The megaround tape keeps printing AI, and everything else is stuck waiting for somebody to blink. Startup Fundraising, Friday close. We’ve got a gallery of 2026’s funded startups, a YouTube explainer on where VC money is actually flowing, and Carta’s Series B guide making an appearance — and, yeah, that last one matters more than it sounds. Carta put out that Series B guide in December 2023. The fact that it’s still the best thing on the table in May 2026 says plenty about how much the market has bothered to explain itself lately. And the week gave us Cognition at twenty-six billion yesterday — then today it hands us a liquidity conversation. That gap is the whole story. From Startups Gallery: Startups Gallery dropped a teaser today — paywalled past the lead investors — but what you can see is enough: Lux Capital turns up on a $46M Series B, and they’re also tied to a $1B venture line. Same week, they were in the Cognition syndicate too. That’s a pretty wide spread in check size. The $46M one is Pace, insurance infrastructure — Business Wire sourced, May 27. Fine, that’s an unsexy category, and I can respect that. But Lux going from a $46M B to a $1B venture facility in the same weekly snapshot while also sitting in a $26B AI valuation? That’s a buffet, not a portfolio thesis. The gallery also has Modal at $355M Series C, with General Catalyst leading and a $4.65B post-money. That’s the kind of round where the cap table math starts to bite — what did the seed and A investors actually net at that price? And somehow the week ends with a paywall and four truncated entries. No ARR on any of it, no terms visible. The whole gallery reads like a headlines list dressed up as diligence. I’ve been handed worse, but not by much. Here's Irish at Nothing Ventured:
In this episode of Nothing Ventured, we break down the real state of the venture capital market, from AI investment concentration and startup funding trends to liquidity pressure, emerging manager struggles and the growing power of platforms like OpenAI.
Nothing Ventured posted yesterday — four views as of this morning, which may be the most honest number in venture media right now. The episode description makes the point pretty plainly: this is about power and concentration, not recovery. That’s the B-side to yesterday’s twenty-six billion Cognition headline. They use the words “liquidity crisis” — not “liquidity pressure,” not “challenging environment.” Crisis. And then they point to secondaries and engineered exits as the answer. That’s not a market functioning normally. That’s founders and LPs looking for the side door. The emerging manager thread is worth flagging. If capital keeps concentrating around a handful of names, the funds that don’t have an OpenAI or a Cognition on the cap table aren’t just underperforming — they’re getting starved of the carry that lets them raise a Fund II. And Carta’s Series B playbook — the one that surfaced this week, written in December 2023 — is describing a market with functioning VC appetite and priced rounds. Nothing Ventured just described the opposite. So a two-and-a-half-year-old guide is now the best resource for founders trying to navigate a market that looks nothing like the one it was written for. From Lucy Hoyle at Carta:
After a post-pandemic period of high valuations and low interest rates, the private market downturn in early 2022 laid the foundations for a more competitive funding landscape. Now, as the venture capital markets in the U.S. and Europe gradually begin to thaw, today’s founders must be prepared to meet a high bar if they stand a chance of securing finance.
Carta published this Series B guide in December 2023 — solid evergreen piece, sure — and it’s also sitting underneath half the cap tables we’ve covered this week, including Socket and Dust. Quiet infrastructure, loud week. December 2023 is the freshest playbook available, and it’s May 2026. That gap is the story. Carta’s describing a market where VC appetite is predictable and priced rounds follow a logic. Nothing Ventured just dropped an episode about liquidity crisis and emerging manager struggles. Those are not the same market. And if the exit window is closed the way Nothing Ventured frames it, a Series B stops being a milestone and turns into a holding pattern with a fresh dilution event attached. Payabli’s concentration question from earlier this week fits right here. Standard Series B diligence on customer concentration gets a lot harder when the buyer pool for your eventual exit has shrunk to three names and a Cognition-sized anomaly. Got a fundraising question, a story idea, or a correction for us? Send it to startupfundraising at lantern podcasts dot com. We read the notes, and they help shape future episodes.
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That’s Startup Fundraising for this Friday, May 29. Thanks for listening. This is a Lantern Podcast.