The quick answer is "not really."
The latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, which presents venture capital activity, revealed the industry invested $98.4 billion during the third quarter of 2026. But as SSTI’s past analyses have shown—and the most recent quarter’s data further confirms—the national VC market is overwhelmingly dominated by one technological phenomenon, artificial intelligence, and by the mega funds managing more than $500 million. The new Venture Monitor reported nearly 83 cents of every dollar invested in Q3 went into AI, and most of that in “a handful of outsized rounds.” Mega funds controlled more than 78% of the $108.5 billion in capital raised.
That presents a whole lot of noise blocking meaningful understanding of what happened in the 5,000 other deals made in the quarter. It also presents a significant distortion for policymaker discussions about how best to help local innovation startups secure the risk financing they need to move their firms into growth phases where job creation is greatest.
Overemphasis of the national data on a few big firms playing with the same handful of deals isn’t the only troubling result in the latest report that should have regional nonprofit venture development organizations honing their strategies and messaging to public investment partners: the number of IPOs is down sharply, and they are underperforming at least one key market indicator. As of September 30, the report shows the median VC-backed IPO index was consistently and increasingly below the Morningstar Growth Index as the IPOs aged. One hundred twenty days after the IPO, VC firms’ stock performance was, on average,a staggering 38.2% off the Index.
SSTI encourages nonprofit VDOs to:
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Direct discussion with policymakers on the impact of your portfolio for local economic opportunity, competitiveness, productivity, societal benefits and technological advancement.
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Steer benchmarks toward local/regional change over time instead of how much of the total national VC investment the region attracts. One reason: for the vast majority of the country, the share of total VC will be too small for policymakers to believe a meaningful difference can be made with the size of the public funding available to add to your fund. Additionally, the national share will likely shrink because of the perverse nature of the current VC market, as mentioned above. The Arkansas Capital Scan provides one example of localizing data and policy discussions.
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Stimulate local innovation entrepreneurship by emphasizing to policymakers the importance of small seed and A round money, neither of which is seeing the 30-50% growth in deal value recording in later rounds, according to the latest Venture Monitor. Seed deals have dropped so far this year in median deal size to $3 million versus the $3.4 million posted in 2025. A rounds have seen a 27% uptick in value year over year. (report p. 11)
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If your portfolio more closely matches the demographic composition of your region than the national data, that might be a point to emphasize with some public and institutional investment partners. That might not be difficult: PitchBook-NVCA found nationally that female founders have continued a declining trend in deals that started in 2021, with only 19% of 2026 deals involving at least one female founder. (p. 17)
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Consider methods to increase your focus on investments in startups with regional stickiness, whether through their growth plan, business customer base, localized M&A options, or ability to scale in place and transition your investment into nontraditional exit paths.
The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor for Q3 2026 is available here.