The San Francisco Bay Area, the world’s startup capital, dominated expansion-stage exits by value in the first half of 2026. But Dallas-Fort Worth — not traditional startup hubs like New York City, Boston and Austin — claimed the No. 2 spot.

A new report from professional services firm Deloitte showed 24 expansion-stage exits in DFW during the first half of this year yielded $55.9 billion. That compares with 54 expansion-stage exits in all of 2025 that generated $10.9 billion.

Translation: A smaller number of expansion-stage exits in DFW during the first half of 2026 generated 413% more value.

The Bay Area produced more than $300 billion across 108 exits in the first half of this year. That’s more than four times the total for all of 2025, the report said.

Deloitte based its findings on data from PitchBook.

‘Outsized impact’

An expansion-stage exit typically happens at a company that goes beyond the startup stage and shifts into its growth phase. This sort of liquidity exit could be an IPO, acquisition or majority-stakeholder buyout, for example.

“In Dallas-Fort Worth, a small number of very large transactions had an outsized impact, showing investors’ interest in companies operating in attractive long-term areas such as industrials, energy and power infrastructure, fintech and life sciences,” Will Braeutigam, U.S. capital markets transactions leader and accounting advisory offering leader at Deloitte, told Dallas Innovates.

Behind the numbers

Braeutigam said the average size of an expansion-stage exit in DFW rose from roughly $200 million last year to more than $2 billion in the first half of this year.

“The surge is consistent with what we are seeing nationally,” he said. “Investors and buyers are demonstrating a clear flight to quality — placing large-scale bets on mature, high-conviction companies with differentiated market positions and clear paths to durable profitability.”

DFW’s $55.9 billion in first-half exits far eclipsed the region’s record-setting annual total of $29.1 billion in 2021, Braeutigam said. The Deloitte report didn’t contain any specifics about the exits.

North Texas’ numbers reflect a “broader national recovery” in expansion-stage liquidity, he said. The value of U.S. expansion-stage exits climbed to $2.26 trillion in the first half of this year, more than five times the total for all of 2025, the report showed.

What’s ahead?

Although DFW’s handful of megadeals accelerated the record-high haul in the first half of 2026, underlying conditions driving them represent an “enduring trend,” Braeutigam said.

Private equity firms and strategic acquirers have piled up capital that needs to be allocated, he said, and high-dollar merger-and-acquisition activity “is resetting valuation benchmarks across the market.” A strategic acquirer buys a company in the same sector or a related one to create long-term value.

Even more exits expected

The volume of DFW expansion-stage exits is poised to grow.

Many North Texas companies sat on the sidelines for the past two years to strengthen internal controls and governance, Braeutigam said in late September. Now, he said, they’d like to test the IPO market in the next six to nine months. However, a hoped-for boom in IPOs this fall may be a bust. Ring maker Oura recently postponed its offering, and companies like Claude.ai owner Anthropic have changed their IPOs timelines.

One potential candidate: Dallas-based Blockchain.com Group Holdings. In May, the cryptocurrency company confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Blockchain.com is targeting a $4 billion to $6 billion valuation in its pending $500 million IPO, Bloomberg reported.

Going forward, some North Texas IPOs might launch on the Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange. Traditionally, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have handled the vast majority of IPOs in the U.S.

‘Positive momentum’

Braeutigam said he expects “positive momentum” in DFW and U.S. expansion-stage exits to continue through the end of this year.

“This is particularly true for the key sectors — such as industrials, energy infrastructure and fintech — that are heavily represented within the Dallas-Fort Worth marketplace,” he said.