PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor

The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, produced by NVCA and PitchBook, is the authoritative quarterly report on venture capital activity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

What’s new: Our newly released Q1 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor presented by PitchBook, NVCA, J.P. Morgan, Dentons, and EisnerAmper, offers an in-depth view of the US venture capital and provides analysis on the changing mechanics of the market.

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.
  • 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.
  • Yet for most investors, returns tell a different story with single-digit IRRs and sub-1x distributions remaining the norm.

Learn more about real-time fundraising, investments, exits, and other relevant industry information:

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Special thanks to NVCA’s official data provider, PitchBook.