Series C+ post-money benchmarks

Cap-table mechanics at this stage

Wide distribution. Late-stage rounds in 2026 are increasingly bifurcated: a few mega-rounds (AI infra, hyperscalers, model labs) pull the high end; the broad middle is more conservative than 2021 peaks. AI premium is estimated: Carta publishes a Series E+ AI premium of about +193% but does not break out clean Series C/D splits, so this C-weighted bucket is set to +90% — well above the Series B (~+50%) cut to reflect the escalation toward E+, but deliberately conservative relative to the +193% E+ extreme.

Typical post-money breakdown

For a series c+ round at the cohort median ($500M post-money, average check 115.0M, 8% option pool refresh): new investor takes roughly 23.0% of post-money. Option pool refresh of 3-8% of post-money consumes additional founder + existing-investor allocation. Existing holders absorb the dilution proportionally.

AI-labelled series c+ rounds price about +90% above non-AI on Carta's broad AI cohort (estimated — Carta does not publish a clean priced AI split at this stage). AI Series C+ post-money median: approximately $950M. Within AI the gap is larger still — foundational-model companies command multiples of application-layer peers. The cap-table implication: AI rounds have higher absolute valuations but similar dilution percentages, so the absolute dollar value of the new investor's stake is materially higher.

Source

Source: Carta Q4 2025 + PitchBook-NVCA Q1 2026 · Verified 2026-08-31.