Seed Rounds Close at Zero ARR and at 3.6 Million ARR

How much ARR do you need to raise a seed round?

The answer is $0.0 million...or $3.6 million 😅

Very cool data from our friends at Silicon Valley Bank in their State of Markets Report, H1 2026.

Lots of takeaways, but here's my main one: there is no perfect revenue number to raise any round. Rounds will be completed for companies with 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗹𝘆 different revenues at time of raise.

As always, comparison is the thief of joy, founders.

𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀

• Looks like a solid percentage of seed rounds are going to companies with marginal or no revenue. AI world is so fun :)

• The jump from median seed to median Series A revenue is 11.3x. That's no joke! But it calms down a lot from A to B.

• However many companies would want to go from a median seed number to a top quartile Series A number, and that jump is 29.5x. Which is...a lot. The "point of acceleration" is earlier than ever for many AI-native companies which makes catching up a greater challenge round over round.

• The methodology says US tech companies on this particular chart so I'm not sure if it excludes industries where revenue is not expected like Biotech. That could change the findings.

• We often read about companies that have revenues above the 90th percentiles in this chart. Why do we read so much about them? Because they are significant outliers and outliers garner more attention. But they are not the market.

Happy fundraising, my friends. Shouts to SVB for the report, will link in the comments!