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All-time highs in VC are unevenly distributed
Q1 2026 set new highs for both venture dealmaking and exits. However, a deeper dive into the data reveals a more complicated story. The quarter’s $267.2 billion in deal value exceeded every full-year total except for those of 2021 and 2025, and exit value hit $347.3 billion, the highest quarter on record. Yet without the five largest deals and exits, those figures fall by 73.2% and 86.6%, respectively.
Concentration has defined the post-pandemic VC market, but Q1 marked a new extreme. Beneath the top-line figures, the market remains largely unchanged from 2025. Liquidity is still tight, AI continues to dominate, and volatility surrounding both national policy and geopolitical conflicts has added new obstacles to an already difficult exit environment.
The potential for a historic windfall looms large. IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic could generate nearly $2.5 trillion in exit value, more than all VC-backed IPOs in this century combined. But that potential sits alongside a sobering reality: The median VC IRR for North American fund vintages since 2019 remains in the single digits, and the median distribution to paid-in multiple for the past decade’s vintages is still below 1x.
Now more than ever, the only certainty in VC is uncertainty. Read more about the trends that defined VC in Q1 in the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, sponsored by J.P. Morgan, Dentons Global Venture Technology Group, and EisnerAmper.
Table of contents
| Market overview | 4 |
| NVCA policy highlights | 6 |
| Dealmaking | 7 |
| A word from J.P. Morgan | 9 |
| Regional spotlight | 11 |
| AI spotlight | 12 |
| Female founders | 15 |
| A word from Dentons Global Venture Technology Group | 17 |
| Investor trends | 20 |
| Venture debt | 22 |
| A word from EisnerAmper | 24 |
| Exits | 27 |
| Fundraising | 30 |
| Q1 2026 US league tables | 33 |
| Methodology | 34 |
| References | 35 |
In Q1, the $267.2 billion in quarterly deal value topped all full-year totals except for those of 2021 and 2025, and the $347.3 billion in exit value set a quarterly high. However, if you exclude the five largest deals and exits, those figures fall by 73.2% and 86.6%, respectively.
More than half (51.7%) of the megadeals completed during Q1 involved AI companies, and the market value of AI startups is now only outpaced by that of software-as-a-service startups.