Best of LinkedIn: Venture Capital CW 35/ 36

Venture capital's own structure is under more scrutiny than the deals it funds. Fund performance data shows most vehicles never reach the returns they pitch to LPs, capital is concentrating in a shrinking number of mega firms even as first-time managers outperform them, and the categories that used to organize the industry, generalist mid-market funds, IPO exits, "VC" as a label distinct from private equity, are all being renegotiated at once. Underneath that, deal activity keeps moving: AI still dominates funding volume, deep tech categories from quantum to photonics are setting new records, and regional ecosystems from the UAE to Louisiana are building the infrastructure to compete for it.

Date

September 10, 2026

Venture Capital

Thomas Allgeyer

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Deal Flow: The Fortnight's Notable Rounds

Mistral raised a €3B Series D at $24B, Europe's largest private tech round, led by Samsung
Forus closed a $150M Series C at $3B for its AI medication access platform, led by Bain Capital Ventures
Accel raised $3.5B across four new early-stage AI funds
Fasset hit a $1B valuation with zero tier-one San Francisco VCs on its cap table
HSBC Asset Management backed Model ML through its $81bn Alternatives platform
F&F Ventures launched a $10M pre-seed-to-Series-A fund, already backing 13 companies
David Mussafer's anchor investment pushed 1834 Ventures past 95% of its $20M target

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Fund Economics and LP Behavior

Median net TVPI across 400+ US 2016-18 funds sits at 1.38x, versus 13.12x at the 99th percentile
Factorial Funds turned a $135M Fund I into $965M of LP distributions at 7.1x DPI
The top five US VC firms captured 73.1% of Q1 2026's $47.8B raised
First-time funds have beaten peers by up to 15 IRR points, yet get the smallest LP share in three decades
US venture secondaries rose from 3% of exit value in 2015 to roughly a third last year
Fewer than 50 VC-backed companies have IPO'd in any year since 2022, as unicorn count tops 950
A Mizuho LP said the bank underwrites mega funds and first-time managers identically

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Fresh Capital: New Funds and Vehicles

VC Lab's Start Fund now lets managers launch with zero setup costs, down from roughly $100k
New pre-seed and seed funds launched in July span AI, fintech and deeptech
A list of 31 active pre-seed leads ranges from $50k to $100M in check size
Eight more pre-seed leads surfaced, including boldstart ventures backing ideas pre-code
Intel's 1999 multi-LP fund around its IA-64 chip shows fund structure as ecosystem strategy
SPV-based investing hands each deal decision to the crowd rather than the manager

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Regional Ecosystems: Where Venture Is Building

Mexico and Brazil accounted for 78.5% of Latin American venture capital in 2025
The UAE's Resilience by Design report credits its venture edge to ecosystem coordination
MENA venture health reads better through DPI than headline capital raised
Almost all new Guernsey private capital funds now use the PIF structure
PitchBook ranks San Francisco first, New York second and London eighth for VC hubs
Japan's CVCs lose relationship continuity as staff rotate out just as trust matures
A fireside chat with HealthCap Africa's Dr Ola Brown covered fund building across Africa

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The Diversity Gap in Venture Capital

All-female founding teams took 5.2% of US VC deals in 2025 but only 1.1% of the capital
Femtech funding is tracking toward $478M in 2026, down a third from 2025
Five FFR Fundraising Accelerator alumnae raised over £2m combined
Red Clover Venture Partners launched as Vermont's first fund for female founders
Liat Ben-Zur's new book, The Bias Advantage, reframes outsider skills as an AI-era edge

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AI and Deep Tech Are Resetting Venture's Math

AI made up 42.5% of US VC deal count and 88.8% of deal value in Q1 2026
AI products run roughly 50% gross margins versus classic software's 80%
Blazel's AI Native Agency pivot cut two-thirds of staff after margins missed target
Eighteen quantum startups raised $50M+ rounds in 2026, already beating 2025's record of 16
Photonics acquisitions carried a median 5.6x multiple, seen in Lightsynq's $18M-to-$306M exit
Prelude Ventures led seven US climate tech Series A rounds since Q3 2024
Physical AI is splitting into a funded defense track and an overlooked healthcare track

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Industry Self-Reflection: What VC Is Becoming

The largest venture firms increasingly aren't legally classified as VC at all
Middle-market fundraising fell roughly 40% last year as capital concentrates at the extremes
Venture capital's public image has shifted from "Wall Street alternative" toward the excess it once avoided
Indian family office assets, near ₹70,000 crore in 2024, are set to grow 1.5x
Cornell ranks fourth worldwide for undergrad alumni founding venture-backed companies
The fourth edition of The Business of Venture Capital was released, with a foreword from Sequoia's Alfred Lin

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Founder Playbook: How Practitioners Are Framing the Raise

A VC moving easily on valuation is often trading a higher number for more control
The clauses deciding who gets paid carry more real risk than the valuation headline
Badly structured anti-dilution clauses can be void under Indian company law
"Come back with more traction" usually signals one of four issues, rarely a real metrics gap
Diligence runs both ways, so founders should vet investors before wiring funds
Friend capital carries a moral obligation rather than a fiduciary one

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Thanks to Anze Voje, Aaron Kim, Ivelina Dineva, Arthur Bedel, Adam Kallaus, Adam Shaw, Josh Fleig, Bill Kerr, Elana Gold, Jolynn Vallejo, Aaron Dubin, Alexandre Covello, Pavel Prata, Itamar Novick, Nathan Bucci, Celine Al Helou, Tyler Senecal, Laura Zhunussova, Nicolas Sauvage, Peter Zwyssig, Mike S., Shiro Matsuzaki, Philip Bahoshy, Nabil Ramadan, Jose Kont, Anand Pv, Sid Trivedi, Tim Hsia, Abdelkader Y., David Sym-Smith, Ajay Joseph, John Roberts, Bettina Briz, Jacob Colker and Andrei Stenmark, and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: