Not All Boats Rise with the AI IPO Tide: Policy Weekly 7/17/26

Not all boats rise with the AI IPO tide

Author:
The Carta Policy Team
Published date:
July 17, 2026
Read time:
9 minutes

Topline

AI mega-IPOs could deepen venture capital’s winner-take-most divide

The next wave of blockbuster technology IPOs may inject long-awaited liquidity into venture capital, but the benefits will not be felt equally. Following SpaceX’s historic ~ $2 trillion public debut, OpenAI and Anthropic have confidentially submitted paperwork in preparation for potential mega-IPOs of their own. To put that scale in perspective, the combined value of the three companies could exceed the total value of all U.S. venture-backed exits since 2000.

According to a recent Reuters analysis, only about 20% of active venture firms own a stake in at least one of the three companies, leaving roughly 3,000 firms outside the largest liquidity events in venture capital history. That disparity matters because venture returns are driven by a relatively small number of outlier investments. The firms holding stakes in the leading AI companies could receive significant distributions, strengthen their performance records, and enter their next fundraising cycles with substantially more capital and a greater competitive advantage. Those that missed out—particularly emerging and smaller managers—will continue to face a difficult fundraising environment after several years of limited exits and capital locked in aging portfolios.

This divide is already visible and growing. U.S. venture firms raised approximately $72 billion during the first half of 2026, nearly equaling the total raised during all of 2025. But the gains have been highly concentrated: Three of the largest venture firms accounted for nearly half of the capital raised during the first half of the year, while five firms accounted for nearly 75% of first-quarter fundraising. Managers with fewer than four funds, meanwhile, accounted for less than 10% of capital raised, down from roughly one-third over the prior decade. At the same time, the average Series A round has increased by more than 60%, giving the largest firms another advantage in competing for the increasingly capital-intensive AI, defense, and hardware companies attracting much of today’s investment.

Why it matters: The return of major IPOs is unquestionably positive for the venture ecosystem. Successful exits generate liquidity for limited partners, employees, and founders and recycle capital into the next generation of companies. But a handful of grand slams cannot, on their own, improve conditions across the broader venture market. If liquidity and fundraising remain concentrated among a small group of established managers, promising startups outside their networks—and emerging managers who often back overlooked founders, industries, and regions—could face an increasingly narrow path to capital.

A healthy innovation economy requires not only bigger exits at the top, but also a deeper, more competitive capital formation ecosystem underneath them. The solution is not to constrain companies capable of achieving extraordinary scale. It is to create more pathways for more companies and investors to access capital and participate in the growth cycle. The bipartisan INVEST Act, together with the SEC’s efforts to encourage more companies to enter the public markets, represents an important step in that direction.

Tick-tock: The House passed the INVEST Act in December by a strong bipartisan vote of 302–123, and many of its underlying provisions like the DEAL Act have previously passed the House with overwhelming or unanimous support. But the Senate has yet to take up the House legislation or consider a comparable package of its own—and the legislative window is narrowing before the midterm elections.

Carta and our ecosystem partners have worked for years to advance policies that expand access to capital, support emerging fund managers, and help more companies scale and ultimately enter the public markets. We will continue fighting the good fight in Washington, but as Rep. Bill Huizenga emphasized during Carta’s latest policy webinar, you—members of the ecosystem—are the most effective advocates for why these policies matter.

Reach out to your network, post on social channels, and contact your senators. Let them know how passing the INVEST Act would help broaden access to capital, strengthen the innovation economy, and ensure that the next generation of category-defining companies can emerge from more firms, founders, industries, and regions.

Signed, sealed, e-delivered

The SEC proposed Regulation E-Delivery this week, which, if adopted, would make electronic delivery—not paper—the default for disclosures under the federal securities laws. Companies, broker-dealers, investment advisers, funds, and other regulated entities could deliver information electronically without first obtaining affirmative consent, and would apply broadly to documents, including prospectuses, proxy material, and Form CRS disclosures.

Why it matters: The significance of this shift goes beyond printing and postage. As Commissioner Hester Peirce noted, the bigger opportunity is what comes next. Moving from a paper-based to digital-first framework could create room for interactive dashboards, streaming video, mobile-optimized summaries, which could help facilitate disclosures that are more timely, searchable, accessible, and personalized. The proposal preserves investor choice, enabling paper opt-ins and additional protections for documents containing personal financial information.

Admin launches AI clearinghouse

The Trump administration launched Gold Eagle on July 14, creating a public-private clearinghouse to coordinate the discovery, validation, and remediation of software vulnerabilities identified using advanced AI models. Led by the Treasury Department in partnership with CISA and the Pentagon, the initiative stems from the president’s June 2 executive order and is designed to prevent AI companies and cybersecurity researchers from duplicating vulnerability scans while helping critical infrastructure operators prioritize and patch the most consequential flaws. Gold Eagle has already begun accepting and triaging vulnerability reports, with a particular focus on open-source software that underpins financial institutions, hospitals, utilities, and other critical systems.

The clearinghouse is the most concrete institutional product yet of the June 2 executive order, but it is only one piece of the administration’s emerging AI security framework. Separate provisions direct the government to develop classified benchmarks for determining which systems qualify as “covered frontier models” and establish a formally voluntary process through which developers can provide the government access to those models for up to 30 days before broader release. The order expressly disclaims mandatory licensing or preclearance, but recent interventions in frontier model deployment illustrate why industry remains focused on how that distinction operates in practice.

Why it matters: Gold Eagle addresses a well-defined coordination problem where the interests of government, industry, and critical infrastructure operators are reasonably well aligned. The clearinghouse could reduce duplicative work, improve vulnerability disclosures, and accelerate patching—particularly for open-source projects that may lack the resources to respond to a growing volume of AI-generated findings. Its launch also signals that federal AI oversight is moving rapidly from policy statements to operational infrastructure. The key questions now are how participation and vulnerability prioritization will work, what protections will apply to proprietary information, and how the clearinghouse will interact with the government’s separate classified benchmarking and pre-release review process, whose standards have yet to be made public.

For developers and investors, the central issue is no longer whether Washington will play a role in frontier model deployment—it already does. It is whether that role evolves into a predictable framework with clear standards and procedural guardrails, or remains a nominally voluntary process in which companies must negotiate government approval model by model.

Trump intervenes as CLARITY Act enters make-or-break stretch

The White House made a renewed push to salvage the CLARITY Act this week, with President Trump meeting Republican senators Thursday to address the ethics dispute now threatening the crypto market-structure bill. Democrats have insisted that the final legislation restrict the president, vice president, members of Congress, and other senior officials from maintaining personal crypto interests—an issue that has become increasingly politically charged following Trump’s disclosure of more than $1 billion in crypto-related income last year.

The dispute is delaying the release of a nearly final Senate package combining the separate bills advanced by the Banking and Agriculture committees. The merged text reportedly adds stronger consumer protections and responds to several Democratic concerns, but negotiators have yet to resolve ethics restrictions, federal preemption, or the process for filling Democratic vacancies at the SEC and CFTC. Of those issues, ethics has become the most immediate obstacle to securing the Democratic votes needed for floor action. The Senate Banking Committee advanced its version 15–9 in May, with Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joining Republicans after lawmakers reached a compromise over stablecoin rewards. Both warned, however, that they might not support the final legislation unless it includes stronger ethics protections.

Why it matters: The CLARITY Act could establish the first durable federal framework for digital-asset fundraising, trading, and tokenized financial infrastructure, clarifying the line between securities and commodities while giving startups a more predictable pathway to issue tokens and build blockchain-based products in the United States. But after lawmakers largely navigated the substantive fight between banks and crypto companies over stablecoin rewards, the bill’s fate may now depend on whether the president is willing to accept restrictions on his own financial interests.

What’s next: Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he intends to press forward later this month, but the legislative window is rapidly closing. The bill needs 60 votes to advance, meaning Gallego, Alsobrooks, and several additional Democrats will be essential. Further complicating the final push, Patrick Witt—the White House’s lead crypto negotiator—is scheduled to begin a months-long military leave later this month. Without an ethics compromise soon, years of bipartisan market-structure negotiations could collapse, leaving the SEC and CFTC to establish the rules of the road through regulatory action rather than legislation.

Quick hits

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham's sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve out his term through January 3, 2027. A special Republican primary next month will determine the party’s nominee for the November election.