Venture trends follow similar patterns across the globe. You won't find many places where AI isn't the focus. Nor will you find many that are generating exits at a higher rate than in 2021.

However, the depth of the decline or the robustness of the rebound can vary, sometimes widely, based on the size and development of the regional venture markets.

This is the case between the US market and Europe. The trends are similar: AI, lack of liquidity, secondaries and low fundraising. But a comparison of the markets highlights the vast differences. In the US, deal value surged to $339.6 billion, with 65.4% of it going to AI. In Europe, €23.3 billion invested in AI accounted for 35.5% of the market’s deal value, which only barely surpassed 2024's total.

 

 

Fundraising between the two regions also highlights the vast difference in venture resources. Europe's fundraising was the lowest in a decade at €12.0 billion. US VC fundraising also fell to a decade low, though it hit $66.1 billion.

If the answer is liquidity, the US holds an edge, generating $298 billion in exit value in 2025, compared with Europe's €67.8 billion. This could drive further consolidation of venture resources into the US.

VC is a riskier strategy than most asset classes, so global volatility caused investors to retreat everywhere, which is why similar trends have emerged. But because it's a riskier strategy, the reallocation to VC has not been as uniform, as LPs look to derisk their investments as much as possible until economic uncertainty fades.

Where we will find resilient venture ecosystems in the next few years will be where LPs feel they can get the best return, and therefore place their VC allocation.

Europe and the US are entrenched markets, but their future growth isn't likely to be even. We explored the trends of each market in more depth in our European Venture Report and the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, which was sponsored by J.P. Morgan, Dentons and EisnerAmper.

Almost a full month into 2026, many New Year's resolutions are hitting their breaking points. Optimism remains, but only discipline and sustainable systems determine what really survives.

Fintech is in the same boat. Let's review the state of the industry so far.

Out: Growth without quality. In: Earnings visibility and profitability.

Most public fintech stocks continue to underperform as investors apply an earnings-visibility discount, compressing valuation multiples where growth lacks margin clarity—even as topline trends hold up. But fintech companies that can pair growth with clearer margin trajectories, repeatable profitability and evidence of operating leverage are more than fine. On average, profitable fintech companies trade at 5.5x EV/sales compared to 2.8x for unprofitable peers.

 

Out: AI as positioning without proof. In: Real AI-native fintech.

Public markets are discounting AI narratives that add earnings noise without improving visibility, compressing valuation multiples when AI coincides with margin resets or reinvestment cycles. Meanwhile, a growing number of core AI startups are raising capital at seed, Series A and Series B, often earning valuation premiums. AI-enabled fintech companies made up 45% of US VC deal value in 2025.

Out: Blockchain speculation. In: Stablecoins and tokenization as real infrastructure.

Leaders are both building and buying on-chain infrastructure as regulatory clarity improves and institutional adoption accelerates. The average stablecoin supply ended 2025 at $274 billion, and the distributed tokenized real-world asset value has reached $20 billion. Nasdaq wants to explore how to support tokenized securities, as does the New York Stock Exchange.

Out: Prediction markets for betting. In: Prediction markets for real insights.

Prediction markets are the real deal, and even Goldman Sachs is exploring the optics. Weekly notional volumes are over $5 billion, and $4.5 billion of VC deal value came from Kalshi and Polymarket in 2025. Capital markets are realizing that these platforms can provide real-time information that is more accurate than polls, forecasts or other limited datasets.

Out: Payments only for humans. In: Payments for machines.

AI has not yet displaced traditional shopping traffic, but it is beginning to rewire the funnel. As LLM-driven referrals and conversions gain attention, a race has formed to build the payments infrastructure for autonomous agents. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and OpenAI are already competing for the winning protocol on agent identity, intent and autonomous payments. Now in 2026, Google and Shopify are heating up the field as well.

Fintech innovation is clearly off to a hot start this year. Track how it will hold up by getting the full picture from our latest Fintech: State of the Industry 2026 report.