Methodology

How venture-backed raises are picked

An offering is kept when its latest filing meets all three of these:

• A Delaware corporation. The standard entity for venture-backed startups.
• Not a vehicle. No investment-company exemption; not a pooled fund, real estate or oil and gas; no “series”, “SPV” or “fund” in the name; not a partnership or business trust; no business combination; no pooled-fund, tenant-in-common or mineral securities; not an exchange-listed company.
• A venture investor on the board. An outside director (a director who is not also an executive officer) has the same first and last name as a person named on a venture capital fund's filing, in any quarter published since 2012.

15,677 people are named on venture fund filings since 3 January 2012. 1,249 raises by 1,097 startups qualify in this window. The rule favors precision: seed rounds rarely add a board member, so it holds roughly a quarter to a third of the venture-backed startups raising in a year. A name match is not a verified identity.

The archive

Before the current window, the site keeps venture fund filings and the raises this rule picks, back to 3 January 2012: 20,007 more raises by 10,186 startups, and 53,479 fund filings. The published data sets skip 2008 to 2013 except their first quarters, so those years are thin. A company listed on an exchange today counts as listed only from its first public report, so a raise from before its listing is still a startup raise. Raises filed before 2025 are not checked for an announcement.

How a round is checked for an announcement

Raises filed 2 January 2025 to 17 September 2026 have been checked, most recently on 17 September 2026. Each check searches the web for the company under its legal and brand names. A press release, news article, or company or investor post about the round counts; pages that only restate the filing do not. New raises are checked daily, and a round marked unannounced is one where no announcement was found, not one proven never to have been made. See the unannounced rounds.

How to read the numbers

• A filing is not an offering. A company files a notice within 15 days of its first sale, then amendments to update it. Each round is counted once, at its latest filing.
• Amount sold is cumulative. It is everything sold since the round began, which can predate this window.
• Investor firms come from the venture funds whose filings name a director of the company.
• Company websites are shown only when the site carries the company's legal name or the brand it trades under.
• Self-reported. These filings are notices, not registrations. Nobody reviews them before they are published.

What this does not catch

Rounds without a venture investor on the board (most seed rounds), companies that are not Delaware corporations, raises filed late or never filed, and announcements the check did not find. The list is a selection picked for signal, not a census. Seen a round announced that is marked unannounced? Each raise's page has a form to send the link.