Q4 2026 Venture Trends

Venture capital has never agreed on anything this much.

In the first half of 2026, 86% of every US venture dollar went to AI companies, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Rounds of $100 million or more took 87.5% of all the capital deployed. That's the highest consensus in the history of our industry, and it isn't close.

And our own community is right there with it. Last quarter, the top four trends in this survey were all AI: Autonomous Agents took #1 at 27%, followed by AI-Powered Investment Tools, AI of Everything and AI Cofounders. Only 13% of you called it a bubble.

But venture returns have never come from agreeing with everyone. They come from being right when the room is wrong. So when the whole market is making the same bet, the useful question isn't whether AI is the trend (it obviously is). It's which part of AI actually wins, and what everyone's missing while they stare at it.

So we rebuilt the survey.

This quarter's list is shorter and sharper: 21 trends across AI and agents, the AI bet itself, capital and LPs, and exits and liquidity. We also put Consensus Investing on the ballot, right next to Non-Consensus Opportunities, so you can tell us which side of the room you're on.

Cast Your Vote

Which top three trends do you think will define Q4 2026? To vote, select three items and hit submit.

Then join us live on Thursday, October 22nd at 8 AM PT for Q4 Venture Trends, our most popular quarterly gathering. We'll break down the final results, argue about the consensus, and this time we're adding something new: a live demo of the agentic AI tools we're building for fund managers. If agents are what everyone's voting for, we figured we should show you what they can actually do.

👉 RSVP: Q4 Venture Trends on October 22nd

This isn't a community of group think. Tell us what you're seeing.