Founders’ guides to equity, valuations, and company growth.
How much of a biotech startup do the founders end up with after a number of funding rounds? It’s not simply a matter of how much money you’ve raised. Investor ownership, employee stock options, top ups to the option pool and convertible securities all play a part in how the equity is split as you …
In a single month, a chipmaker was worth about $5.2 trillion, a private AI lab was valued at $965 billion, and a GPU cloud provider lost about 30% of its market value. That is the story of AI valuations in 2026, record-setting prices at the top, and sharp repricing for anyone who borrowed heavily to …
The ten best-funded AI companies in the US have raised $751 billion between them, and the top five account for $582 billion of that, or about 77.5%. OpenAI alone has raised $201.1 billion. The company ranked 100th, Klaviyo, has raised $1.35 billion. Across the full list, the same investors appear again and again: NVIDIA, Sequoia …
The AI boom has created some of the most valuable private companies in the world. Convincing the world of AI’s transformative potential is easy; justifying its sky-high valuations in public markets is another story. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is reportedly targeting a staggering $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion IPO valuation as it prepares for …
Bombas pitched for $200,000 and now reports $1.3 billion in lifetime sales. ZipZ Wine landed the biggest check in the show’s history, $2.5 million, and the company later faded from the market. The gap between those two outcomes shows what a Shark Tank deal really is: a pricing decision that changes who owns the company. …
Why IP Due Diligence Matters Before an AI fundraise? In 2025, AI had the highest deal value and deal count. However, when it came to average deal size, AI was 7th among the top 20 sectors by deal value. The top spot was claimed by Big Data. One possible contributor to this trend could be …
As myTU prepared for its Series B, the fintech company needed more than a valuation based on its previous funding round. With Eqvista Real-Time Company Valuation®, myTU gained an independent, continuously updated market benchmark to support investor discussions, evaluate financing options, and make more informed decisions about equity dilution. myTU is a growing fintech company …
Which were the biggest rounds Accel backed in 2026, and what can founders learn from them? The largest were in AI, defense and security companies that were already growing fast. Anthropic’s $30 billion Series G was the biggest by far. But the rounds Accel led, such as Legora, Armadin, Basis and Fractile, show more about …
A seed funding round can change what your company’s common stock is worth, which matters when you grant employee stock options. For most private startups, a 409A valuation helps establish the common stock’s fair market value (FMV) so options can be granted at an exercise price that meets Section 409A requirements. For seed-stage startups, the …
Imagine two companies. For every $1 of short-term bills, a biotech firm holds $5.13 in cash and quick assets. A discount store holds just 32 cents. Why such a big gap? The answer is how each business earns money. Biotech firms sit on cash raised from investors, while discount stores collect cash at the register …
AI’s dominance in venture capital has been nothing short of remarkable. In Q1 2023, AI accounted for 21.05% of global VC funding. By Q1 2026, that figure had surged to 80.61%, meaning that for every dollar deployed by venture capitalists globally, roughly 80 cents is flowing into AI. It stands to reason that, if capital …
A 12% ROE beats the 9.4% earned by restaurants, but trails the 14.1% earned in engineering and construction. Same number, two different verdicts. This guide uses October 2026 data on 128 U.S. industries to show which sectors earn the most on shareholder equity, which earn the least, and how to benchmark your own company against …
A wrong answer from an AI chatbot is one thing. An AI agent leaking internal information or bypassing security controls is another. That distinction led Joan Vendrell, co-founder and CEO of NeuralTrust, to build a platform that helps enterprises monitor, secure, and govern AI agents connected to their business systems. Drawing on his experience at …
US companies spent more money on deals in 2026 than in any recent year on record. The numbers are striking: SpaceX bought xAI at a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion, two of the largest apartment landlords in the country merged into one company, and a handful of pharmaceutical companies spent over $67 billion acquiring drug …
Eqvista has once again been named a 2026 Inc. Power Partner Award winner, recognizing our role in helping entrepreneurs and businesses grow. The annual Inc. Power Partner Awards honor leading B2B companies with a strong track record of supporting businesses through the challenges of building, operating, and scaling. This recognition reflects the trust our clients …
Private equity has an ESG commitment problem, but not where you might think. PE firms are putting more money, teams, and targets behind ESG, yet those commitments are still struggling to reach the portfolio companies that have to deliver them. In 2026, the real question isn’t whether private equity takes ESG seriously. It’s whether those …
Eqvista has launched Company-Sponsored Tender Offers, giving private companies a new way to organize shareholder liquidity events directly within their equity management platform. As companies stay private longer, employees and early investors often wait years for an opportunity to sell their shares. Eqvista’s new capabilities help companies organize these transactions while maintaining control over participation, …
Liscio needed more than a new cap table platform. It needed a provider that could preserve its equity history, support an active company restructure, and stay involved beyond the migration. Liscio is a File Intelligence platform built specifically for accounting and tax professionals, helping firms manage documents, client requests, communication, and tax workflows while delivering …
Behind every company valuation is a combination of financial analysis, industry research, judgment, and an understanding of the business itself. At Eqvista, that work is carried out by valuation professionals who bring experience across different areas of finance and capital markets. In this employee spotlight, we speak with Jeff Yang, Senior Valuation Analyst at Eqvista, …
Where is the smartest money in startups going in 2026? A good way to find out is to look at Sequoia and a16z. Between them, they joined OpenAI’s $122 billion round, Anthropic’s $65 billion round, Waymo’s $16 billion round and Anduril’s $5 billion round. But the headlines only show big numbers. They don’t tell you …
Over 25,000 companies use Eqvista to simplify equity, stay compliant, and scale—whether hiring their first employee or closing their next round.