The global picture
The global venture capital (VC) market saw $227.4 billion in investment across 8,440 deals in Q2’26, making it the second-best quarter on record despite continuing geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic uncertainties.
With six-months remaining, annual global VC investment is already at a five-year high of $560.4 billion, second only to the record $750.9 billion seen in 2021 according to the Q2’26 edition of Venture Pulse from KPMG Private Enterprise.
The record-pace of global VC investment reflects a continued surge in late-stage deals as VC investors continued to place very large bets on AI companies; US-based Anthropic attracted the largest deal ($65 billion) of Q2’26, followed by US-based Prometheus ($12 billion) and China-based DeepSeek ($7.4 billion). Global corporate venture capital (CVC) investment also was on a record pace, accounting for $149.1 billion in investment during the quarter.
On a regional basis, the Americas attracted $150.0 billion across 3,999 deals, well above historical norms. Of this total, the US accounted for $144.9 billion across 3,644 deals. Asia attracted the second highest level of VC investment globally, with $50.8 billion across 2,676 deals. Notably, this was Asia’s fifth consecutive quarter of growth and its strongest quarter since Q4’21.
Much of Asia’s increase was fuelled by a resurgence in VC investment in China, which attracted $35.1 billion in Q2’26 as it continued to recover after several years of challenging market conditions. VC investment in Europe remained stable at $25.6 billion across 1,636 deals.
Q2’26 global exit value ($1.9 trillion) shattered the previous record, driven by SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO exit – $85.7 billion after greenshoe options were exercised.
