April 9, 2026

Venturing out

Hi there,

Here is this week’s Hot or Not.

Hot: Private-company secondaries

Private-market secondary activity has grown steadily for a decade. 

Q1’26 reached 134 secondary deals, putting the full year on an annualized pace of 536, equaling the record set last year.

Examples from Q1’26 reinforce that pattern: 

• Stripe ran structured secondary programs at a $159B valuation in February 2026
• Anthropic paired a massive fundraising round with a shareholder sell-down, allowing early backers to take money off the table while the company remains private

See the full breakdown in CB Insights' State of Venture Q1’26 report.

Not: Small AI rounds

Venture funding hit a new quarterly record in Q1’26, driven largely by a single transaction: OpenAI’s $122B raise accounted for 43% of all funding during the quarter. 

Even excluding that round, Q1'26 would rank among the strongest quarters since Q1'22, with AI mega-rounds ($100M+) fueling the bulk of activity.

Other top deals include $30B for Anthropic, $16B for Waymo, and $7.5B for xAI.

Explore the full trend in our recent report.

Hot: Aerospace & defense tech

Hard tech in areas like defense and space lead the ranks by CB Insights Hiring Momentum (0-100 score used to identify the fastest-growing private companies). 

Recent government contracts and partnerships also reflect that momentum:

• Rocket Lab secured a DoD contract for hypersonic test flights
• Ursa Major partnered with Teledyne for hypersonic propulsion
• Pascal and Welinq expanded their neutral-atom quantum computing collaboration

Learn which markets are gaining ground in CB Insights' State of Venture Q1'26 report.

Not: Global exits

In Q1’26, exit activity declined 15% to its lowest level in almost two years. 

While the US held steady on both M&A and IPOs with only a 2% decline in exits, Asia and Europe together accounted for most of the decrease.

Though overall exit activity is declining, AI exit activity remains elevated. AI M&A reached 266 deals, near its quarterly record, while AI IPOs hit a record 21 in Q1’26.

Get the full picture in our recent report.

The +1

Source: u/Zestyclose_Edge1027 via Reddit.

Red flags. Why are bars randomly bigger but the #s keep going down?

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

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