Top Venture Capital Firms in the United States (2026): Who Writes the Biggest Checks

The top venture capital firms in the United States have never been bigger, fewer or more concentrated than they are in 2026. This guide, part of the Kurums Venture Capital finance hub, walks through the fifteen firms that write the largest checks, the funds they raised between 2024 and 2026, where each sits on the stage spectrum from seed to pre-IPO, and what a founder, CFO or limited partner should know before approaching any of them. You will learn which firms concentrated into multi-strategy platforms, which stayed deliberately small, what the latest PitchBook fundraising data says about who is actually getting money, and how to approach each firm without wasting a warm introduction.

Which US venture firms raised the largest funds in 2025 and 2026?

Andreessen Horowitz leads with more than $15 billion raised in January 2026, followed by Thrive Capital ($10 billion, February 2026), Lightspeed ($9 billion, December 2025), Sequoia ($7 billion Expansion Fund, 2026), Accel ($5 billion Leaders V), Founders Fund ($4.6 billion Growth III, 2025) and Dragoneer ($4.3 billion).

The scale of these raises is new. Fortune’s reporting on the a16z announcement broke the total into a fifth growth fund of $6.75 billion, a second apps fund and a second infrastructure fund of $1.7 billion each, a $1.176 billion American Dynamism (defence and industrial) fund, a $700 million fifth biotech and healthcare fund and about $3 billion across other strategies including separately managed accounts. For comparison, a16z’s entire 2024 raise was about $7 billion. Ben Horowitz framed the fund as capital for technology that competes with China, a positioning that mirrors the firm’s political activity in Washington.

Thrive Capital’s Thrive X, reported by TechCrunch in February 2026 at $10 billion, is nearly twice the size of its predecessor, with roughly $1 billion reserved for early stage and the rest for growth. Josh Kushner’s firm is the most concentrated of the group: it holds large positions in OpenAI, Stripe, SpaceX, Databricks, Anduril and Cursor, and has incubated a dozen companies, at least six of which reached unicorn status. Lightspeed’s $9 billion, per Newcomer’s December 2025 coverage, is spread across six vehicles: a $980 million seed-to-Series-A fund, a $1.2 billion early-to-mid fund, a $1.8 billion Select VI, a $3.3 billion Opportunity Fund III, a $600 million co-investment vehicle and a $1.25 billion single-investor account. PitchBook calculated that Lightspeed and Dragoneer together equalled just under a third of all US venture fundraising in the first three quarters of 2025.

Sequoia’s approach differs. The firm raised two early-stage funds totalling about $950 million in October 2025, then, according to Murph Capital’s Q2 2026 fundraising tracker, closed a $7 billion Expansion Fund to deepen positions in OpenAI, Anthropic, robotics and AI coding. Sequoia also changed leadership: Roelof Botha stepped aside as senior steward in November 2025, passing the role to Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, as Fortune reported. Accel’s $5 billion Leaders Fund V (with a $650 million sidecar for existing LPs, per the same tracker) and Founders Fund’s $4.6 billion Growth III, disclosed in an April 2025 SEC filing with 270 outside investors, complete the top tier.

How did US venture capital concentrate into mega-funds?

Three forces drove concentration: LPs retreating to brand names after the 2022–2023 reset, AI mega-rounds that only multi-billion funds can lead, and the collapse of first-time fund formation. PitchBook counts only 1,117 venture funds closed globally in 2025, versus nearly 2,100 the year before.

The numbers from PitchBook’s Q2 2026 US VC Fundraising and Returns report, as summarised by Foley & Lardner in August 2026, are stark. US venture funds raised $74.8 billion in the first half of 2026, nearly matching all of 2025. Funds of $1 billion or more took 68.3% of that total, up from 36.1% a year earlier. Twelve firms accounted for about three quarters of all dollars. At the other end, funds under $50 million were 67.7% of all closed funds, a decade high by count, yet raised only 4% of the money. First-time funds hit a decade low. The median gap between fund vintages stretched to 1.7 years as managers waited for distributions before returning to market.

Returns explain LP behaviour. The same report put the one-year US venture return at 17.1%, driven by AI markups that lifted fund asset values 21.6%. But cash distributed to investors ran at only 11.7% to 12.8% of asset value, against an 18.7% long-run average, and the 2021 vintage had returned almost no cash at year five. Three-year returns were 5.7% and five-year returns 8%. LPs facing a liquidity drought chose to re-up with managers who could show paper gains in OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX or Databricks, which meant the same dozen names. Venture secondary trading of roughly $100 billion for the year became the release valve.

The result is a barbell that we analysed in our piece on the venture capital barbell effect: enormous multi-strategy platforms at one end, thousands of sub-$50 million seed funds at the other, and a hollowed-out middle. For founders this means the firm you pitch at Series B in 2026 is often the same one that led your seed, because the platforms now run seed, venture, growth and opportunity vehicles side by side.

What are the latest fund sizes and stage focus of the top 15 US firms?

The table below lists each firm’s most recent disclosed raise (2024–2026), its reported assets under management where a credible figure exists, and its primary stage focus. Figures come from firm announcements, SEC Form D filings, Newcomer, TechCrunch, Fortune and PitchBook; treat AUM as approximate.

Sources: firm announcements, SEC Form D filings, Newcomer (Dec 2025), TechCrunch (Apr 2025, Feb 2026), Fortune (Jan 2026), Murph Capital Q2 2026 tracker, vcbeast and Altss rankings. AUM figures are approximate and mix committed capital with marked value.

Two observations. First, the “latest raise” column shows that the top firms now raise in bundles: a16z, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Accel and Benchmark all closed multiple vehicles at once, which lets them support a company from seed through pre-IPO without a competing lead. Second, Tiger Global is the outlier: its PIP 16 closed 63% below target in 2024 and TechCrunch reported in December 2025 that the firm’s PIP 17 letter promised a more targeted approach and warned that AI valuations were elevated. The 2021 crossover-fund model has not returned.

What were the notable US venture deals of 2025 and 2026?

The defining deals were AI mega-rounds: OpenAI’s $122 billion raise in March 2026 (co-led by Abu Dhabi’s MGX with Thrive, SoftBank and others), Anthropic’s $30 billion round in February 2026 and $65 billion Series H in May 2026, and xAI’s $20 billion raise in January 2026, alongside Anduril, Cursor and Databricks rounds.

PitchBook put 2025 global venture dealmaking at $512.6 billion, the second-highest year on record, and AI took the majority of US deal value. The pattern is that a handful of foundation-model and AI-infrastructure companies absorb tens of billions per round, with the same investors recurring: Thrive, Sequoia, a16z, Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Khosla, Menlo (which raised $3 billion across two AI-focused funds in 2026 on the back of its 2024 Anthropic position), plus sovereign and crossover capital. Menlo’s “AI Leaders II” filing in May 2026 and Sequoia’s “Expansion II” filing in September 2026 show the mega-round machine is still being fed as of October 2026.

Outside AI, defence and “American Dynamism” became a genuine category. Founders Fund’s Anduril (reported by CNBC in early 2025 to be raising at a $28 billion valuation), a16z’s $1.18 billion defence fund, Eclipse’s $1.3 billion “physical AI” raise and a wave of sub-$250 million defence seed funds (Banner, Discipulus) all appear in the 2026 fund trackers. We cover the sector split in detail in our article on where venture capital went in 2024–2026. The exit side also reopened: the Wiz acquisition by Alphabet ($32 billion), Figma, CoreWeave, Circle and Chime listings in 2025, and anticipated OpenAI and SpaceX liquidity shaped LP expectations, a story we track in our biggest venture-backed exits by year series.

Which firms still back companies outside the AI mega-round cycle?

Benchmark, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla, NEA, Founders Fund and the early-stage sleeves of Sequoia, a16z and Lightspeed still write $2–30 million Series A checks into vertical software, fintech, healthcare, climate-adjacent industrial tech and biotech. The capital exists; the pitch simply has to clear a higher bar.

Benchmark is the clearest example of a firm that resisted the platform model. Its $750 million flagship in 2026 is roughly the same size as its 2020 and 2022 funds, and the firm has five or six general partners who each lead a small number of Series A deals per year. The 2026 decision to raise a first-ever $1.25 billion growth fund, reported in Murph Capital’s tracker, is a concession to follow-on competition rather than a change in philosophy. Kleiner Perkins, after its 2019 reset, raised about $2 billion across KP21 and a Select fund in 2024 and remains concentrated at seed through Series B. Bessemer’s $3.85 billion BVP XII (2022) is still deploying, and the firm raised a $350 million India fund in 2025 and filed a new “Century Fund III” vehicle in September 2026.

For founders in these categories, the practical questions are stage fit and partner fit rather than firm size. A $15 billion a16z still has a seed practice, but the signalling risk when a platform fund declines to follow is real. Our guide for founders outside AI raising in 2026 goes deeper, and sibling guides in this pillar cover the leading UK and European firms and Indian and Southeast Asian funds for companies whose market is not primarily American.

How should founders approach each of the top US firms?

Approach the platform funds through portfolio founders, scouts or their open programmes (a16z speedrun, Sequoia Arc, YC-style channels), approach Benchmark and Kleiner through a specific partner, and approach growth firms like Insight and Thrive with metrics rather than narrative. Cold email works for a minority of firms and almost never for the top ten.

Platform firms: a16z, Sequoia, Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Accel

These firms run formal on-ramps. a16z’s speedrun accelerator and American Dynamism programmes, Sequoia’s Arc programme for pre-seed and seed companies in the US and Europe, and Lightspeed’s and Accel’s scout networks are deliberate top-of-funnel tools. A warm introduction from a portfolio CEO is still the most reliable path, and the partner who leads your sector matters more than the firm brand: a16z, for example, has separate teams for infrastructure, apps, bio, crypto, games and American Dynamism, each with its own fund and deal memo process.

Concentrated early-stage firms: Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Khosla

Here the unit of decision is the individual partner. Benchmark partners publicly list their focus areas; Founders Fund’s partners are vocal on X and in essays about what they want to back; Khosla’s team is organised by sector (AI, climate, health, sustainability). Research the partner, reference a specific portfolio company and explain why your company is the “next” one in that partner’s pattern. These firms rarely respond to generic decks forwarded by a service provider.

Growth firms: Insight, Thrive, Tiger, Dragoneer, Lightspeed Opportunity

Growth investors run outbound sourcing teams that track revenue, hiring and product signals, so being discoverable matters more than cold outreach. Insight’s sourcing analysts contact thousands of software companies a year; Thrive and Dragoneer concentrate on a few dozen names and typically arrive via existing investors or founders. Have your data room ready before the first call, because growth diligence moves fast once a term sheet is in play. Our walk-through of reading a term sheet before it reads you covers the clauses that matter at this stage, and our review of the best virtual data room software compares the tools growth firms expect to see.

What does the concentration mean for LPs and emerging managers?

For LPs, access to the top twelve firms is now the entire game: those managers raised roughly three quarters of H1 2026 dollars and are heavily oversubscribed. For emerging managers, the market has bifurcated into a few hundred micro-funds under $50 million fighting over 4% of capital.

The PitchBook returns data shows why. One-year returns of 17.1% are almost entirely unrealised AI markups, and the 2021 vintage has returned almost no cash at year five. Institutional LPs facing denominator effects and slow distributions have cut the number of GP relationships and re-upped with managers who hold the largest positions in the companies most likely to generate liquidity in 2026–2027. That makes allocation to a first-time or sub-$100 million fund a harder internal sell even when its strategy is sound. We examine what LPs are being offered in our overview of venture funds currently raising in 2026 and the access routes available to smaller investors in how to invest in VC funds as a limited partner.

There is one counter-trend. Sovereign and family-office capital from the Gulf and Asia is entering US venture directly, both as LPs in the mega-funds and as co-investors in AI rounds. MGX’s $49 billion AI fund (closed above a $45 billion target, per Bloomberg Law in July 2026) co-led OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s largest rounds. That capital is reshaping cap tables at the very top, a theme we explore in our guide to Middle East, Turkish and Israeli venture firms.

How do US firms compare internationally, and what should non-US founders expect?

US firms raised about $28.2 billion across 63 funds in Q2 2026 alone, against $7.1 billion across 48 funds in Europe and $2.4 billion across ten funds in Asia, according to Murph Capital’s tracker. The gap means non-US founders usually need a US lead by Series B, but the top US firms now run offices in London, Bengaluru, Singapore and Tel Aviv.

Sequoia, Accel, Lightspeed, Index, General Catalyst, a16z (London) and Bessemer all maintain European or Israeli investment teams; Accel, Lightspeed, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) and Bessemer run dedicated India funds; and Insight Partners has deployed more than $5.8 billion into Israeli companies. Practically, this means a London or Berlin founder can get a Series A from Accel’s $650 million Europe fund without moving, and an Indian SaaS company can raise from Accel India IX ($550 million, August 2026) and later tap the US Leaders fund. The counterpoint is that US growth money still expects US revenue: a company with no American customers by Series B will struggle to attract Thrive or Insight regardless of its home-market numbers.

For a full picture of the regional alternatives, browse the full VC Firms by Country pillar, which covers Europe, India and Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Middle East. If you are preparing to pitch any of the firms above, our checklist on what a strong investor pitch actually contains is the right next read.

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