concentrating into a narrower set of AI infrastructure and vertical workflow plays, compressing the addressable IPO pipeline while sustaining high valuations at the top, relevant to both portfolio exposure and exit-market assumptions.
421 other tracked developments touching the same claims.