Rising Valuations but Fewer Startup Rounds in 2026
Rising Valuations but Fewer Startup Rounds in 2026
Author: Peter Walker
Read time: 1 minute
Published date: July 9, 2026
Median early-stage valuations are at record highs, yet the number of rounds being completed is actually falling—concentrating dollars into fewer companies.
“Everyone is raising huge venture rounds at wild valuations, it’s all easy now.”
Eh…not quite.
- Median valuations in early-stage venture are rising quickly
- For seed and Series A, they've never been higher
- In prior booms, the number of rounds rose alongside the valuations
- But in this one, there are actually fewer rounds being completed
Higher valuations (and more $) into fewer companies = concentrated bets as an asset class.
Personally I'd like to see more odd, weird, off-the-radar founders getting a shot.
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.