Analysis
North American venture funding jumped 50% year over year to $92 billion in the third quarter of 2026, even as the number of reported deals fell to its lowest quarterly total since 2023, according to Crunchbase News. Deal counts in the region fell 16% year over year and 14% quarter over quarter, a split that confirms what Pulse has tracked across its own funding desk all year: venture dollars are concentrating into fewer, larger checks.
How concentrated is Q3's VC funding, exactly?
Crunchbase News found that roughly one-third of all Q3 2026 funding went to just 27 companies -- a level of concentration that mirrors the megaround dynamic Pulse has flagged repeatedly this year, from Anthropic's $65 billion Series H to OpenAI's since-trimmed fundraising target. Series B dollars in US startups hit a multiyear high so far this year, Crunchbase reported, even as Series B deal count is on pace for a multiyear low -- the same bigger-check, fewer-deal pattern showing up one stage earlier than the mega-rounds that dominate Pulse's own front page.
What's driving the gap between dollars and deals
The split reflects a market where a shrinking pool of investors with the largest funds are willing to write $50 million-plus checks into AI infrastructure, foundation-model labs and a handful of breakout commercial AI products, while smaller managers pull back from seed and early Series A bets that would otherwise swell the deal count. Pulse's own median-round tracking during the same period found a similar split: a handful of nine-figure rounds pulling attention far above the $11.3 million average check size Pulse measured for one representative week, a gap Pulse has previously quantified.
The IPO backdrop
The divergence is unfolding as global venture funding approaches $680 billion through the first three quarters of 2026, and as Anthropic's amended IPO filing -- which Crunchbase News said some investors have discussed at a valuation near $2 trillion, a figure that runs higher than the roughly $1.5 trillion mark Pulse has otherwise reported investors discussing -- keeps late-stage AI valuations in the headlines. Pulse's own funding tracker has logged a similar run of billion-dollar-plus rounds this year across foundation-model labs and AI infrastructure startups, the same category Crunchbase's concentration figures describe in aggregate. For seed and early Series A investors, the message is blunt: capital is not disappearing, but it is increasingly reserved for follow-on checks into companies that already have proof of traction, not first checks into unproven ones.
What to watch next
The risk for founders outside the mega-round tier is that the bar for getting funded at all keeps rising even as headline VC dollar totals look healthy -- a dynamic that rewards companies with an existing lead investor's conviction and punishes first-time founders without a network into the handful of funds still writing checks. Crunchbase's charts stop at Q3; Pulse will revisit this split as Q4 term sheets close out the year, particularly whether the same 27 companies account for an even larger share of Q4 dollars.