The latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, with data through Sept. 30, counts 766 venture deals worth $40.7 billion in the Bay Area in the third quarter of 2026. Nationally, venture firms invested $98.4 billion, the lowest quarterly total this year, though the San Francisco Examiner reported it was still the fourth-largest quarter on record.

No more $10 billion rounds, for now

Earlier this year, San Francisco companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI raised tens of billions of dollars in single rounds. In the third quarter the biggest U.S. deal was $5 billion. "It's tough when the beginning of the year has really set so many unprecedented highs that Q3 in comparison looks a lot more muted," PitchBook senior analyst Emily Zheng told the Examiner.

How the Bay Area stacks up

  • Of the top 20 U.S. rounds, five went to San Francisco startups and five more went to companies elsewhere in the Bay Area, according to the Examiner.
  • The five San Francisco companies, Databricks, Cognition, Superhuman, Motive and Instinct, raised $10.8 billion, or 11% of U.S. venture dollars.
  • The 10 Bay Area companies together raised $16.7 billion, or 17% of the U.S. total.
  • Crunchbase, which tracks deals differently, says the Bay Area took 24% of the $159 billion invested globally.

The AI share

The Examiner reported that AI and machine-learning startups received $64.9 billion, about 66% of U.S. venture dollars in the quarter, down from more than 80% in each of the first two quarters. Crunchbase counted a record 27 companies worldwide raising rounds of $1 billion or more. Databricks and Safe Superintelligence led with $5 billion each.

PitchBook and Crunchbase use different methods, so their totals don't match.