Venture capital is bigger than it’s ever been—but that doesn’t mean the industry is better than it’s ever been.
I’ve often written in this newsletter about how venture capital is becoming a hyper-concentrated, seesaw-skewed sector of finance. And no matter how much harping on this I do, the numbers continue to surprise me, as was the case this week when PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association released their 2026 midyear report. Unequivocally, we’ve never seen capital flow like this: In the first half of 2026, U.S. VCs deployed $412.7 billion, a record that surpasses the full year of 2025 by 30%.
