Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

O'Driscoll: 70% of Q1 venture dollars went to just four or five deals

Rory O’Driscoll · DeepSeek Raises at $50B | The Rise of Open Source vs OpenAI & Anthropic | OpenAI Builds Own Chip · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 25, 2026 · at 56:04

Rory O'Driscoll, GP at Scale Venture Partners, cites venture industry statistics to illustrate how capital concentration forces mega-funds into a tiny number of massive rounds.

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“One of the statistics in Q-one, like, 70% of the venture dollars went to four or five deals.”

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The claim, plainly

In Q1, 70% of all venture capital dollars deployed went into just four or five mega-deals.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Major venture capital reports for Q1 2026 validate Rory O'Driscoll's claim that approximately 70% of venture dollars went into just four or five deals. PitchBook-NVCA reported that the top 5 mega-deals accounted for 73.2% of total US venture capital deal value. Crunchbase reported that the top 4 mega-deals captured 65% of total global venture funding and 75.2% of total US venture funding. Both primary data providers confirm the concentration figure of around 70% across 4 to 5 deals.

PitchBook and J.P. Morgan reported that the top five mega-deals accounted for 73.2% of total US venture capital deal value in Q1 2026.
Crunchbase recorded $188 billion raised across four mega-deals (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Waymo), representing 65% of total global VC deployed and 75.2% of US VC deployed in Q1 2026.

Checked against

[1] substack.com [2] pitchbook.com [3] gamesbeat.com [4] nvca.org [5] crunchbase.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

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Mentioned

venture dollars

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O'Driscoll: 70% of Q1 venture dollars went to just four or five deals

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