Q1 2026 was a bumper quarter in venture capital. Investors deployed $300 billion of fresh capital, more than double the previous quarter and surpassing 70% of all venture spending in 2025.
The devil is, of course, in the detail: $188 billion of that cash went to four companies – OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo – accounting for 60% of all venture capital deployed in Q1.
VCs generally revel in change, but even by our standards what it takes to raise has shifted at an unprecedented rate over the past 12 months: expectations of early-stage founders – in terms of defensibility, scaling, and pricing – have been completely rewritten.
Fearing the ‘AI-pocalypse’, early-stage founders could be forgiven for feeling despondent seeing these figures. The outlook looks daunting, but it doesn’t need to be. The concentration of capital around a handful of AI giants is changing the rules, but the game goes on. The question for founders right now is not whether Big AI wins, but how can smaller companies survive and thrive alongside it.
A Rising Tide Is Lifting Most Boats
