Record seed valuations: $24M post-money, and the trap inside the median

Carta data published in March 2026 puts the median post-money valuation on primary seed rounds at $24 million in Q4 2025 — an all-time high. A year earlier it was $18 million; two years earlier, $16 million. At Series A, the median post-money jumped to $78.7 million, up 37% from a prior record of $57.5 million. Carta stresses this is not only a median story: the 25th percentile moved up too.

Placed against the macro picture, the rise has an obvious source. Crunchbase recorded a record $510 billion of global venture funding in the first half of 2026, more than the $440 billion invested in all of 2025. In Q1 2026 alone, $300 billion went into about 6,000 startups, with AI taking roughly 80% of the quarterly total and the four largest companies absorbing nearly two-thirds of the entire pool.

Prices rose, the slice sold did not

This is the detail most easily missed. Carta reports that dilution at seed and Series A has eased slightly over two years but the medians remain between 19% and 20%, right at the industry's historical norm. If valuations rise by a third while dilution holds, round sizes rose in step. Founders are not selling less of the company; they are taking more money for the same ownership trade — and inheriting a higher bar for the next round.

Carta also records down rounds falling from a 22% peak in 2023 to under 12% today, with liquidation preferences and participation rights near multi-year lows. The terms environment is tilted toward founders — but that is a market condition, not a law, and it can turn faster than an early-stage company's runway.

Pre-seed: the instrument is standardised, the caps are not

One layer down, Carta reports roughly 3,000 US startups on its platform raised pre-seed capital in Q1 2026, totalling more than $2.3 billion at the time of counting and expected to reach about $2.9 billion once data settles — in line with recent quarters. The dominant instrument is the post-money SAFE with a valuation cap, and Carta notes those caps kept climbing through 2026, while convertible notes have all but disappeared from practice.

A high cap does not mean low dilution. When multiple SAFEs stack and convert together at a priced round, total dilution only becomes visible when the cap table is finalised — usually too late to renegotiate. That is a mechanical risk rather than a market risk, and it is entirely controllable if the model is built in advance.

The trap inside the median

The $24 million figure is a median for the US market on Carta's platform, in a period when global capital is concentrated in AI to an unprecedented degree. Using it as the reference point for a Southeast Asian seed round compares the wrong units: different currency, different addressable market, different density of acquirers at exit. Carta's data is most useful as a benchmark for structure — dilution, instruments, time between rounds — not for price.

• Valuations rose while dilution held at 19–20%: round sizes grew in step, and so did growth expectations.
• Down rounds are under 12% and protective terms are at multi-year lows — favourable conditions that can reverse.
• The capped post-money SAFE is the norm; a high cap does not automatically preserve ownership.
• US medians are a structural benchmark, not a price benchmark for other markets.