A near-5x step-up from February's $230M Series B at roughly $1B. Worth studying as structure rather than as a headline: the round is split into a priced Series C at a $3.5B pre-money and a follow-on C-1 anchored by the same lead, which is how you stage a raise this size without marking the whole thing at once.

OpenAI and Anthropic alone took $217B — about 43% of every venture dollar deployed in the half. Anthropic raised $65B in Q2 by itself. Read the headline number carefully: strip those two out and the rest of the market is far closer to flat than the total suggests.

The largest venture-backed IPO ever, followed by the largest startup acquisition ever. Q2 was the strongest exit window since 2021 — 24 acquisitions at $1B or above, $113B in total value — which matters for DPI at funds that have been sitting on paper marks since 2021.