OpenAI and Anthropic AI.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Omar Marques | SOPA Photos | Getty Photos
A model of this text appeared in CNBC’s Inside Alts publication, a information to the fast-growing world of other investments, from personal fairness and personal credit score to hedge funds and enterprise capital. Join to obtain future editions, straight to your inbox.
As capital turns into extra concentrated in personal markets, megafunds in enterprise capital now dominate fundraising and investments, in keeping with new knowledge.
VC megafunds – or these with greater than $1 billion in property – accounted for 72% of all deal worth within the first six months of 2026, in keeping with PitchBook. That was up from simply 25% within the first half of 2025. First-time managers accounted for less than 10%.
Megafunds are additionally crowding out many of the fundraising. Mega VCs raised $50 billion in capital within the first half, in comparison with $8 billion throughout the identical interval final yr. Absolutely 73% of all newly dedicated capital in enterprise capital this yr has gone to simply 5 megafunds, in keeping with PitchBook.
The rising energy and dominance of mega VCs is an element of a bigger winner-take-most shift in personal markets and alternate options. With AI requiring unprecedented quantities of capital, the VCs with the most important stability sheets have the perfect entry to startups and progress corporations. They’re additionally the most important winners within the latest spherical of huge IPOs like SpaceX, which provides to their fundraising energy and creates a digital cycle that rewards scale.
For traders, the brand new power-law dynamics in enterprise capital has created new alternatives and challenges. With the bulge-bracket corporations the clear winners, selecting a VC has develop into less complicated. On the identical time, gaining access to the massive funds, and paying their steep charges, has develop into tougher even for some giant household workplaces and ultra-wealthy traders.
“5 years in the past, many people have been evaluating how we take into consideration a billion-dollar enterprise fund measurement,” mentioned Theresa Hajer, head of U.S. enterprise capital analysis at Cambridge Associates. “In the present day, that that may be the quantity a single agency is investing in a single spherical of a single firm.”
Total, 2026 has been a banner yr for enterprise capital, which had fallen out of favor within the alts investing world. The IPO drought after 2022 left many enterprise capital funds with poor efficiency and a scarcity of exits. Traders have been reluctant to take a position extra in VC funds, since they weren’t getting distributions.
The return of IPOs in 2026 and AI fundraises has sparked a VC revival. But it is dominated by a handful of super-sized firms elevating funds and a handful of VCs offering the cash.
OpenAI within the first quarter raised $122 billion at a valuation of $852 billion. Anthropic lately raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation.
SpaceX went public in June, debuting at a $2 trillion valuation and creating the biggest liquidity occasion ever in public or personal markets. Each Anthropic and OpenAI have filed preliminary registration paperwork with the Securities and Trade Fee to go public at valuations that might additionally attain $1 trillion. There are actually over 800 so-called unicorns, or personal firms with valuations of greater than $1 billion, in keeping with PitchBook.
Whereas the AI craze and IPOs have unleashed a flood of capital each into and out of VC funds, each the inflows and outflows are much more concentrated than earlier cycles. Most of the LPs, or traders, who rushed into enterprise capital over the past growth of 2021 and 2022 “have since left,” in keeping with PitchBook’s mid-year outlook.
They’re being changed by sovereign wealth funds and different large-scale traders who can commit giant quantities of capital. The result’s extra money from fewer traders, placing extra money into fewer funds, that are themselves investing extra money into fewer firms.
Together with the flexibility to write down greater checks, the megafunds even have extra flexibility in investing in each early and later rounds. Smaller funds, against this, are sometimes restricted to 1 technique.
Between 2024 and 2025, Andreessen Horowitz invested in additional than 300 seed and Collection A offers, in keeping with PitchBook. Within the first half of 2026, the tech-focused VC agency had made 74 seed, Collection A and Collection B offers, PitchBook discovered. Basic Catalyst, Lightspeed Enterprise Companions and Sequoia Capital accounted for a mixed whole of 104 offers within the first half.
In the case of fundraising, Thrive Capital closed its $10 billion Thrive X fund, Sequoia Capital closed a $7 billion late-stage AI fund, Andreessen Horowitz closed a $6.75 billion progress fund and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund closed its $6 billion Progress IV fund, its largest ever.
Extra VC funds are additionally holding onto their stakes longer within the firm’s lifetime.
Hajer mentioned an enormous driver of the focus is profitable corporations investing early in firms like SpaceX or OpenAI, and using these successes to large valuation will increase.
“A lot of the dimensions of those platform corporations have been inside progress funds, which have continued to fund that variety of firms, which has pushed a whole lot of the focus,” she mentioned.
Traders want to think about plenty of points in the case of investing in in the present day’s VC panorama. She mentioned traders who need outperformance want some publicity to enterprise capital, and a number of the megafunds are “nicely positioned to provide you that publicity.”
However, traders want to think about the danger profiles, succession plans and exit choices for every of the corporations. Traders additionally need to search for VC funds that have been early traders within the firms you need publicity to, reasonably than leaping on the bandwagon in later sequence rounds.
“Individuals neglect that SpaceX was 20 years within the making,” Hajer mentioned. “So these corporations began as early stage corporations, inserting a few of these bets which have now continued to compound and develop into winners.”
Whereas it could be tempting for traders to simply put their VC capital within the megafunds, she mentioned long-term, true diversification is crucial. Together with betting on the hyperscalers and big AI startups, she mentioned traders must also search VC publicity to different progress sectors like biotech and healthcare.
“There are nonetheless nice alternatives in different sectors,” she mentioned. “You need to be fascinated about the following 5 or 10 years.”
