Startup capital is both more abundant than ever this year and yet scarcer. That contradiction has become increasingly visible in 2026 when analyzing Crunchbase data, and the trend continued through Q3. Our data shows that despite record venture capital spending in 2026 ' nearly $680 billion through Q3 ' investors are writing fewer checks to seed and early-stage companies, the businesses one typically thinks of when we talk about startups. One of the best ways to visualize this dichotomy is by looking at how much of the record global venture funding this year went to funding rounds across different tiers: less than $100 million, $100 million to just under $1 billion, and $1 billion and more. The massive surge in billion-dollar-plus rounds in Q1 and Q2, of course, was thanks to record-setting financings for OpenAI and Anthropic. But it's not just those two companies concentrating capital at the top. About one-third of Q3 funding went to just 27 companies raising billion-dollar-plus...
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