Startup Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett | Last updated: August 6, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
U.S. business applications hit 531,423 in June 2026, the strongest June on record and 23.2% above June 2024 — while applications signalling an intent to hire fell 21.8% over the same two years. Globally, startups raised a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, but two companies took 43% of it. Record formation. Record capital. Narrowing access.
Quick Answer
Startup activity in 2026 is running at record volume on both sides of the ledger. The U.S. Census Bureau recorded 531,423 seasonally adjusted business applications in June 2026, up 1.1% on the month and 23.2% above June 2024. Globally, venture funding reached $510 billion in the first half of 2026 — more than the $440 billion invested in all of 2025 — with OpenAI and Anthropic alone absorbing $217 billion, or 43% of the total.
The survival math has not moved with the money. Federal cohort data shows 77.9% of new U.S. establishments survive their first year and 51.4% reach year five. According to Axis Intelligence Research, the survival half-life of a U.S. business establishment is 5.3 years — the point at which half a founding cohort has closed.
And access is tightening even as capital expands. The Axis Startup Funding Access Index (SFAI™) reads 46.7 for Q2 2026, down 13.8 points from 60.5 in Q2 2025 — the sharpest one-year narrowing in the series.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, U.S. business applications indicating planned wages fell 21.8% between June 2024 and June 2026 — from 45,668 to 35,695 — while total applications rose 23.2%, computed from two U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics releases.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Employer Formation Intensity (EFI™) fell from 10.59% to 6.72% over those same two years, meaning fewer than seven in every hundred new U.S. business applications now carry a planned first-payroll date.
- Global venture funding reached $510 billion in H1 2026, with $205 billion in Q2 2026 across more than 5,000 startups, per Crunchbase data published July 2, 2026.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, 10 of the world’s 1,840 unicorns — 0.54% of the population — hold 34.9% of aggregate unicorn value, computed from the Crunchbase Unicorn Board reading of $8.9 trillion on August 5, 2026.
- Just 16% of U.S. startups that raised a $1 million-plus seed round in 2024 have progressed to a later stage or exited, down from a historical graduation rate of 55% or higher through 2020, per Crunchbase data published May 26, 2026.
How Many Startups Are Launched Each Year?
The most current, verifiable measure of U.S. startup formation is the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics, built from IRS Form SS-4 employer identification number filings. The June 2026 release, published July 9, 2026, is the reference point for every formation figure on this page.
| Series (seasonally adjusted) | June 2026 | June 2024 | 2-year change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business applications (total) | 531,423 | 431,246 | +23.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| High-propensity applications | 149,714 | 138,678 | +8.0% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Applications with planned wages | 35,695 | 45,668 | −21.8% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Applications from corporations | 43,346 | 47,613 | −9.0% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Projected formations within 4 quarters | 29,741 | 28,166 | +5.6% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Projected formations within 8 quarters | 41,042 | 38,666 | +6.1% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
Two-year change columns calculated by Axis Intelligence Research from the Census Bureau’s June 2026 and June 2024 monthly releases.
The headline is a record. The composition is not. Total applications grew almost three times faster than the high-propensity subseries the Census Bureau flags as likely to become payroll businesses, and the two subseries most tightly linked to hiring — planned wages and corporate filings — both fell in absolute terms.
That gap is why we publish a ratio rather than a count.
Employer Formation Intensity (EFI™)
EFI™ (Employer Formation Intensity) is the share of total business applications that indicate a first wages-paid date on IRS Form SS-4 — the single strongest documented predictor that an application becomes a business with payroll.
EFI = (Business Applications with Planned Wages ÷ Total Business Applications) × 100 June 2024: (45,668 ÷ 431,246) × 100 = 10.59% June 2026: (35,695 ÷ 531,423) × 100 = 6.72%
According to Axis Intelligence Research, EFI fell 3.87 percentage points in two years, a relative decline of 36.6%. Both inputs are seasonally adjusted, drawn from the same calendar month two years apart, and published by the same federal series — so the movement is not a seasonal artifact or a definitional change.
Read plainly: the formation boom is real, and it is increasingly a boom in entities that do not plan to hire anyone. Two adjacent ratios move the same direction. Corporate-form applications fell from 11.04% of the total to 8.16%, and the Census Bureau’s own projected four-quarter conversion rate slipped from 6.53% to 5.60%.
Which Industries Are Producing the Most New Businesses?
No published source breaks out multi-year change by NAICS sector from the BFS monthly industry tables. The table below does, comparing the June 2026 release against the June 2024 release.
| Industry (NAICS) | June 2024 | June 2026 | 2-year change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Information (51) | 7,606 | 12,999 | +70.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Professional, scientific & technical services (54) | 57,855 | 82,990 | +43.4% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Educational services (61) | 6,082 | 8,345 | +37.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Management of companies (55) | 4,762 | 6,517 | +36.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Other services (81) | 34,646 | 44,314 | +27.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Accommodation & food services (72) | 22,795 | 28,777 | +26.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Real estate & rental (53) | 21,287 | 26,565 | +24.8% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Manufacturing (31–33) | 5,975 | 7,424 | +24.3% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Administrative & support (56) | 30,293 | 36,909 | +21.8% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Health care & social assistance (62) | 27,742 | 33,436 | +20.5% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Arts & entertainment (71) | 12,684 | 15,204 | +19.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Retail trade (44–45) | 82,049 | 97,096 | +18.3% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Transportation & warehousing (48–49) | 29,344 | 34,512 | +17.6% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Mining (21) | 474 | 554 | +16.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Construction (23) | 43,496 | 48,933 | +12.5% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Agriculture (11) | 3,413 | 3,794 | +11.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Finance & insurance (52) | 18,719 | 19,512 | +4.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Wholesale trade (42) | 9,023 | 9,061 | +0.4% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Utilities (22) | 655 | 610 | −6.9% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
| Total | 431,246 | 531,423 | +23.2% | U.S. Census Bureau BFS |
Percentage changes calculated by Axis Intelligence Research. Utilities (22) is the one sector the Census Bureau does not seasonally adjust.
Mia Scarlett, Business & Entrepreneurship: Information is the sector to watch, and not because it is large — 12,999 applications in a month is a rounding error next to retail’s 97,096. It is because Information grew 70.9% in two years while wholesale trade grew 0.4%. Software, data services and content sit in NAICS 51. That is where the AI-tooling wave shows up in the federal formation series before it shows up in anyone’s revenue. Professional services at +43.4% tells the adjacent story: a large share of new “businesses” in this cycle are one person, a laptop, and a consulting agreement. The spread between the fastest and slowest sectors is 78 points. The average conceals the entire story.
What Percentage of Startups Fail?
The claim that 90% of businesses fail in year one appears in no federal dataset. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks every establishment cohort opened since March 1994 and records how many are still operating each subsequent March, in Table 7 of its Business Employment Dynamics establishment age and survival series.
| Years since opening | Cohort (year ended) | Survival rate at March 2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | March 2024 | 77.9% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 2 years | March 2023 | 65.9% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 3 years | March 2022 | 56.3% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 4 years | March 2021 | 52.4% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 5 years | March 2020 | 51.4% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 6 years | March 2019 | 46.8% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
| 10 years | March 2015 | 34.7% | BLS Business Employment Dynamics |
So roughly 22 in 100 close within twelve months, about half are gone by year five, and two thirds are gone by year ten. Failure is a decade-long erosion, not a first-year cliff — and any business plan, valuation model or acquisition thesis built on the folklore number starts from a false premise.
The Survival Half-Life (SHL)
A cohort curve is hard to quote. A half-life is not.
SHL (Survival Half-Life) is the elapsed time from opening at which exactly 50% of a founding cohort is still operating, obtained by linear interpolation between the two published annual readings that bracket 50%.
SHL = t₅ + [(S₅ − 50) ÷ (S₅ − S₆)] Using the cohort opened in the year ended March 2019: S₅ = 51.5% (March 2024), S₆ = 46.8% (March 2025) SHL = 5 + [(51.5 − 50) ÷ (51.5 − 46.8)] = 5 + (1.5 ÷ 4.7) = 5.32 years
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the survival half-life of a U.S. private-sector establishment is 5.3 years, as of the March 2025 observation. This is an interpolated estimate between annual observations, not a directly measured value; the underlying survival rates are administrative counts and are not subject to sampling error.
One number worth holding next to it: the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy has for two decades summarised federal data as roughly half of new employer firms reaching year five. The 2020 cohort came in at 51.4%. Across a financial crisis, a pandemic, a zero-rate era and a rate-hiking cycle, the five-year survival rate has barely moved. Whatever changed in the last twenty-five years, it was not the odds.
Startups Are Opening Smaller
The BLS series also records employment at opening. Establishments opened in the year ended March 1994 averaged 7.2 employees. The cohort opened in the year ended March 2025 averaged 3.6 — and that cohort numbered 980,333 establishments, against 1,065,228 for the record cohort opened in the year ended March 2022.
Mia Scarlett: Half the headcount per opening, across three decades, is the number that reframes the formation boom. More businesses are being started and each one is starting smaller. That is consistent with the EFI reading, consistent with the planned-wages decline, and consistent with what the Information and professional-services sectors are producing. A record count of new firms and a falling count of new jobs per firm are the same fact viewed twice.
How Much Venture Capital Are Startups Raising in 2026?
Global venture funding reached $510 billion in the first half of 2026, surpassing the $440 billion invested across all of 2025 and the previous half-year peak of $375 billion set in H2 2021, per Crunchbase data published July 2, 2026.
| Metric | Q2 2026 | Q2 2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global venture funding | $205B | $91B | Crunchbase |
| Companies funded | 5,000+ | not reported | Crunchbase |
| Largest single round | Anthropic, $65B | Scale AI, $14.3B | Crunchbase |
| AI share of funding | >70% | ~44% | Crunchbase |
| U.S. share of funding | ~67% | ~66% | Crunchbase |
| Late-stage funding | $134B | $55B | Crunchbase |
| Global seed funding | $12B | $10.3B | Crunchbase |
| Rounds of $1B or more | 16 rounds, $108.6B | 16 rounds of $500M+ | Crunchbase |
| Acquisitions at $1B or more | 24, totalling $113B | 18 | Crunchbase |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, average funding per funded company reached $41.0 million in Q2 2026 ($205B ÷ 5,000+ companies). Remove Anthropic’s single round and the same arithmetic yields $28.0 million across the remaining companies — a 32% swing produced by one line item.
Momentum has continued past the quarter boundary. July 2026 brought $65 billion in global startup funding and 14 billion-dollar rounds, the highest monthly count on record, per Crunchbase, led by a $10 billion investment in Blue Origin.
Which Startups Actually Get Funded? The Startup Funding Access Index
Aggregate venture totals answer the wrong question for anyone building a company. Whether $205 billion or $91 billion entered the market matters far less to a founder than whether that capital was reachable. The Startup Funding Access Index (SFAI™) measures the second thing.
SFAI™ is a 0–100 quarterly reading of how broadly global venture capital is distributed across companies, sectors, geographies and stages. Higher is broader; lower is narrower. Each of the four components is expressed as the complement of a concentration share, so every component moves in the same direction as access.
| Component | Weight | Definition | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company dispersion | 40% | 100 − (largest single recipient’s share of quarterly funding) | 84.3 | 68.3 |
| Sector breadth | 25% | 100 − (AI share of quarterly funding) | 56.0 | 30.0 |
| Geographic breadth | 20% | 100 − (U.S. share of quarterly funding) | 34.1 | 33.3 |
| Stage balance | 15% | 100 − (late-stage share of quarterly funding) | 39.6 | 34.6 |
| SFAI™ reading | 100% | Weighted sum | 60.5 | 46.7 |
SFAI = 0.40·C₁ + 0.25·C₂ + 0.20·C₃ + 0.15·C₄ Q2 2026 = (0.40 × 68.3) + (0.25 × 30.0) + (0.20 × 33.3) + (0.15 × 34.6) = 27.32 + 7.50 + 6.66 + 5.19 = 46.7
Component inputs, all from Crunchbase quarterly global reports: Q2 2026 — Anthropic $65B of $205B (31.7%); AI ≥70%; U.S. two-thirds (66.7%); late stage $134B of $205B (65.4%). Q2 2025 — Scale AI $14.3B of $91B (15.7%); AI $40B of $91B (44.0%); U.S. $60B of $91B (65.9%); late stage $55B of $91B (60.4%).
According to Axis Intelligence Research, SFAI fell from 60.5 in Q2 2025 to 46.7 in Q2 2026, a 13.8-point narrowing. Company dispersion contributed 6.4 points of that decline and sector breadth 6.5 points; geography and stage together contributed under 1 point. Access narrowed because of who and what got funded, not where.
Weights are set once and held. Company dispersion carries the heaviest weight because a single recipient’s share is the most direct measure of whether the marginal dollar was reachable by anyone else. Sector breadth follows because a sector-locked market redirects capital away from every founder outside it. Geography and stage carry lower weights because both have been structurally stable for a decade and add little quarter-to-quarter signal.
What SFAI does not capture: it is a dollar-weighted measure, so it says nothing about deal counts, and a quarter in which many small rounds close alongside one enormous one will still register as narrow. It uses one commercial dataset for all components by design — mixing providers with different round-inclusion rules would make the components incomparable. And the Q2 2026 AI component uses 70.0, the reported floor of a “>70%” disclosure, which makes this reading conservative rather than aggressive.
Mia Scarlett: The interesting property of this index is that it moves opposite to the headline. Funding more than doubled year over year and access fell by nearly a quarter. Both statements come from the same four figures. A founder reading “$510 billion, record half-year” and concluding the market has opened up is reading the aggregate and missing the distribution — which is the oldest mistake in venture reporting and the one this index exists to correct.
How Hard Is It to Raise a Seed Round or a Series A in 2026?
Seed rounds are larger than they have ever been and lead somewhere less often than they ever have. Both facts come from the same Crunchbase analysis of U.S. seed cohorts published May 26, 2026.
| Metric | Reading | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Median U.S. seed round, 2025 | ~$3M (3× the 2018 median) | Crunchbase |
| Upper-quartile U.S. seed round, 2025 | ~$5.6M | Crunchbase |
| Lower-quartile U.S. seed round, 2025 | ~$1M | Crunchbase |
| Median U.S. Series A, 2025 | $15M | Crunchbase |
| Upper / lower quartile Series A, 2025 | $25M / $7M | Crunchbase |
| Time from seed to Series A | more than 2 years | Crunchbase |
| Seed-to-next-stage graduation, pre-2021 cohorts | 55% or higher | Crunchbase |
| Seed-to-next-stage graduation, 2023 cohort | 24% | Crunchbase |
| Seed-to-next-stage graduation, 2024 cohort | 16% | Crunchbase |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the seed-to-next-stage graduation rate has fallen by 39 percentage points from its pre-2021 level — a relative decline of 71% — while the median seed cheque tripled from 2018. Of every 100 companies raising a $1 million-plus seed round today, 16 reach a further round or an exit, against 55 or more a decade ago.
The revenue bar moved with it. Uncork Capital managing partner Andy McLoughlin, speaking to Crunchbase News, described the Series A threshold as no longer $1 million in annual recurring revenue but $2 million to $4 million in the AI era. Note the compounding effect: a larger seed cheque, a longer runway, a higher revenue bar and a lower graduation rate are four independent pressures pointing the same way.
Seed concentration mirrors the top of the market. Of the $12 billion in global seed funding in Q2 2026, $2.8 billion (23.3%) went to seed rounds of $100 million or more, while $5 billion (41.7%) went to rounds of $10 million or under — Axis Intelligence Research calculations from the Crunchbase Q2 2026 global report.
How Many Unicorns Are There in 2026?
The Crunchbase Unicorn Board listed 1,840 private companies valued at $1 billion or more as of August 5, 2026, with $8.9 trillion in aggregate post-money value against $1.54 trillion in total equity raised.
| Unicorn metric | Reading | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Companies on the board | 1,840 | Crunchbase Unicorn Board |
| Aggregate post-money value | $8.9T | Crunchbase Unicorn Board |
| Aggregate equity raised | $1.54T | Crunchbase Unicorn Board |
| Mean valuation per unicorn | $4.84B | Axis Intelligence Research |
| Aggregate value ÷ capital raised | 5.78× | Axis Intelligence Research |
| Top 2 companies’ share of value | 20.4% | Axis Intelligence Research |
| Top 10 companies’ share of value | 34.9% | Axis Intelligence Research |
The five most valuable private companies on the board were Anthropic ($965B post-money, $121B raised), OpenAI ($852B, $181B), ByteDance ($480B), Stripe ($159B) and Ant Group ($150B).
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the mean unicorn is valued at $4.84 billion, but 10 companies — 0.54% of the population — account for 34.9% of aggregate unicorn value. The mean is therefore close to useless as a description of a typical unicorn; the median company on the board sits an order of magnitude below it.
The 5.78× aggregate value-to-capital multiple is worth reading with care. It is not a return: post-money valuations are marks from the most recent priced round, not realised proceeds, and the two frontier labs at the top of the board carry marks set within the last two quarters.
Where Are Startups Raising Money?
| Region | Q2 2026 funding | Notable detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | $137.2B (H1: $392B) | ~80% of Q2 investment went to AI-focused startups | Crunchbase |
| Asia | $42.8B | China $30B, up 424% year over year; AI took >60% of Asian funding | Crunchbase |
| Europe | $24B | Strongest quarter in four years; U.K. >$10B | Crunchbase |
North American startups raised $392 billion in H1 2026, per Crunchbase. Asia’s $42.8 billion was its highest quarterly total in more than three years, with deal counts hitting a multiyear low in the same quarter — the concentration pattern reproducing itself regionally. Europe’s $24 billion was its strongest quarter in four years, with four billion-dollar rounds accounting for a quarter of all regional investment.
Are Startups Exiting Again?
After three years of a closed exit window, Q2 2026 was the strongest quarter for venture-backed liquidity since 2021.
- 32 companies went public at valuations above $1 billion in Q2 2026.
- 24 companies were acquired at $1 billion or more, totalling $113 billion — the highest quarterly acquisition value on record.
- SpaceX listed at a $1.77 trillion valuation, raising $75 billion, the largest IPO ever for a venture-backed company; days later it agreed to acquire Anysphere, maker of Cursor, for $60 billion, the largest startup acquisition on record.
Liquidity matters more than the headline suggests. Exits are what recycle capital back to limited partners and, eventually, back to the seed stage where the graduation rate has collapsed. A reopened exit market is the single most plausible mechanism by which the SFAI reading recovers.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure on this page was retrieved from a primary source document during production between August 5 and August 6, 2026, and logged with its URL and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. Formation and survival data come from two U.S. federal statistical programmes: the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics (June 2026 release, published July 9, 2026; and the June 2024 release, published July 11, 2024) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Business Employment Dynamics establishment age and survival tables (Table 7, national total private, observed through March 2025). Venture, unicorn and exit data come from Crunchbase quarterly global reports and the Crunchbase Unicorn Board, which are the originating publisher of that dataset rather than a summary of someone else’s.
Formulas. EFI™ = applications with planned wages ÷ total business applications, both seasonally adjusted, same calendar month. SHL = t₅ + [(S₅ − 50) ÷ (S₅ − S₆)], applied to the BLS cohort opened in the year ended March 2019. SFAI™ = 0.40·(100 − largest-recipient share) + 0.25·(100 − AI share) + 0.20·(100 − U.S. share) + 0.15·(100 − late-stage share), all shares expressed as percentages of quarterly global venture funding. All component inputs and intermediate arithmetic are disclosed inline in the sections above and reproduced as rows in the CSV.
Scope and caveats. Census business applications count EIN filings, not operating businesses; a filing may become a business, a holding entity, or nothing. Projected business formations are model outputs, not observed counts — the Census Bureau states that actual formation data currently runs only through the fourth quarter of 2023. BLS survival data tracks establishments rather than firms, so a multi-location company closing one site registers as an establishment exit. Crunchbase seed totals rise after a quarter closes as rounds are added retroactively, so recent seed figures are floors.
Two documented source discrepancies. First, the Crunchbase Q2 2026 global report lists an early-stage total that exceeds the reported total for the quarter; we treated that as a typographical error and excluded early-stage funding from this analysis rather than reconciling it. Second, that same report characterises the year-ago AI share as “just under 50%”, while the contemporaneous Q2 2025 report gives $40 billion of $91 billion (44.0%). The SFAI Q2 2025 component uses the contemporaneous 44.0% figure, which is computed from two published dollar values rather than a characterisation. Both choices make the year-over-year SFAI decline smaller than the alternatives would.
A figure we could not verify and therefore did not publish. Secondary sources circulate at least three different totals for U.S. business applications in calendar year 2025 — 5.62 million, 5,671,836 and 5.48 million. The Census Bureau does not publish an annual applications total in its monthly release, and we were unable to trace any of the three to a primary Census document. No annual total appears anywhere on this page. Monthly seasonally adjusted figures, which are directly published, are used throughout instead.
About This Dataset
Dataset: Startup Statistics 2026 — Formation, Survival, Funding and Exit Data
Publisher: Axis Intelligence Research
Coverage: United States (formation, survival), global (venture funding, unicorns, exits)
Temporal coverage: March 1994 – August 2026
Format: CSV, UTF-8, one row per observation with full provenance columns
License: CC BY 4.0
Every number in the prose above exists as a row in the CSV with its value, unit, as-of date, source organisation, source document, source URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag and method note. Rows marked axis_calculated = yes carry a method note pointing to the formula disclosed in the section above.
Updates are relevance-driven, not calendar-driven. This page is revised when the underlying series move, not on a schedule.
How to cite
APA — Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Startup statistics 2026: Formation, failure, funding and survival data. https://axis-intelligence.com/startup-statistics/
MLA — Axis Intelligence Research. “Startup Statistics 2026: Formation, Failure, Funding and Survival Data.” Axis Intelligence, 6 Aug. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/startup-statistics/.
Chicago — Axis Intelligence Research. “Startup Statistics 2026: Formation, Failure, Funding and Survival Data.” Axis Intelligence, August 6, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/startup-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a business application the same thing as a startup?
No, and conflating them is the most common error in startup statistics. A business application is an IRS Form SS-4 filing for an employer identification number. Some become operating companies, some become holding vehicles or single-property LLCs, and some never transact. The Census Bureau’s high-propensity subseries exists precisely to separate the two: of 531,423 total applications in June 2026, 149,714 carried high-propensity markers and 35,695 indicated a planned first-payroll date.
What does the Employer Formation Intensity metric tell a founder that the headline count does not?
It tells you what kind of formation boom you are in. Total applications rose 23.2% between June 2024 and June 2026 while EFI fell from 10.59% to 6.72%, meaning the growth came almost entirely from entities with no stated intent to hire. If you are hiring, competing for early employees, or selling into newly formed businesses, the addressable population of payroll employers grew far more slowly than the headline suggests.
Why is the survival half-life 5.3 years when the five-year survival rate is 51.4%?
They measure different things. The 51.4% is a single point on the curve — the share of the cohort opened in the year ended March 2020 still operating five years later. The half-life is the moment the curve crosses 50%, which lands between the fifth and sixth annual observations. Since the fifth-year reading sits just above 50%, the crossing point falls shortly after year five.
Do venture-backed startups fail at the same rate as ordinary businesses?
The two populations are not comparable and no single federal dataset covers both. BLS survival tracks establishments with payroll across the whole private sector. Venture-backed failure is better approximated by graduation data: 16% of companies raising a $1 million-plus seed round in 2024 have progressed to a later stage or exit. Note that not graduating is not the same as failing — a company can operate profitably without raising again.
Why did startup funding hit a record while funding access fell?
Because they measure different quantities. Aggregate funding measures dollars entering the market; SFAI measures how those dollars were distributed. In Q2 2026, one company took 31.7% of global venture funding and AI-focused companies took more than 70% of it. Dollars rose and reachability fell, which is why both readings can be accurate simultaneously.
What counts as a unicorn, and how many are there?
A unicorn is a private company with a post-money valuation of $1 billion or more from a disclosed funding round. The Crunchbase Unicorn Board listed 1,840 as of August 5, 2026, worth $8.9 trillion in aggregate. Because valuations are marks from the most recent priced round rather than realised value, the board reflects the last time each company raised, not what it would fetch today.
How long does it take to raise a Series A after a seed round?
More than two years for U.S. startups since 2023, per Crunchbase cohort data, up from a timeline that briefly compressed by roughly six months during the 2021–2022 peak. The revenue bar rose alongside the timeline: investors now look for $2 million to $4 million in annual recurring revenue rather than the $1 million benchmark that prevailed before the AI cycle.
Which industries are producing the fastest-growing number of new US businesses?
Information (NAICS 51) leads by a wide margin at +70.9% over two years, followed by professional, scientific and technical services at +43.4% and educational services at +37.2%. At the other end, wholesale trade grew 0.4% and utilities declined 6.9%. The 78-point spread between fastest and slowest means sector-level formation data is far more useful than the national total for anyone sizing a market.
Is the startup exit market open again?
By dollar volume, yes. Q2 2026 recorded 32 IPOs above $1 billion and 24 acquisitions at $1 billion or more totalling $113 billion, the highest quarterly acquisition value on record. Two SpaceX transactions dominate both columns, so the underlying breadth is thinner than the totals imply — but the window is demonstrably open in a way it was not between 2022 and 2025.
Where can I download the underlying data?
The full dataset ships as a CC BY 4.0 CSV linked in the “About This Dataset” section above, with one row per observation and complete source provenance including URLs and retrieval dates. Attribution to Axis Intelligence Research is required; commercial reuse is permitted.
Related Axis Intelligence Research
- Small Business Statistics 2026
- Small Business Failure Rate Statistics
- AI Investment Statistics — global AI investment totals and the AICI™ concentration index, the AI-sector counterpart to the market-wide SFAI™ reading on this page
- AI Statistics — adoption, market size and model data behind the sector absorbing 70% of venture dollars
Data licensed CC BY 4.0. Cite as: Axis Intelligence Research, Startup Statistics 2026.