{"id":9265,"date":"2026-07-28T02:15:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T23:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/28\/the-rise-and-rise-of-billion-dollar-plus-rounds\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T02:15:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T23:15:49","slug":"the-rise-and-rise-of-billion-dollar-plus-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/28\/the-rise-and-rise-of-billion-dollar-plus-rounds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise And Rise Of Billion-Dollar-Plus Rounds\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Startup funding used to be associated with smallish bets on promising founders. But times change.<\/p>\n

While financings of a few million haven\u2019t gone away, today most venture capital actually goes to rounds of a billion dollars or more. Moreover, it looks like a rising trend.<\/p>\n

So far this year, 60% of global startup funding across stages\u00a01<\/a> \u00a0\u2014 around $320 billion \u2014 went to rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. Such rounds were instrumental in pushing global funding for the first half of the year to record levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The U.S. funding tallies are even more tilted to megadeals this year, with 73% of funding going to billion-dollar-plus rounds. Of the $290 billion invested in these deals, just two rounds for AI leaders OpenAI<\/a> and Anthropic<\/a> account for more than half the total.<\/p>\n

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As you can see, the notion of billion-dollar-plus rounds accounted for a minority of funding before this year. The lone exception was the first quarter of 2025, when OpenAI closed a $40 billion financing.<\/p>\n

Not just bigger deals, more of them too<\/h2>\n

Giant rounds aren\u2019t just getting more ginormous. They\u2019re happening with greater frequency too.<\/p>\n

So far this year, U.S. startups have closed 23 known rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. That puts 2026 already on par with 2025, a record-setting year, and we\u2019ve still got about five months left.<\/p>\n

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Not surprisingly, these megarounds are generally later-stage rounds or corporate financings. Only two of this year\u2019s billion-dollar-plus rounds \u2014 Prometheus<\/a> and World Labs<\/a> \u2014 were seed or early-stage rounds, per Crunchbase data.<\/p>\n

Lessons from the first crop of billion-plus financings<\/h2>\n

In the history of startups, meanwhile, the billion-dollar-plus venture funding round is a fairly contemporary phenomenon.<\/p>\n

The first American example, per Crunchbase data, was Uber<\/a>\u2019s $1.2 billion Series D, in 2014. Over the next three years, a handful of others pulled in 10-figure rounds as well, including SpaceX<\/a>, Airbnb<\/a>, Lyft<\/a>, SoFi<\/a>, Snap<\/a>, Grail<\/a>, WeWork<\/a>, Fanatics<\/a> and Argo AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of those companies went on to go public and reach valuations that well-exceeded levels set for prior megarounds. SpaceX ($1.6 trillion recent market cap), Uber ($148 billion) and Airbnb ($87 billion) were the standout success stories.<\/p>\n

Two of the megafund recipients \u2014 Argo AI and WeWork \u2014 did not fare so well, while a third, cancer diagnostics provider Grail, has been up and down. Fanatics, meanwhile, remained private and is still thriving.<\/p>\n

If these early billion-plus fundings taught investors anything, it was that pouring unusually large sums into well-regarded unicorns can be quite lucrative but is far from a sure bet.<\/p>\n

Uncharted territory<\/h2>\n

In the current funding cycle, it\u2019s not enough to ask whether billion-dollar rounds have potential for high returns. With Anthropic and OpenAI, the question now applies to rounds in the tens of billions or even over $100 billion. As both have already filed confidentially to go public, it may not take us long to find out.<\/p>\n

Related Crunchbase query:<\/h2>\n