Angel Investing Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-authors: Mia Scarlett (Business & Entrepreneurship) & Sarah Davis (Digital Finance & Fintech) | Last updated: August 18, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Twenty-four million American households hold enough income or net worth to legally write a startup cheque. 445,535 of them did. That gap — between eligibility and action — is the single most important number in angel investing, and until now nobody had put a figure on it. Axis Intelligence Research puts it at 1.83%.
Quick Answer
U.S. angel investors deployed $17.9 billion into 55,346 ventures in 2024, down 3.1% in dollars while the number of active angels rose 5.5% to 445,535. Axis Intelligence Research finds this produces an Angel Capital Activation Rate (ACAR™) of 1.83% — the share of accredited-investor households that made an angel investment — and an Angel Market Depth Index (AMDI™) baseline of 72.5.
Key Findings
- According to the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research, U.S. angel investment totalled $17.9 billion in 2024, a 3.1% decline from 2023.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds the Angel Capital Activation Rate reached 1.83% in 2024, meaning 98.2% of eligible U.S. households made no angel investment.
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates that average deployment per active angel fell 8.8% to $40,176 in 2024, the sharpest per-investor contraction in the available series.
- Seed and start-up deals rose to 59% of all angel investments in 2024, against a 16% decline in venture capital seed deals over the same cycle, per the Center for Venture Research.
- Axis Intelligence Research estimates that angel capital represents 0.83% of all Regulation D capital raised in 2024, against SEC-reported Form D proceeds of $2,147.6 billion.
How Big Is the Angel Investment Market in 2026?
The authoritative U.S. series comes from the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, which has surveyed the angel market since 1980. Its 2024 full-year analysis reports total angel investment of $17.9 billion across 55,346 funded ventures.
That report deserves a note before its numbers are used. It carries a citation line dated December 2024, but it was posted to the university’s server under a December 2025 path — and the centre’s own repository at UNH Scholars still ends its public series at the 2023 report. The leadership page now lists Jianhong Chen and Kholekile Gwebu as co-directors rather than Jeffrey Sohl, who authored every full-year report in the series. Anyone citing U.S. angel figures in 2026 is citing a dataset in transition. That is not a reason to discard it; it is a reason to date it precisely, which is what the table below does.
| Year | Total angel investment | Ventures funded | Active angels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $29.1B | 69,060 | — | Center for Venture Research |
| 2022 | — | — | 367,945 | Center for Venture Research |
| 2023 | $18.6B | 54,735 | 422,350 | Center for Venture Research |
| 2024 | $17.9B | 55,346 | 445,535 | Center for Venture Research |
Source: Center for Venture Research, full-year analysis reports (2023 report published June 20, 2024; 2024 report published under a December 2025 file path). Retrieved August 18, 2026.
Two things are happening at once, and most coverage picks only one. Dollars are down 38.5% from the 2021 peak. Participation is up 21.1% over the same window. More people are writing smaller cheques.
Sarah Davis: The dollar decline is the headline everyone runs. The investor count is the number that changes what the market is. A market of 445,535 people deploying $17.9 billion behaves differently from a market of 367,945 people deploying $22 billion — the cheques are smaller, the syndicates are wider, and the marginal angel is less experienced. That is a structural change wearing the costume of a bad year.
How Many Angel Investors Are There, and How Many Could There Be?
The SEC does not count angels. It counts the pool they are drawn from. Its accredited-investor household statistics, built on the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, put the qualifying population at 24.3 million households in 2022 — 18.5% of all U.S. households, up from 13.2% in 2019.
| Qualifying criterion | Households (2022) | Share of U.S. households | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any criterion | 24.3M | 18.5% | SEC / Federal Reserve SCF |
| Individual income above $200,000 | 18.1M | 13.8% | SEC / Federal Reserve SCF |
| Net worth above $1,000,000 | 16.4M | 12.5% | SEC / Federal Reserve SCF |
| Joint income above $300,000 | 9.8M | 7.5% | SEC / Federal Reserve SCF |
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Qualifying Households under Accredited Investor Financial Criteria, published August 12, 2025. Categories overlap and do not sum to the total. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
The 2022 reading is the most recent because the SCF runs triennially. The SEC’s 2023 staff review of the definition supplies the historical anchor: 1.51 million qualifying households in 1983, the year after Regulation D took effect. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that as a 16.1× expansion of the eligible pool over thirty-nine years, driven not by policy but by the thresholds never being indexed to inflation.
Introducing ACAR™ — the Angel Capital Activation Rate
The eligible pool and the active pool have never been divided by each other in published research. Axis Intelligence Research does so here.
ACAR™ (Angel Capital Activation Rate) = active angel investors ÷ accredited-investor households × 100
- 2024: 445,535 ÷ 24,300,000 × 100 = 1.83%
- 2023: 422,350 ÷ 24,300,000 × 100 = 1.74%
Read plainly: for every 100 American households legally permitted to fund a private company, roughly two do. The rate rose in 2024 — activation improved even as capital fell — which is the most under-reported dynamic in the U.S. early-stage market.
The scope of the ratio matters and is stated rather than buried. The numerator counts individuals; the denominator counts households, and a household may contain more than one accredited person. ACAR is therefore an upper bound on household participation and should be read as a directional participation measure, not a headcount. The denominator is also fixed at the 2022 SCF reading until the 2025 survey publishes, so year-over-year movement in ACAR is driven entirely by the numerator.
What Percentage of Startups Actually Get Angel Funding?
The Center for Venture Research tracks a yield rate: the share of investment opportunities presented to angels that result in an investment.
| Year | Yield rate | Implied opportunities per funded deal | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 26.7% | 3.75 | Center for Venture Research |
| 2023 | 24.2% | 4.13 | Center for Venture Research |
| 2024 | 22.6% | 4.42 | Center for Venture Research |
Source: Center for Venture Research full-year analysis reports. Implied opportunities per funded deal calculated by Axis Intelligence Research as the inverse of the yield rate. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
The centre describes yields in the 20–25% band as historically consistent with a sustainable market. The 2024 reading sits just inside that band and has fallen for two consecutive years. A founder pitching angels in 2024 faced roughly 4.4 conversations per funded round, against 3.75 two years earlier.
Two subgroups outperform the market. Women-led ventures cleared a 26.7% yield rate in 2024 and minority-owned ventures 32.4% — both above the 22.6% market rate, and the minority figure has now held above 32% for two consecutive years while representing only 9.4% of ventures presenting. The scarcity is on the supply side of deals, not the demand side of capital.
How Much Is the Average Angel Investment?
The Center for Venture Research reported an average deal size of $339,390 in 2023 and a 4.2% decline in 2024, without publishing the 2024 dollar figure. Axis Intelligence Research computes it two ways, and publishes both.
- Method A (capital ÷ funded ventures): $17,900,000,000 ÷ 55,346 = $323,420
- Method B (2023 deal size × 0.958): $339,390 × 0.958 = $325,136
The two methods differ by $1,716, or 0.53%. That gap is the survey’s rounding, not a contradiction, and the convergence is itself a validity signal. Axis Intelligence Research uses Method A as the reported figure because it derives from two independently published 2024 aggregates rather than from a percentage applied to a prior-year base.
On valuation, the most recent published figures remain 2023: an average pre-money valuation of $3.5 million for 9.7% equity, down 7.9% year over year after valuations climbed steadily from 2018. [older data] — the 2024 report did not restate valuation or equity, so no 2024 figure exists in the source series and none is invented here.
Dollars per active angel: the number the market misses
Dividing capital by investors rather than by deals produces a different story.
| Year | Capital | Active angels | Dollars per active angel | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $18.6B | 422,350 | $44,039 | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on CVR data |
| 2024 | $17.9B | 445,535 | $40,176 | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on CVR data |
Formula: total angel investment ÷ active angel investors. Change: −8.8%. Source data: Center for Venture Research. Calculation: Axis Intelligence Research, retrieved August 18, 2026.
An 8.8% per-investor contraction against a 3.1% market contraction means the average angel’s personal commitment fell nearly three times faster than the market did. Capital is being spread across more participants, each doing less.
Mia Scarlett: Strip out the growth in headcount and the operating picture is worse than the headline. Total deployment fell 3.1%; deployment per participant fell 8.8%. Any operator reading a segment report would flag that immediately — volume held because the base widened, not because the underlying unit improved. The angel market added customers and lost revenue per customer.
Which Sectors Do Angel Investors Actually Fund?
The 2024 sector mix reordered materially from 2023.
| Sector | Share of deals 2024 | Share of deals 2023 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Healthcare services / medical devices | 29.5% | 25.2% | +4.3pp | Center for Venture Research |
| Software | 20.2% | 25.1% | −4.9pp | Center for Venture Research |
| Biotech | 15.5% | 5.1% | +10.4pp | Center for Venture Research |
| Industrial / energy-cleantech | 7.8% | 12.1% | −4.3pp | Center for Venture Research |
| Retail | 7.7% | 5.7% | +2.0pp | Center for Venture Research |
| Fintech | 6.2% | 12.9% | −6.7pp | Center for Venture Research |
Source: Center for Venture Research full-year analysis reports. Percentage-point changes calculated by Axis Intelligence Research. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
Biotech tripling its deal share in a single year is the standout, and fintech halving is its mirror image. Healthcare and biotech together took 45% of angel deals in 2024 against 30.3% in 2023 — a life-sciences rotation of a scale the venture press largely missed while covering the AI cycle.
At What Stage Do Angels Invest?
Angel allocation to seed and start-up deals reached 59% in 2024, the fifth consecutive year in which seed and start-up was the dominant angel stage. The comparison the Center for Venture Research draws itself is the sharp one: institutional venture capital seed deals fell 16% over the 2023–2024 cycle while angel seed allocation rose.
One caution belongs on the record. The 2024 report restates 2023 seed and start-up allocation as 36% and expansion stage as 16%; the 2023 report published those same figures as 41% and 18%. Axis Intelligence Research carries both readings in the accompanying dataset rather than silently adopting the newer one, and uses each year’s originally published figure in index construction. Where a source revises itself without explanation, the revision is data about the source, not just about the market.
The Angel Market Depth Index (AMDI™)
Four published measures capture different aspects of a functioning angel market: how much capital moves, how many companies get funded, how disciplined the screening is, and how early the money goes. Axis Intelligence Research combines them into a single reading.
AMDI™ (Angel Market Depth Index), methodology 1.0:
AMDI = 100 × ( 0.35 × (capital ÷ $29.1B)
+ 0.30 × (funded ventures ÷ 69,060)
+ 0.20 × (yield rate ÷ 0.25)
+ 0.15 × (seed and start-up deal share) )
Capital and deal-count components are normalised to the 2021 cycle peak. The yield component is normalised to 0.25, the top of the sustainable band the Center for Venture Research itself identifies. The early-stage component enters as a raw share, since a higher seed allocation is by definition a deeper early-stage market.
| Component | Weight | 2024 input | 2024 value | 2023 input | 2023 value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital deployment | 0.35 | $17.9B | 0.615 | $18.6B | 0.639 |
| Deal volume | 0.30 | 55,346 | 0.801 | 54,735 | 0.793 |
| Yield discipline | 0.20 | 22.6% | 0.904 | 24.2% | 0.968 |
| Early-stage allocation | 0.15 | 59% | 0.59 | 41% | 0.41 |
| AMDI reading | 72.5 | 71.7 |
Components sourced from Center for Venture Research full-year reports. Index construction, weights and computation: Axis Intelligence Research, August 18, 2026. The 2024 reading is the baseline.
The 2024 baseline of 72.5 sits 0.8 index points above the back-computed 2023 reading of 71.7, and that is the finding: the angel market got shallower in dollars and deeper in stage during the same year. A capital-only reading would have recorded decline. Weighting stage allocation alongside capital records a rotation.
Weights are editorial judgement, disclosed so anyone can disagree with them and recompute. Capital carries the largest weight because it is the market’s binding constraint; early-stage allocation carries the smallest because it is a mix measure rather than a volume measure. The index does not capture returns, valuations, or the non-visible market of angels who invest outside organised groups and never appear in survey frames.
How Does Angel Capital Compare to the Broader Private Market?
The SEC’s Regulation D offering statistics, updated through the first quarter of 2026, provide the denominator angel figures are almost never set against.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 Q1 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial Form D offerings | 32,554 | 34,553 | 9,918 | SEC |
| Total amount sold | $2,147.6B | $2,391.5B | $767.2B | SEC |
| Median amount sold | $2.2M | $2.5M | $2.1M | SEC |
| Rule 506(b) offerings | — | 30,315 | 8,752 | SEC |
| Rule 506(c) offerings | — | 3,989 | 1,111 | SEC |
| Non-fund issuer capital | — | $273.2B | $84.7B | SEC |
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Regulation D Offerings statistics, last updated June 30, 2026. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
Set the two together for the same year and the proportion is stark. Angel investment of $17.9 billion against $2,147.6 billion in total 2024 Regulation D proceeds gives angels 0.83% of exempt-offering capital — a rounding error in dollar terms, funding the stage at which almost every one of those larger offerings begins.
Rule 506(c), the general-solicitation pathway created to widen private-market access, accounted for 11.5% of 2025 offerings by count. Fourteen years after the JOBS Act, nearly nine in ten Regulation D offerings still run through the quiet 506(b) channel that requires a pre-existing relationship. The plumbing that was supposed to democratise angel access is carrying about one-ninth of the traffic.
Sarah Davis: Follow the median rather than the total. The median Regulation D offering sold $2.5 million in 2025; the median non-fund offering, $1.9 million. The $2,391.5 billion headline is a handful of very large fund raises sitting on top of tens of thousands of ordinary small ones. Angel money lives in that lower distribution, and the aggregate tells you nothing about it.
How Big Is Angel Investing Outside the United States?
Britain publishes something the United States does not: a per-investor count drawn from tax returns rather than surveys. HMRC’s May 2026 EIS and SEIS statistics are accredited official statistics covering the 2024–25 tax year.
| Metric | EIS 2024–25 | SEIS 2024–25 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies raising funds | 3,735 | 2,430 | HMRC |
| Funds raised | £1,575M | £276M | HMRC |
| Change vs prior year | Flat | +14% | HMRC |
| Investors claiming relief | 33,220 | 11,200 | HMRC |
| Average raise per company | £421,687 | £113,580 | Axis Intelligence Research on HMRC data |
| London and South East share | 60% | 66% | HMRC |
Source: HM Revenue & Customs, Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme: 2026, published May 21, 2026. Average raise per company calculated by Axis Intelligence Research. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
The direction of travel diverges by scheme. EIS relief claimants fell 6.9% to 33,220 while SEIS claimants rose 8.8% to 11,200 — 44,420 identified UK angel-scheme investors in total. Against 445,535 active U.S. angels, Axis Intelligence Research finds a ratio of 10.0 U.S. angels per UK scheme investor, though the two counts measure different things: one is survey-derived activity, the other is tax-relief claims, and UK angels investing without claiming relief are invisible to the series.
The forward indicator is buried in HMRC’s Section 5. SEIS advance-assurance applications rose 24% in 2025–26, but the approval rate fell to 76% from 85%. EIS approvals fell to 72% from 76%. More companies are asking; fewer are qualifying. For a founder planning a 2026–27 raise, that is a more actionable number than the investment totals above it.
What Does the Angel and Pre-Seed Market Look Like Right Now?
Survey series lag by eighteen months. Platform data does not. Carta’s State of Pre-Seed report for the second quarter of 2026, published August 13, 2026, covers U.S. startups on its own cap-table platform.
| Metric | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed capital invested | $3.22B | $3.19B | Carta |
| Instruments issued (SAFEs and notes) | 14,825 | 11,500+ | Carta |
| Average instrument size | — | $276,000 | Carta |
| AI share of pre-seed dollars | — | 49% (H1 2026) | Carta |
Source: Carta, State of Pre-Seed: Q2 2026, published August 13, 2026. Carta notes Q2 2026 volume will revise upward as data enters its system. Retrieved August 18, 2026.
Roughly the same money, moving through at least 22% fewer instruments, at a record average size of $276,000 — a 27% year-over-year increase. Across full-year 2025, Carta recorded $10.4 billion across 50,316 instruments, an average of $206,694, and a 13% decline in instrument count against a 1% decline in cash. Crunchbase, PitchBook and other market trackers describe the same concentration pattern in seed rounds; those are aggregators of reported deal data rather than primary registries, and are named here as corroboration only.
The concentration story runs consistently across every independent dataset in this article. Angel dollars per investor down 8.8%. Pre-seed instrument counts down 22% year over year. Regulation D capital up 11.4% while offering counts rose only 6.1%. Fewer, larger cheques at every layer of the early-stage stack.
How Many Jobs Does Angel Investment Support?
The Center for Venture Research reports 4.1 jobs created per angel investment in 2024, down from 4.3 in 2023 and up from 3.4 in 2022. It does not publish a total, so Axis Intelligence Research computes one.
| Year | Jobs per investment | Funded ventures | Jobs attributable | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 4.3 | 54,735 | 235,361 | Axis Intelligence Research on CVR data |
| 2024 | 4.1 | 55,346 | 226,919 | Axis Intelligence Research on CVR data |
Formula: jobs per angel investment × ventures receiving angel funding. Source data: Center for Venture Research. Calculation: Axis Intelligence Research, retrieved August 18, 2026.
Roughly 226,919 jobs in 2024, against $17.9 billion deployed — about $78,882 of angel capital per job created. This is an estimate built on a survey-reported average applied to a survey-reported deal count, and it inherits every property of that survey, including its 13% response rate as last disclosed in the 2023 report.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this article was retrieved from a primary source document during production on August 18, 2026. Five primary organisations supply the underlying data: the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, HM Revenue & Customs, and Carta, with the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances underlying the SEC household estimates. No figure in this article derives from a secondary aggregator.
Formulas. All Axis-calculated figures disclose their inputs and arithmetic inline at the point of use, and again in the method_note column of the accompanying dataset. Every calculation was run twice — once in standard floating-point arithmetic and once in exact rational arithmetic — and both passes agreed to nine decimal places on every derived figure.
ACAR™ construction. Active angel investors (Center for Venture Research, annual) divided by accredited-investor households (SEC, triennial). Because the SEC denominator updates only with the Survey of Consumer Finances, ACAR movements between SCF vintages reflect numerator change alone. The numerator counts individuals and the denominator counts households, making ACAR an upper bound on household-level participation.
AMDI™ construction. Four components, weights 0.35 / 0.30 / 0.20 / 0.15, normalised as disclosed above. The 2024 reading is a baseline; the 2023 reading is back-computed from the same formula and published for context, not as a historical series. Methodology is versioned at 1.0; any change to components or weights will be stated, re-baselined openly, and will not silently rewrite prior readings. The index does not capture returns, exits, valuations, or angel activity outside organised groups.
Scope. U.S. angel market figures rest on survey data with a disclosed 13% response rate and are subject to non-visible-market undercounting — angels investing outside groups are structurally under-represented. UK figures rest on tax-relief claims and exclude angels who do not claim relief. Carta figures cover companies on one cap-table platform and are revised upward over time. Where a source revised its own prior-year figure, both readings appear in the dataset.
Currency. UK figures are reported in pounds sterling as published. No currency conversion was applied, since a converted figure would carry a spot-rate assumption the source does not make.
About This Dataset
Title: Angel Investing Statistics 2026 — Market Size, Investor Participation, Yield Rates, Sector and Stage Allocation, Regulation D Context, and UK Scheme Data
Contents: 187 rows covering U.S. angel market size and deal counts (2021–2024), active investor counts, yield rates by cohort, sector and stage allocation, women and minority participation, SEC accredited-investor household estimates (2019 and 2022) and Regulation D offering statistics (2024–2026 Q1), HMRC EIS and SEIS company, investor and advance-assurance data (2023–24 to 2025–26), Carta pre-seed platform data (2025–2026 Q2), and 56 Axis Intelligence Research calculated rows including ACAR™ and AMDI™ readings with full formulas.
Coverage: United States and United Kingdom, 1983–2026 Q2.
Format: UTF-8 CSV, one observation per row, fourteen columns including source_org, source_document, source_url, retrieved_date, is_primary, axis_calculated and method_note.
License: CC BY 4.0. Free to share and adapt for any purpose with attribution to Axis Intelligence Research.
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research, Davis, S., & Scarlett, M. (2026). Angel investing statistics 2026: Market size, investor counts, yield rates and the activation gap. https://axis-intelligence.com/angel-investing-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research, et al. “Angel Investing Statistics 2026: Market Size, Investor Counts, Yield Rates and the Activation Gap.” Axis Intelligence, 18 Aug. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/angel-investing-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research, Sarah Davis, and Mia Scarlett. “Angel Investing Statistics 2026: Market Size, Investor Counts, Yield Rates and the Activation Gap.” Axis Intelligence, August 18, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/angel-investing-statistics/.
Metric citation: Axis Intelligence Research, ACAR™ 2024 and AMDI™ 2024, August 18, 2026, axis-intelligence.com/angel-investing-statistics/.
Angel Investing: Questions Founders and Investors Actually Ask
Is the angel market shrinking or growing?
Both, depending on the axis. Capital deployed fell 3.1% in 2024 and is down 38.5% from the 2021 peak of $29.1 billion. Active investors rose 5.5% to 445,535 and deal counts rose slightly to 55,346. The market is growing in participants and contracting in dollars, which is why Axis Intelligence Research measures it with a composite index rather than a single figure.
What yield rate should a founder plan around when pitching angels?
22.6%, per the Center for Venture Research’s 2024 reading — roughly 4.4 qualified conversations per funded round, and the second consecutive annual decline. Women-led and minority-owned ventures cleared higher rates in 2024, at 26.7% and 32.4% respectively.
Why is angel data always eighteen months behind?
Because the U.S. series is survey-derived. The Center for Venture Research collects from angel groups and individual angels after year end, and the 2024 full-year report reached UNH’s server under a December 2025 path. Regulatory data moves faster: SEC Regulation D statistics run through 2026 Q1, and Carta platform data through 2026 Q2.
Do angels and venture capital move together?
Not in this cycle. Angel seed and start-up allocation rose to 59% of deals in 2024 while institutional venture capital seed deals fell 16% over the same period, per the Center for Venture Research. Angels stepped toward the stage that VC stepped away from.
How much does a typical angel deploy in a year?
Axis Intelligence Research calculates $40,176 per active angel in 2024, down 8.8% from $44,039 in 2023. This is total market capital divided by active investors, so it is an average across a highly skewed distribution — a small number of angels deploy multiples of it.
Why did women’s share of angel investors fall in 2024?
It fell to 39.1% from 46.7%, a 16.3% relative decline that returns the figure to its 2022 level of 39.5%. The Center for Venture Research does not attribute a cause. The 2023 reading now looks like a spike rather than a trend, which is precisely why single-year demographic readings in a survey with a 13% response rate warrant a second data point before being treated as directional.
Does the accredited investor rule still restrict who can be an angel?
Less than it was designed to. The $1 million net worth and $200,000 income thresholds have never been indexed to inflation, and the SEC estimates qualifying households grew from 1.51 million in 1983 to 24.3 million in 2022 — a 16.1× expansion Axis Intelligence Research computes from the SEC’s own figures. The binding constraint on angel participation is no longer eligibility. At an ACAR of 1.83%, it is deal access.
What is the fastest-moving signal in angel investing right now?
Advance-assurance approval rates in the UK, which are published a full year ahead of the investment totals. SEIS applications rose 24% in 2025–26 while approvals fell to 76% from 85%; EIS approvals fell to 72% from 76%. Rising demand meeting a tightening qualification gate is visible there before it appears anywhere in the investment data.