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Liftoff may be too mild a term for what's happening to the top end of Series A valuations at the moment. In Q2 of this year, the top 5% of Series A companies raised rounds at over half a billion in valuation.

Now that's not everyone of course! I find some of the emerging manager anxiety about this valuation spike telling. It may just be that mega-funds are competing for a small set of legible, highly pedigreed, AI-frenzied founders. Which should, in theory, leave many great founders outside this attention circle and in prime position for contrarian Series A investors.

But damn, the pull of consensus is strong sometimes.

Onwards!

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Cheers,

Peter Walker

Carta Insights

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Q2 is closed. But the data will keep being recorded on cap tables in the weeks to come. We won't release the Q2 State of Private Markets until mid August.

In the meantime, here's what we're seeing.

Total venture funding is up. $56.5B was raised in H1 2025. $58.7B is already recorded for H1 2026.

The stage story is concentration. Seed fell nearly in half. $6.5B to $3.8B. Series B is down. $13.5B to $10.4B. Series A held flat at $12.7B. All of that compression is being absorbed by one place. Series C+. Up from $23.9B to $31.8B. The big checks are getting bigger. Everything below them is getting squeezed.

The industry story is bifurcation. Hardware nearly doubled. $8.6B to $14.3B. SaaS held steady at roughly $24B. Below those two the rows get lighter. Pharma down. Healthcare Tech down. Medical Devices collapsed from $1.7B to $585M. Advertising Tech from $335M to $65M.

Energy is the quiet story. Up from $1.2B to $2.2B. Consistent flow. No single massive week. Just steady accumulation.

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The middle is disappearing. At both the stage level and the industry level. Capital is moving to the top and to the known winners.

Each row in the chart above represents a stage or industry. Each column is a week.

The two rows per group tell the year-over-year story. 2025 above. 2026 below. The darker the cell the more capital raised that week. White or near-white means little to no activity.

Read it horizontally to see the rhythm of a category. Some industries raise consistently every week. Others show long quiet stretches with occasional spikes.

Read it vertically to spot moments when capital moved across multiple categories at once.

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Cheers,

Ashley Neville

Carta Insights

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The major theme in venture over the past few years has been the paucity of exits, leaving investors and other shareholders frozen in place. Companies have recognized this issue and are addressing liquidity needs for both investors and early employees through tender offers, which have surged in popularity.

Our latest data from H1 2026 shows that some three billion dollars were transacted across 71 tender offers administered by Carta. That represents the highest H1 volume since 2022, signaling that the venture market has broken free from the liquidity desert.

H1 2026 didn't just beat H1 2022 in dollar volume ($3.0B vs. $2.6B), but it also involved more overall transactions (71 vs. 54). Many of the companies running these tenders may not be going public or getting acquired anytime soon. But they've still reached a level of maturity where they can consistently provide liquidity to their shareholders. Tender offers have evolved from an occasional release valve into a mainstream, permanent portfolio management tool.

Looking ahead to H2, generational giants Anthropic and OpenAI may crowd out the IPO window for other late-stage tech companies. That means that tender offers aren't going anywhere – if anything, expect transaction volume to go up in the coming months. And stay tuned for our upcoming deep dive into tender offers!

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Till next time,

Hamza Shad,

Carta Insights

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At most startups, exec comp follows a familiar logic. Higher salary, higher equity. The two major components of compensation move together.

AI startups between Seed and Series B are breaking that pattern. Executives taking the highest salaries are landing in the lowest equity quintiles. Executives with modest salaries are getting the most equity. The relationship has inverted.

This finding is part of the newly launched Total Comp Scouting Report for founders hiring their executive teams. It's part of Carta's official sponsorship of the Golden State Warriors 2026 NBA Draft and includes brand new charts and analysis:

Cumulative cash raised at round and at CxO hire

Changes to median salary and equity by level, including AI/ML engineers

Employee Stock Option Pool size by stage

Distribution of salary and equity by CxO role and stage

Prevalence of equity types and terms

Value of executed employee tender offers

And for data visualization enthusiasts it might be the most beautiful report we've ever released.

Go deeper with new content from Carta's Data Insights Team:

The Total Comp Scouting Report

This special edition of the 2026 Carta Total Compensation Report, The Total Comp Scouting Report, is built to give founders and CFOs real offer data from over 900,000 employees in the private markets.

Read the report

How the Best Data Builds the Best Teams

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The massive IPO of SpaceX last week prompted me to look back at the largest tech debuts on US stock exchanges since 2000. This analysis reveals an interesting pattern: the biggest blockbusters have shifted from providing software and apps to hardware and deeptech.

The 2010s were truly the era of digital aggregation and consumer software. From 2012 to 2020, the biggest public debuts included Facebook, Snap, Uber, Alibaba, and DoorDash. These companies captured human attention, orchestrated logistical networks, and organized data. They didn't build heavy physical assets, but rather won by using software to disrupt legacy media, mobility, and commerce.

It seems that we are now witnessing a deeptech renaissance. Semiconductor producers Arm Holdings and Cerebras debuted on public markets in 2023 and 2026, respectively. Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian debuted in 2021. And most recently, of course, aerospace giant SpaceX broke all prior records this month. Its opening day market cap was larger than the other top 19 tech debuts combined – even adjusting for inflation.

Of course, it won't just be hardware companies that make massive public debuts going forward. The other big category is artificial intelligence, which will often overlap with hardware, but will also feature powerhouses like OpenAI and Anthropic. These companies may not be producing hardware but are compute-heavy engines closely tied to the development of better, higher-capacity hardware.

Ultimately we may be moving beyond the clean line separating hardware and software. Next-gen AI models will need advanced chips, and modern rockets and EV fleets will need sophisticated software. Companies like SpaceX and Rivian are trying to bridge the gap in their own verticals, and we'll see if the next cohort of big tech companies follow suit.

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