startupandvc

Three funding rounds to know this week: @ExplorationTEC: $450M Series C Savvy Wealth: $100M Series C Magnar: $8M Series A Space transportation, wealth management, and legal tech all attracted fresh capital. Which round stands out to you?

Where is the next $10B AI company coming from? Not another model. AI infrastructure startups are already reaching: $30B VAST Data $14.6B Nscale $10B+ Crusoe The infrastructure layer is becoming a venture category of its own.

AI infrastructure is attracting billion-dollar valuations. VAST Data: $30B Nscale: $14.6B Crusoe: $10B+ Together AI: $8.3B The AI boom is creating massive opportunities underneath the models.

CVC New Acquisition Booz Allen Ventures is putting $300M behind startups working across AI, defense tech, cybersecurity, quantum, and reindustrialization. The CVC says its model combines capital with access to 20,000 technologists and its broader engineering infrastructure.

CVC New Acquisition UNC Health Ventures just added $125M in fresh capital to its corporate venture arm. The healthcare system plans to use the capital to back healthcare startups over the next decade, building on a portfolio that already includes 12 active companies.

Corporate investors accounted for a record 82.6% share of U.S. venture deal value in H1 2026 (PitchBook-NVCA). A related analysis raises this as a consideration for founders: what does a given investor make possible, and what does it ask for in return?

PitchBook's Q2 2026 Venture Monitor describes corporate investors as "spending more on less": fewer venture deals overall, with a larger share of capital concentrated in AI-related investments.

LP categories can overlap. An HNWI may invest through a private bank or platform rather than appear directly on a fund's LP register — making the actual capital base harder to map than it looks.

IRR, TVPI, and DPI aren't interchangeable. They answer different questions, and LPs weigh them differently — some prioritize long-term value, others prioritize realized returns.

Reading about venture is useful. Writing about markets, evaluating startups, and developing an investment thesis helps turn knowledge into a skill you can demonstrate.

The best way to prepare for a career in VC is to spend time around startups. Patterns become easier to recognize when you’re close to founders, products, and the decisions that shape early-stage companies.

A strong VC candidate usually has more than an interest in startups. They have a point of view on markets, curiosity about founders, and the ability to explain why a business matters. Those skills compound over time.

Most VC jobs aren’t filled through traditional recruiting. Building a track record of thoughtful work, whether that’s investment memos, market research, or founder conversations, often creates stronger opportunities than sending another application.

Trends emerging across venture right now: fewer checks, bigger conviction. Funds are slowing down on early experimentation and concentrating capital into startups showing real traction earlier than ever before.

Today, Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1B to scale AI-powered drug discovery, backed by Thrive, Alphabet, Temasek, and MGX. The next major AI platform companies may come from biotech, not SaaS.

VC firms are quietly changing how they evaluate founders in 2026. It’s no longer just: “Can this team build?” Now it’s: “Can this team distribute?”

Q1 2026 funding was dominated by a handful of AI companies, with mega-rounds concentrating capital at a level the industry hasn’t seen before. OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and others are absorbing billions while smaller startups fight for distribution, data, and compute.

The fastest way into VC is to act like you’re already in it. Pick a sector. Publish theses. Break down startups. Consistency builds credibility.

Funds don’t hire resumes. They hire judgment. Can you spot patterns early, think independently, and move with conviction? That’s what gets you in.

VC hiring is opaque by design. Most roles never get posted. If you rely on job boards, it could help to build relationships and stay visible in the ecosystem.