Two private companies are raising more money right now than every VC fund in America raised last year. Combined.

Anthropic closed $30B last week. OpenAI is reportedly closing $100B+ this month. (per Bloomberg)

Total US venture fundraising in 2025? $66B per PitchBook.

That's not a typo. Two rounds. 2x the entire VC industry.

So how does this compare to other time periods in capital markets?

One interesting benchmark: some single funding rounds are now significantly larger than the largest ever IPOs (per Yahoo Finance). Let that sink in.

🛢️ Saudi Aramco: $26B
🛒 Alibaba: $22B
📱 SoftBank: $21B
💳 Visa: $18B
📘 Meta: $16B

OpenAI's $40B round last year, a single round, was 56% larger than the biggest IPO ever. The $100B round being assembled right now would nearly match the top five IPOs. Combined.

Most of the funding for these rounds is not coming from Sand Hill Road. Amazon in for $50B. SoftBank Investment Advisers for $30B. NVIDIA for $20B. Microsoft. The meaningful backers are corporates and sovereigns, not venture capitalists.

In the new normal “VC” funding goes to capital-heavy businesses.

AI, robotics, defense companies may need hundreds of billions before they generate a dollar of free cash flow. A lean SaaS company doesn't need $100B. A company training frontier models does.

So what is going to happen to VCs?

Andreessen Horowitz raised $15B in January. 18% of every venture dollar raised in America last year. To a single firm. The top 9 firms captured half of all US VC fundraising in 2024 (per Pitchbook).

If the new normal is $30-100B rounds funded by the world's largest corporations, the venture asset class isn't just changing, it’s being structurally redefined around a handful of firms large enough to stay at the table, and the specialists who got to the table first.

Disclaimer: This communication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investment products. Consult with your financial advisor or an investment professional before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investments in private companies are illiquid, as there is a limited secondary market for private company shares.

Sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/openai-funding-on-track-to-top-100-billion-with-latest-round https://www.reuters.com/technology/anthropic-valued-380-billion-latest-funding-round-2026-02-12/ https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/06/elon-musk-xai-raises-20-billion-from-nvidia-cisco-investors.html

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-raising-10b-series-j-investment-62b-valuation

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-ipos-time-5-recent-221304574.html