VC Fund Performance: Q1 2026

Authors:

Peter Walker, Kevin Dowd

Read time:

4 minutes

Published date:

June 4, 2026

Venture capital fund performance rebounded in Q1 2026: Carta funds raised $3.9B across 86 new funds, while TVPI climbed for nearly every recent vintage.

Executive summary

For venture fund managers, it was a promising start to the year. In Q1 2026, median net TVPI increased for nearly every recent vintage of VC funds tracked on Carta. On a slightly longer timeframe, the picture is even clearer: Over the past six quarters, median TVPIs have climbed steadily for every vintage from 2017 through 2024.

This represents a welcome reversal for GPs. Three years ago, a troubling trend had started to emerge: After having skyrocketed in the previous several quarters, the median net TVPI for every vintage from 2017 through 2020 began to decline. In some cases—such as for the 2018 vintage—the drop-off was perilously steep.

But from today’s vantage, it appears the VC market has turned the page. Recent declines in TVPI have come to an end, and a new phase of up and to the right has begun.

The reasons for the initial downward momentum are no secret. TVPI measures the value of both the realized and unrealized assets held by a VC fund. During the early 2020s, when valuations across the startup universe were experiencing a phase of explosive growth, the value of the assets held by these recent vintages mostly went up. In 2022, the music stopped. A reset in valuations began. And in many cases, the valuations of assets held in VC funds from the late 2010s started to decline.

The factors driving the recent reversal are also clear enough: Valuations have been rising once again. At most stages of VC fundraising, median valuations are significantly higher today than they were six quarters ago. At every stage, 90th percentile valuations have surged. As the value of assets goes up, the value of the funds that hold those assets go up, too.

Yet this only tells half the story. And, for fund managers and their LPs, it’s the less important half. Unrealized valuations of VC-owned assets may be trending up. But realized gains—the deals that actually put cash in investors’ pockets—are still relatively few and far between.

This is best demonstrated by the paucity of DPI that has been generated by most recent fund vintages. In each of the 2019 and 2020 vintages, for instance, median DPIs are still barely over zero, and less than half of all funds have begun to return any capital at all to their LPs. The 2017 and 2018 cohorts are the only recent vintages with much DPI to speak of, and even then, the return profiles remain relatively slight. Across those two vintages, less than 20% of funds have yet reached a 1x DPI, marking the point at which fund LPs start to earn a profit, rather than simply getting back the capital that they initially paid in.

In the big picture, the latest data shows promising signs for the performance of recent VC funds. But the challenge for the investors managing those funds is clear. Eventually, they will need to convert the unrealized gains that these vehicles are experiencing into concrete returns, producing profits for themselves and their LPs that will allow the flywheel of venture capital fundraising to keep on spinning.

Q1 highlights

• Top-decile IRRs top 20%: For every fund vintage from 2017 through 2024 (with the exception of 2021), the 90th percentile for net IRR is currently higher than 20%. In none of these vintages is the 75th percentile for IRR above 15.5%. At least among these funds, most of which are still being actively managed, only a small minority of vehicles are achieving the sorts of performance that many LPs expect.

• Fundraising starts strong in 2026: Investors on Carta raised $3.9 billion across 86 new venture funds in Q1, with the latter figure representing the most funds closed in any Q1 since 2022. The year is still young, but for now, 2026 is on pace for the most new funds and most cash raised in any full year since 2022.

• VC fundraising keeps getting more concentrated: About 57% of all cash raised by new funds on Carta in 2025 went to vehicles with at least $100 million in commitments. Eight years ago, that figure was just 31%. The majority of all funds closed are smaller than $25 million. But the few large funds that do close are gobbling up more and more of the total fundraising pie.

Fund details

This report is based on data from 2,775 venture funds on Carta closed from the start of 2017 through the end of Q1 2026. Combined, these funds raised about $119.3 billion in total capital.

The bulk of these funds—about 89%—are smaller than $100 million in size. However, the majority of all capital in this sample—about 54%—resides in funds larger than $100 million. These contrasting figures demonstrate a baseline fact about venture capital fundraising: Small funds are far more common than large funds, but those relatively scarce large funds maintain an outsized degree of buying power.

Investors on Carta closed 86 new VC funds during Q1 2026, marking the strongest start to a year for GP fundraising since 2022, when the post-pandemic bull market was still going strong. Total cash raised by new VC funds has ticked up steadily each of the past two years, and while it’s still early, 2026 is on pace to continue the trend.

These funds closed in Q1 have already deployed about 28% of their committed capital, with the other 72% remaining as dry powder. The 2025 vintage of funds, meanwhile, has already invested about 35% of its capital. Recently closed VC funds typically aren’t wasting any time in putting their capital to work.