Best of LinkedIn: Venture Capital CW 37/ 38

Capital kept moving toward physical infrastructure and applied AI, even as the market's plumbing showed strain. Hardware and energy backed deals dominated the largest rounds of the period, fund managers kept raising to chase that shift, and new data on distributions and pre-seed pricing pointed to a market where fundraising is getting harder even as headline valuations climb. Underneath the deal flow, the mechanics of closing a round, who gets access to capital, and who controls it, kept resurfacing as the real story.

Date

September 24, 2026

Venture Capital

Thomas Allgeyer

Methodology: Every two weeks we collect most relevant posts on LinkedIn for selected topics and create an overall summary only based on these posts. If you´re interested in the single posts behind, you can find them here: https://linktr.ee/thomasallgeyer. Have a great read!

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Funding Rounds and Deals

Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins
Factory raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation, tripling its April valuation, backed by Blackstone and Sequoia Capital
Thatch raised a $108 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, with ARR up nearly sevenfold in twelve months
Rune raised a $40 million Series A and unveiled RELIC, a solar sited compute system deployable in under an hour
Scaffold raised a $15 million seed round, already deployed on more than 200,000 homes across 30 states
MIND raised a $72 million Series B, pushing total funding past $100 million in twelve months
BackOps raised a $42 million Series B led by Insight Partners, six months after its $26 million Series A

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Fund Launches and Capital Deployment

Thirty Indian funds announced fresh capital for pre-seed through Series A since August 2025
More than 40 active US venture funds were tracked deploying capital across AI, defense, hard tech and crypto
A separate list tracked funds with fresh August capital, including a16z's Machine Age Fund and the OpenAI Startup Fund
Matter Venture Partners closed a $450 million Fund II dedicated to hardtech
Bain Capital Ventures announced its eleventh fund, investing from pre-seed through Series D
Eclipse now manages roughly $12.5 billion after closing $1.3 billion across two funds in April
Twenty five fund of funds were identified backing first time managers, led by Cendana Capital at more than $2.7 billion

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Fundraising Advice and Founder Investor Dynamics

Term sheet fine print, not headline valuation, is what actually determines founder equity and control
Splitting the data room into pre and post term sheet stages protects sensitive company information
Passing over junior investors to chase partners directly tends to backfire since juniors often become partners
Investors matching a startup's sector on paper frequently pass anyway due to portfolio overallocation
A nine question framework, from what is being built to the ask, is what structures a pitch deck investors want
Securing hard capital commitments should come before hiring a lawyer when launching a new fund
A first meeting with a limited partner should build rapport, with the pitch saved for meeting two

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Market Data and Research

US venture fundraising totaled $10.5 billion across 34 funds in August, with five firms taking 66 percent of it
Nine of the eleven largest US venture rounds in August went to hardware, raising a combined $9.25 billion
Mistral's $3.5 billion Series D at a $24 billion valuation became the largest venture round ever raised in Europe
Fund distributions fell from roughly 20 percent historically to 12 percent by the end of 2025
Median valuation caps on post-money SAFEs above $2.5 million rose 40 percent year over year to $35 million
Founders Fund holds stakes in six of the ten most valuable private AI companies, worth $1.99 trillion combined
US private VC funds put $808 million into Canadian startups in the first half of 2026, more than domestic funds combined

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Diversity and Career Paths in Venture

Ten VC funds were named for a track record of backing women founders, including CapitalT and Fika Ventures
Among fund of funds backing first time managers, Recast Capital and Fairview Capital stood out as women led
Creative approaches to breaking into venture, like building a dedicated pitch for a specific hire, were cited as effective
A Forbes framing argued the future of venture depends on who controls capital, not only who receives it

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Events and Community

A free virtual VC pitch conference held September 17 drew more than 1,000 registered investors
Twin Cities Startup Week's Investor Day featured a panel on getting the most value from investors
Y Combinator's most recent Demo Day added another cohort to a program that has seeded over 100 unicorns
A PwC hosted fireside chat examined what it takes to build one of the UK's largest venture networks

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Thanks to James Cadwallader · Matan Grinberg · Saurav D. · Chris Ellis · William Layden · Rachel Sacknoff · Ben Johnson · Eran Barak · Sean McCarthy · Utkarsh Mishra · Ben Kahan · Celine Al Helou · Brock Csira · Joe DiMento · Molly O'Shea · Nathan Beckord · David Sym-Smith · Sahil S · Francis Santora · Orane Carby · Elana Gold · Mike S. · Adeo Ressi · Ivelina Dineva · Alex J. Prince · Sebastiaan Vaessen · Ilya Strebulaev · Kevin Dowd · Hosun Chung · Michael Buhr · Keren Hod · Nicole DeTommaso · Joanne Thompson · Max Pog · Stephanie Rich · Marcus Lima · Stefan Rech