VC Startup Fundraising Benchmarks From 1000 Rounds

Author:

Peter Walker

Read time:

1 minute

Published date:

July 10, 2026

Seed valuations hit $24.3M median in the last 6 months, with Series A at $80M and Series B at $191M. Dilution continues to fall across all stages.

New benchmarks for VC startup fundraising with real data from over 1,000 rounds.

Software companies only included, all rounds raised in the last 6 months, no bridges / extensions / weird stuff. All companies use Carta cap table.

Seed

Median valuation of $24.3M on $4.1M raised
Median dilution fell to 18% and has been ticking down for months

Series A

Median val of $80M on $14.4M raised
18% dilution is lower than at any point in the last few years

Series B

$191M valuation on $25M raised (big money!)
12% of the company sold on median

Series C

$391M post-money valuation on nearly $40M raised
Selling, on median, less than 10% of the company in the round

Series D

$789M valuation on $63M raised (medians)
Median of 8% of the company sold

Things to remember

Medians are not some special number. They simply reflect the middle of a wide range of rounds. Guideline only, each deal is different.
Valuations are often simply the output of the other two parts of the equation (cash raised and dilution). Most massive valuation rounds also come with massive funding amounts. How much cash do you really need?
Startups raising in the top decile at Seed do not always raise in the top decile at A — and vice versa.
Ya, there is a lot of AI here! Probably at least half of these companies would fall under the definition of AI-native.

Data on both deep tech benchmarks and AI-only benchmarks coming soon 🙏

Author: Peter Walker

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.