PitchBook

Private AI companies command more than $2 trillion in combined valuation on $300B+ in capital raised. Five companies alone are spending tens of billions on infrastructure. So is the frontier AI market already locked up? At TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, PitchBook Senior Research Analyst Harrison Rolfes hosts a roundtable on "The $100 Billion Entry Fee: Can Anyone Still Compete in AI?" The conversation works through where the real moats sit (models, data, or distribution), what capital concentration means for startups building outside the frontier race, and why the cheapest company per unit of business quality may not be the one investors expect. The discussion is grounded in data, not hype. October 14 | 2:40 p.m. PT | Roundtable 1 Secure your spot: https://lnkd.in/egz2zSxw If you're at Disrupt, where do you think the real moat is: models, data, or distribution? 🎤

US PE deal value rebounded 20.9% QoQ in Q3, but it's still down 30.4% from a year ago. Exit activity bounced back harder: value jumped 50.4% QoQ, with mega-exits now accounting for 73.3% of the year's exit value. Corporate strategics drove nearly 60% of Q3's exit value, as buyers with strong public market backing swooped in on premium assets. Megadeals are quietly reappearing too — 28 transactions over $1 billion closed in Q3, worth $82.8 billion combined, inching back toward H2 2025's pace. Full findings from the Q3 2026 US PE Breakdown, sponsored by CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen) and Churchill Asset Management, are linked below. Which of these trends are you watching most closely heading into Q4? 📊 https://lnkd.in/gzDteJC2

📣 Q3 VC data is here! Just published our deal, exit, and fundraising data for the global, US, Europe, and APAC regions in PitchBook's Q3 2026 Global VC First Look. Check out our new dashboards: https://lnkd.in/eg2-ZiGD

Join Jacob Robbins and Emily Zheng live for Private Markets, Decoded, including a first look at the Q3 2026 PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor. Tune in on October 7 at 9 a.m. PT #VentureCapital #PrivateMarkets #PitchBook

Drooms set out to build a data-driven piece uncovering M&A and PE trends in Europe to bring greater clarity to the market. That's what led the company to PitchBook's Custom Research team, known for the most accurate, trusted market data. Together, they built the Drooms Report 2026: Executing in an Era of Market Complexities, an in-depth look at European M&A and PE trends and the technology imperative reshaping how deals get done. The partnership allowed Drooms to connect with its audience on a deeper level, backed by more granular data and sharper market insights. "PitchBook offered us something we deliberately sought externally: a lot of valuable, relevant M&A and PE data," said Paula Väinämö, PR & Content Manager at Drooms. "They offered us both a wider and a deeper view into the industries' trends, which was exactly what we were looking for." Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/evdBd7WM

PitchBook's Kyle Walters joined BG Insights to break down why North American M&A deal count is holding up even without a repeat of 2025's mega-deals. He also gets into the AI and data center-driven M&A wave hitting Energy & Infrastructure, and why founder-owned businesses remain private equity's top target regardless of market conditions. Listen here 🎤

Most students only scratch the surface of what PitchBook can do. This live, 30-minute training is built specifically for students with university access to the platform. Genevieve Gibson, one of PitchBook's Customer Trainers, will walk through how to research companies, deals, and market trends, build custom screeners, and identify your school's alumni founders and spinout companies. We'll also cover how to explore PitchBook's research reports and emerging spaces coverage. Two live sessions are open now: Sept. 30 at 9 a.m. PDT and Oct. 8 at 8:30 a.m. PDT. Seats are limited to keep things interactive, so register early. Save your spot: https://lnkd.in/ejtsZ5jq What's the first thing you'd want to figure out in PitchBook: Sourcing a target company, building a screener, or tracking your school's founders? 🎓

Fund sizes are shifting, talent markets are tightening, and comp structures at investment firms are under more pressure to keep pace than they have been in years. 📊 For GPs, that means live decisions on pay and carried interest design that stale benchmarks can't answer, and for LPs, banks, and advisors, it's a real signal of how firms are managing alignment and retention. 🔍 Jody Thelander (J.Thelander Consulting), Rachel Goddard (Cooley), and PitchBook's Kaidi Gao return for the Q3 2026 update to their compensation benchmarking partnership, breaking down real-time pay data by AUM, fund size, and firm type, plus fund formation and carried interest design. 💡 Register for “Insights into Investment Firm Compensation: Q3 2026 Update,” live September 23 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ePXXi3By #PrivateCapital #VentureCapital #CompBenchmarking 

UK-based executive recruitment firm Axon Moore completed a CFO search in a matter of weeks, a placement that wouldn't have happened without PitchBook. From tracking senior candidates to monitoring funding and identifying high-growth companies, PitchBook is an end-to-end solution for Axon Moore. 🎯 As the firm’s use of the PitchBook Platform has grown, it has been able to widen its services and take on searches beyond its existing network. Our powerful search functionality and innovative tools help Axon Moore: - Track market activity and funding rounds to zero in on high-growth companies.  - Build targeted candidate lists quickly.   - Close specialized executive searches with confidence. Read our case study to discover how firms such as Axon Moore use PitchBook to identify trends, understand why they matter, and know how to act 🚀 : https://lnkd.in/eG2bGrzu

Lumonic 12.0 is here, and it's a new kind of platform: you can now direct Lumonic using plain-language instructions, and every action it takes gets logged for review, with human approval required before anything is written. The first capability built on that foundation is automated data extraction. Lumonic reads documents from portfolio companies and borrowers, pulls the data out on its own, and traces every value back to the exact page it came from. Decisions your firm makes once, like how a metric is defined or how a new line item should be treated, carry forward automatically after that, so the same reporting pack doesn't produce different numbers depending on who reviews it. Lumonic is a PitchBook company, and this is the first of several AI workflow capabilities coming to the platform over the next few months. See how the self-monitoring portfolio works here: https://lnkd.in/e2spZhQR