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Our analysts' scorecard puts OpenAI last for value among its peers, based on what investors are paying for each unit of business quality. Our full report covers the scorecard in detail, breaking down the decoupling of the company's valuation from fundamentals prior to its IPO. And read about failure rates for consumer AI startups below.
Combined AI infrastructure spending by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta is projected to reach nearly $600 billion this year, yet acquisition activity across the Big Five, including Apple, has remained well below historical levels. Read our analysis.
May wrap-up: The latest Global Markets Snapshot breaks down a month of returns across dozens of indexes and sectors. View it here.
Tech VC trends: Our new reports are available for cybersecurity, pharma biotools and hypersonics. |
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| A message from Fidelity Private Shares |
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| The venture market is changing, founders need to know what comes next. |
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Fundraising has changed dramatically in recent years. Capital is more concentrated, with investors writing fewer checks. AI companies now capture a larger share of funding, while valuations shift across the market.
Liquidity is improving after years of constrained exits. Acquisitions, buyouts, and potential IPOs may reshape how founders approach timing, valuation, and exits.
Our new report explores the venture trends shaping 2026 and what they mean for founders navigating fundraising and growth.
Inside the report:
- How venture capital is evolving
- Why valuations differ between AI and non-AI startups
- What better liquidity means for exits and secondaries
- How investors are evaluating companies in a more selective market
Download the report to understand the trends influencing venture capital and founder decisions for 2026. |
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| Fundraising lull and concentration persist in 2026 |
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Following four consecutive years of declining private capital fundraising, Q1 2026 offered little reason to think this year will be any different, with just $274.1 billion raised by 619 funds.
With many of the tribulations faced by the private capital markets over the past few years—including sluggish distributions, interest rate pressures, and economic uncertainty—still largely unresolved, it is unsurprising that fundraising has yet to rebound to more normal levels in 2026.
Reluctance around making commitments to private funds was further exacerbated in Q1 by renewed geopolitical concerns, as the US launched military strikes in Venezuela and Iran. Once again, many allocators were forced to take a step back and reassess the playing field, with the war in Iran anticipated to have far-reaching consequences for energy costs and thus the likelihood of inflation and recession.
Against this backdrop, the vast majority of private capital strategies were pacing to fall short of their 2025 raised capital figures in Q1 2026, but there were two exceptions: secondaries and VC funds.
Secondaries vehicles have remained attractive insofar as they are still highly useful to GPs and LPs grappling with constrained liquidity, maturing holdings, and a slow exit environment, and these issues have certainly been pervasive. The $34.3 billion raised by secondaries funds in Q1 puts the strategy on track for yet another record year, as the secondaries market continues to broaden beyond traditional PE exposure.
In VC, the pace of fundraising in Q1 was faster than in each of the prior two years, but that growth is only a reality for a handful of experienced managers. The trend of LP selectivity leading to a concentration of capital in the hands of a few fund managers is one that we see echoed across most strategies, and one that some in the industry have argued was inevitable.
The explosion of fund formations in 2020 and 2021 led to a more fragmented landscape that required more resources for allocators to comprehensively diligence. While the presence of fewer, theoretically better managers may reduce the burden associated with diligence, it could also reduce competition, resulting in higher fees, and crowd out the next generation of hungry emerging managers who could have been top performers.
See what else the data reveals in our Q1 2026 Global Private Market Fundraising Report. |
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Best,
Anikka Villegas
Senior Analyst, Fund Strategies &
Sustainable Investing |
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| Superannuation underpins a steady but selective year for Australia & New Zealand private capital |
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Australia & New Zealand's private capital markets proved resilient in 2025, even as investors grew more selective about where they deployed, according to the 2026 Australia & New Zealand Private Capital Breakdown. Aggregate PE and VC deal value reached $51.3 billion across 1,066 transactions, ahead of 2024 once the prior year's landmark $16 billion AirTrunk buyout is excluded.
Beneath the steady headline, the pattern is one of concentration: Fewer, larger deals carried the market while smaller-round activity thinned.
PE continued to operate well above its pre-pandemic baseline, averaging $48.1 billion in annual deal value over the past four years versus roughly $30 billion before the 2021 surge. Activity was heavily weighted to the second half of the year, more than doubling from $15.3 billion in H1 to $31.9 billion in H2 as sponsors regained confidence once tariff uncertainty eased. Mid-market depth did the heavy lifting, with the $100 million to $500 million bracket climbing to $23.2 billion, becoming the market's largest segment by value.
Supporting that depth is Australia's superannuation system, a mandatory employer-funded retirement savings program and one of APAC's deepest pools of long-duration domestic capital. Assets reached roughly AUD 4.5 trillion and are projected to climb toward AUD 6 trillion by 2030, yet allocations to unlisted equity, property, and infrastructure sit near 18%, below the 30% to 40% of large Canadian, US and Dutch peers. Even a modest narrowing of that gap would continue to channel significant fresh capital into the region's private markets for years to come.
Venture stayed selective as deal value rose 12.3% to $4 billion, even while deal count fell for a fourth straight year, with later-stage rounds absorbing 75.5% of the total. The clearest catalyst ahead for VC exit liquidity is Canva, last valued at $42 billion, whose reportedly planned 2027 listing would be a landmark moment for the region's venture market.
Macro tailwinds reinforced the region's relative standing. Geopolitical tension, tariff uncertainty, and energy-price volatility lifted the appeal of stable markets with exposure to strategic resources, drawing sponsors toward energy, logistics and critical minerals.
Meanwhile, the AI infrastructure cycle centered capital on data centers and compute, evidenced by Firmus Technologies' $541.1 million round and Partners Group's acquisition of GreenSquareDC. Structurally embedded nondomestic capital, backing 73.6% of PE deal value, further underscored the region's accessibility and developed-market governance.
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Have a great weekend,
Ansel Tan
Director, APAC Private Capital |
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The State of Consumer AI
Consumer AI venture is entering a phase defined by concentration, conviction, and increasingly bifurcated outcomes.
Cumulative consumer unicorn valuations tripled YoY to reach $1.4 trillion by the end of 2025, but the top 10 companies now account for nearly 80% of that total value, making the asset class functionally a bet on a handful of platforms.
Acquisition activity surged as the leading exit pathway, with 49 deals closing in 2025 versus 25 the year prior, driven by strategic buyers like ByteDance, Meta, and DoorDash absorbing talent and users rather than waiting for public market validation. |
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On the deal side, the data challenges conventional portfolio construction wisdom. Early-stage dollar failure rates dramatically exceed company failure rates—34.8% of seed dollars fail against a 16% company failure rate—with the asymmetry concentrated in the tail of oversized rounds rather than across the distribution, arguing for smaller, more disciplined early checks.
Series B stands out as the highest-conviction entry point, combining a 97% success rate with 63.5% annualized returns.
Download the research |
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Q1 2026 Pharma Biotools VC Trends
VC-backed pharma biotools companies raised $1.1 billion across 122 deals in Q1 2026, sustaining the near-record deal count pace set in 2025.
The services segment led deal value at $376 million, headlined by Cellares' $257 million raise to scale automated cell therapy manufacturing. Platforms & reagents and in silico discovery followed closely, with Nuclera ($87 million) and Antheia ($80 million) among the quarter's largest rounds.
Exit activity was quiet, with five completed transactions and only one disclosed value—bioMerieux's $50 million acquisition of Accellix.
The bigger story is structural. In 2025, early-stage VC funding in AI-native pharma biotools companies surpassed non-AI-native investment for the first time, and deal counts surged across nearly every segment. |
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