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title: q2’26 venture trends
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| HLTH USA 2026 Insights. Mega-rounds in Q2. Helsing's newest raise.   View in browser July 17, 2026 Health is wealth Hi there,   Here’s what we’re watching this week: HLTH USA 2026 insights Mega-rounds drove Q2 venture Helsing’s $1.8B Series E Let’s get into it. We're the official Strategic Intelligence Partner for HLTH USA 2026. We built you a head start. Together with HLTH USA, we launched the Insights Hub, an interactive dashboard that highlights the companies and trends shaping healthcare for attendees.   Explore the Insights Hub here. Most networking events are broad, unstructured, and left to chance on the show floor. The Hub fixes that by turning "who should I meet?" into a plan you make before you arrive. Powered by CB Insights data across HLTH USA's 12,250+ attendees, it provides: A searchable directory of attending companies: Filterable by technology focus area, so you can build your priority list in minutes A full intelligence profile on every company: Mosaic Score, Commercial Maturity, headcount growth, and IPO and M&A probability, ready before you walk in Live healthcare landscape data: Covers behavioral health, women's health, oncology, longevity, and more, showing where the market (and the money) is heading Registration prices go up at the end of the month, so lock in your spot now. Use partner code H26PAR\_CBI250 to save $250. Mega-rounds drove Q2'26 funding, with a third of it coming from one company. Q2'26 brought in $212.9B, the second-highest quarter on record. On paper, that looks like a boom.   But Anthropic alone accounted for more than a third of all mega-round dollars, totaling $65B for a $965B valuation.   Mega-rounds captured 81% of total funding, nearly matching the record set last quarter. But that record leaned on Anthropic and OpenAI together. Q2 leaned on Anthropic alone. Everyone else is splitting 19 cents of every dollar raised. Deal count hit a decade low and exits fell for a second straight quarter.   Two venture markets, one narrative about concentration. Check out our State of Venture report to see the full breakdown. Helsing raises Europe’s biggest defense tech round. Helsing raised a $1.8B Series E this week at an $18B valuation: the largest private defense-tech round in European history, bringing the Munich company's total funding to $3.3B.   Five years ago, this round wouldn't have happened. Many European VCs excluded defense entirely (ESG constraints, LP restrictions, and a cultural aversion that treated proximity to weapons systems as reputational risk).   Today: European defense tech startups raised $3.2B in 2025, up 37% year over year and roughly 3x the level of five years prior. The number of unique investors in European defense rounds has also nearly tripled since 2020 (as of 2025). “Still, it doesn’t compare to what’s happening in the US. Anduril has raised $11.3B (more than 3x Helsing) and sells into one $886B Pentagon budget. Helsing sells into 25 separate national procurement systems, each with its own specs and paperwork. Raising billions is the easy part. Selling across Europe is the hard part, and that type of challenge will slow down the ability to scale.”   Thomas Hodson, Intelligence Analyst @ CB Insights To learn about Helsing’s competition, check out our market map of the top 100 European AI aerospace & defense startups. The State of Venture Tracker HLTH USA 2026 Insights Hub The top 100 European AI aerospace & defense startups   We love you. The CB Insights Newsletter Team GET STARTED WITH CB INSIGHTS Start your free trial CB Insights' emerging technology insights platform provides all the analysis and data from this newsletter. Our data is the easiest way to discover and respond to emerging tech.  Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here Copyright © 2026 CB Insights, All rights reserved. 498 7th Avenue, NY, CB Insights, New York,10018 About Us \| Update Preferences \| Research \| Newsletter |
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