US venture deal value reaches record $515.8B as exits fail to keep pace

U.S. venture capital deal value surged to a record $515.8 billion in the first nine months of the year, according to a PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report. However, the exits needed to generate returns for investors have not kept pace. The vast majority of the $515.8 billion went to AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic, which raised over $200 billion combined in the first half of the year.

Exits, which are crucial for returning investor money, fell about 40% in the third quarter to $98.4 billion, with the largest check going to Databricks for $5 billion. Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor developer Anysphere Inc. accounted for 53.1% of the quarter's exit value. The report highlights the lack of liquidity in the market, with only 5,012 startups closing deals in the third quarter.

AI accounted for 82.7% of the year's deal value, but its share of each quarter has been declining. AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic have not yet gone public, with OpenAI reportedly ruling out a public listing this year and Anthropic pushing its offering back to November. Despite a record 992 startups valued at $1 billion or more, many of these companies are taking significant discounts on their previous valuations.

Venture firms raised $108.5 billion across 699 funds this year, topping 2025's full-year total by nearly 39%.