Q4 2026 Venture Trends Results: What 179 Investors Picked

Our Q4 2026 venture trends results show that the emerging venture investors in our community expect physical AI and robotics to define the fourth quarter, with 43% of 179 respondents picking it as one of their three trends.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital cited the survey on November 2, 2026, and this page gives you every result, the caveats about who voted, and what the numbers suggest if you're building a fund:

Read it here on the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/vc-firms-are-trying-to-figure-out-ai-too-429e6549

We ran the survey through VC Lab and asked GPs and LPs in our community to pick three of 21 trends they expect to shape the quarter, and most of the people who answered run new venture firms, so you're reading what emerging managers think.

How we ran the Q4 2026 venture trends survey

Voting opened on September 26, 2026 with our original Q4 2026 Venture Trends post, and we closed the count at 5:45 p.m. PT on October 25 with 179 responses, and each person picked three trends, which gave us 537 total votes, so the percentages you'll see below add up to more than 100%.

We grouped the 21 options into four families so voters could compare like with like, and we put Consensus Investing on the ballot right next to Non-Consensus Opportunities so people could tell us which side of the room they're on, and this is how the ballot was organized when voting opened:

• AI and agents: agents replace software seats, agentic VC firms, one-person unicorns, open source AI catches up, physical AI and robotics, and the AI regulation fight

• The AI bet: consensus investing, non-consensus opportunities, AI bubble, AI wrapper wipeout, and frontier lab consolidation

• Capital and LPs: rise of emerging managers, LP investment growth, LP capital concentration, retail access to venture, and multistage funds move to seed

• Exits and liquidity: IPO and M&A reopening, increased secondary liquidity, rebound in VC distributions, growth of continuation funds, and longer exit timelines

The people who voted are GPs and some LPs inside the VC Lab community, and most of them are building their first, second or third fund, which makes this a useful read on what emerging managers expect and not a sample of the whole venture industry.

The survey asked people to pick trends, and it didn't ask why they picked them or whether a pick reflects their own fund's strategy, so a vote for a trend can mean someone expects it, hopes for it, or is already building around it.

If you followed the vote while it was open, you saw interim numbers in Q4 2026 Venture Trends: The Race So Far, while the figures on this page are the final count from October 25 that we shared with the press, so use these if you're quoting the survey.

The full Q4 2026 venture trends results

Physical AI and robotics took first place by a wide margin and AI themes filled the top four spots, and below is the full ranking of all 21 trends, with the number of respondents who picked each one and the share of the 179 people who answered:

All 21 trends, ranked

• Physical AI and robotics: 77 respondents, 43%

• Agents replace software seats: 56 respondents, 31%

• Agentic VC firms: 52 respondents, 29%

• One-person unicorns: 42 respondents, 23%

• Rise of emerging managers: 33 respondents, 18%

• The AI regulation fight: 31 respondents, 17%

• Open source AI catches up: 29 respondents, 16%

• AI bubble: 28 respondents, 16%

• Longer exit timelines: 26 respondents, 15%

• Retail access to venture: 23 respondents, 13%

• LP capital concentration: 22 respondents, 12%

• Increased secondary liquidity: 20 respondents, 11%

• Non-consensus opportunities: 15 respondents, 8%

• LP investment growth: 15 respondents, 8%

• IPO and M&A reopening: 14 respondents, 8%

• Consensus investing: 13 respondents, 7%

• Multistage funds move to seed: 12 respondents, 7%

• AI wrapper wipeout: 10 respondents, 6%

• Frontier lab consolidation: 9 respondents, 5%

• Growth of continuation funds: 8 respondents, 4%

• Rebound in VC distributions: 2 respondents, 1%

AI showed up on almost every ballot

The widest pattern is how much of the vote went to AI, since 94% of respondents picked at least one AI trend, and 65% picked at least one of the three agentic trends on the list, so most of this group expects AI to change their portfolios and their own firms.

That agreement is worth reading with care, and Adeo Ressi, founder and CEO of Decile Group, put it this way in our survey release: "Our survey shows that consensus on AI is at an all time high among emerging VCs, which is dangerous. Everyone is betting on AI."

Physical AI gained ground while voting was open

Physical AI didn't start in first place, and support for it rose from 32% of respondents in the first half of voting, from September 26 to October 11, to 49% in the second half, from October 12 to October 25, and it passed agentic VC firms, which had been in front in the early responses.

We can't tell you from the survey alone why the late voters leaned this way, and a shift inside one month of voting can reflect who happened to vote later as much as any change in opinion.

Still, the late surge is the clearest movement on the board this quarter, and it's the trend we'll watch most closely as Q4 deal flow comes in over the next few months.

Exits and bubbles stayed minority views

The liquidity answers lean cautious, as 15% of respondents picked longer exit timelines, while 8% picked an IPO and M&A reopening and just 1% picked a rebound in VC distributions, so very few voters expect cash to flow back to LPs this quarter.

Bubble talk also stayed small, with 16% picking an AI bubble and 6% picking an AI wrapper wipeout, even though the top of the ballot was almost all AI. Consensus investing drew 7% and non-consensus opportunities drew 8%, so voters split almost evenly when we asked them which side of the room they think wins.

The exit picture looks different from last quarter, since in our Q3 2026 Venture Trends snapshot on June 8, IPO and M&A reopening sat at 21% and AI bubble at 13%, though that ballot had 32 options and an earlier count, so treat the comparison as a direction and not a like-for-like change.

The capital side of the vote

Rise of emerging managers was the top trend outside AI, picked by 18% of respondents and ranked fifth overall, which puts the managers themselves ahead of every exit and LP trend on the ballot. Retail access to venture drew 13%, LP capital concentration drew 12%, and LP investment growth drew 8% of respondents.

That fits what we see in our own data on new firms, where emerging-fund fundraising was strong for four consecutive months in the first half of 2026, and you can read more in our first VC fund fundraising statistics and our emerging manager performance data.

What WSJ Pro Venture Capital cited from the survey

The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Pro Venture Capital newsletter cited the survey in a piece by Matthew Strozier, "VC Firms Are Trying to Figure Out AI, Too," published on November 2, 2026. You can read it in WSJ Pro, though it sits behind the WSJ Pro paywall.

As reported by the WSJ, the survey got 179 responses between September 26 and October 25, mostly from general partners at emerging venture firms, and it ranked physical AI and robotics first, agents replacing software seats second and agentic VC firms third.

The piece also quoted Adeo on where VC firms are heading: "All VC firms at some point in the not-too-distant future will have some blend of human capital and agents."

The Journal also made a fair point that we want you to keep in mind, since many of the firms that voted already use Decile's AI agents, so the vote for agentic VC firms may come partly from managers who already rely on AI in their own work.

Adeo added in the piece that he doesn't think the people in VC firms are going away, though what they do all day changes. That's the same view behind Decile Hub, the agentic operating system for a VC firm, where agents handle much of the fund work and the people lead the firm.

Where the votes and the deal flow split

We didn't want to publish predictions without checking them against what managers are actually doing, so we compared the survey with two sources of deal activity across our network, and the gap between them is the most useful finding in the Q4 2026 venture trends results.

Deals shared in Decile Hub

The first source is the Opportunities feed in Decile Hub, where funds in our network share deals with each other. We looked at 300 deals shared there from May 3 to October 21, 2026 by 113 managers, with 80% of those deals at pre-seed or seed.

Set side by side with the vote, the deal feed shows a clear split between what managers expect and what they're sharing with each other today:

• Physical AI and robotics showed up in about 9% of shared deals, against 43% of respondents who picked it

• Agent companies, across both agent trends, made up about 8% of shared deals

• Open source AI made up 0% of shared deals, against 16% of respondents

• Health, bio and medtech companies appeared in nearly a third of shared deals, about 29%, and that sector wasn't on the survey list at all

• More than half of shared deals, about 54%, involved AI in some form

New company records in Startuply

The second source is Startuply.vc, Decile Group's free AI research tool, and in the 30 days ending October 23, Startuply added 1,155 company profile records, and deeptech at 245, healthtech at 144 and fintech at 100 were the largest specifically classified sectors.

Across all sectors, 53% of those additions were classified as AI or machine learning. These figures describe what Startuply's research covers, and they aren't completed investments or unique companies, so read them as a second view of where founders are building and not as a count of deals.

How to read the gap

Physical AI shows up far more often in what investors expect than in the deals they're sharing today, while health shows up far more often in the deals than anywhere on the ballot.

Deal activity tends to trail sentiment, so either physical AI deals pick up over the coming weeks, or expectations shift as more Q4 deal flow comes in.

We can't say yet which of those happens, and the survey and the deal feed measure different things over different windows. What we can say is that the gap is real in this quarter's data, and it gives you a concrete question to ask about your own pipeline.

What the Q4 2026 venture trends results mean for your fund

If you're launching or running a fund, the Q4 2026 venture trends results are most useful as a check on your own thinking, and these are the ways we'd put them to work, based on what the data shows and what we see in the managers we work with:

• Write your thesis around the deals you can actually see, and treat a popular survey pick as one input. If health is close to a third of the deals your peers share, a health specialist may face fewer competing funds than a generalist chasing physical AI.

• Plan for a small team with agents doing much of the fund work. Most respondents picked at least one agentic trend, and you can see how that works in practice in Decile Hub.

• Get your back office set up early, so your time goes to founders and LPs. Decile Partners bundles the law firm, operations and compliance in one three-entity structure.

• Think about your fund's structure before you think about its size. Fund formation choices shape your timeline and costs, and a Start Fund has a minimum close of $100K and no setup cost, with you as its Investment Lead.

• Look at what specialists and generalists actually return before you pick a lane. Our generalist vs specialist VC data is a good place to start, and you can find the rest of our studies in the VC Research hub.

Liquidity deserves a place in your plan too, since with 15% of respondents expecting longer exit timelines and 1% expecting a rebound in distributions, it makes sense to tell your LPs early that you're building for a long hold and to plan your reserves with that in mind.

If you've already launched and you're working toward a later fund, the Emerging Institute is our free 8-week program for managers raising Fund II through Fund IV, and it covers how to build a strong institutional story around the thesis you've proven.

FAQ

What are the top Q4 2026 venture trends?

In our Q4 2026 venture trends results, physical AI and robotics ranked first at 43% of respondents, agents replacing software seats ranked second at 31%, and agentic VC firms ranked third at 29%. One-person unicorns came fourth at 23%, and the rise of emerging managers was the top non-AI trend at 18%.

How was the Q4 2026 Venture Trends survey run?

We asked GPs and LPs in the VC Lab community to pick three of 21 trends they expect to define Q4 2026. Voting ran from September 26 to October 25, 2026 and collected 179 responses and 537 votes, mostly from people running emerging venture firms.

What is an agentic VC firm?

An agentic VC firm is a venture firm where AI agents handle much of the fund work, such as research, deal memos and fund operations, while the people lead the firm and make the decisions. In our Q4 survey, 29% of respondents picked agentic VC firms as a defining trend for the quarter.

Did the Wall Street Journal cover the survey?

Yes. WSJ Pro Venture Capital cited the survey on November 2, 2026, in a piece by Matthew Strozier on how VC firms are figuring out AI, and it quoted Decile Group CEO Adeo Ressi on firms that blend people and AI agents, though you'll need WSJ Pro access to read it.

Does the survey reflect the whole venture industry?

No. The respondents are GPs and some LPs inside the VC Lab community, mostly at emerging firms, and many already use Decile's AI agents. Read the results as what emerging managers expect, and compare them with the deal flow data above before you act on them.

Launch your own fund with VC Lab

If these Q4 2026 venture trends results got you thinking about the fund you'd run, VC Lab is our free 14-week accelerator for people launching a venture firm, built for emerging VCs, with emerging VCs, and more than 1,000 firms have launched through it.

The early deadline for Cohort 23 is Monday, November 9, 2026, and you can apply to VC Lab here.