Two companies raised three in every ten venture dollars
And the monthly funding total mostly measures whether one of them closed. What 7,984 rounds say about where the money went.
October 23, 2026
01 A few dozen rounds hold the money
Half of all rounds were under $10M, and together they took 2.0% of the money. The average round was $91M, which describes almost nobody.
02 Monthly totals swing on a few closings
March looked like a record month. It was the month OpenAI closed. Take out the $1B rounds and every month looks much like the last.
03 Two names at the top
Most of the eight build AI models or the data centres they run on. The top two raised more than the 7,422 smallest companies put together.
Read the totals with the big rounds taken out
When a headline says funding rose or fell, check whether a $10B round closed that month. For the market most founders raise in, watch the total without $1B rounds and the median round. Both barely moved.
How this was measured Show Hide
- 9,849 venture equity rounds announced between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026, of which 7,984 disclosed an amount. Counted by announcement date, and only rounds we serve through the API.
- Venture equity means rounds into private companies. Debt, convertible notes, grants, PIPEs, secondaries, pre-IPO and private equity rounds are left out, and so are raises by listed companies.
- One raise counts once, however many publications covered it. Amounts are converted to USD at the rate on the announcement date.
- Every round over $1B gets reported. Small rounds often do not, so the true total under $10M is higher than shown here. Doubling it would still leave rounds of $1B or more with more than half of the money.
- Round counts rose late in the window as our coverage widened, so this report compares money and medians rather than counts.
Datahyena, "Two companies raised three in every ten venture dollars", October 2026.