The Hundred-Billion Check Era

Executive Summary

The defining story of Feb 16–Feb 22, 2026 wasn’t simply that AI dominated deal flow—it’s that capital formation itself is being re-architected around AI as infrastructure, with equity rounds now sized like sovereign-era industrial projects. The week’s center of gravity was OpenAI’s $100B+ Series C+—a phased, strategic-heavy syndicate with reported commitments as large as $50B (Amazon), $30B (SoftBank), and $20–30B (NVIDIA), targeting >$850B post-money. This is not venture scale; it’s a new financing category designed to lock compute, power, and distribution for a single platform. The fact that strategics are expected to finalize first—before VCs and sovereigns come in—signals a market where supply-chain position is now the primary underwriting lens.

Two other narratives made the week unusually coherent. First, the “AI constraint stack” broadened: capital flowed not only into models, but into power electronics (solid-state transformers), data centers and chip financing, and regional GPU sovereignty plays (notably India). Second, investors leaned into “measurable throughput” businesses across fintech and enterprise software—ARR, assets administered, token volume, advisor seats, developer counts, and contract backlogs repeatedly appeared as the proof points that unlocked large checks.

Across 184 deals, the stage mix remained barbelled—57 Seed and 40 Series A by count—yet dollars were overwhelmingly captured by a small set of mega- and late-stage rounds and structured financings. The market signal is clear: 2026’s winners will be the companies that can (1) secure privileged inputs (compute/power/chips), (2) finance those inputs with engineered capital stacks (debt + guarantees + strategics), and (3) translate technical advantage into operational throughput that is legible to growth and crossover capital.