Dallas-Fort Worth’s venture capital haul in the first nine months of 2026 fell almost 10% short of the same period last year, a new report shows.

On a positive note, though, the third quarter of this year was the fifth-best recorded in PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor’s dataset, which dates back to 2016.

DFW startups raised $962.5 million across 52 VC deals in this year’s third quarter, the latest PitchBook-NVCA report shows. That’s more than double the second-quarter total of $448.4 million across 66 deals.

The $962.5 million figure brought DFW’s nine-month total for 2026 to nearly $1.73 billion, down from a little over $1.9 billion during the same period in 2025.

DFW’s highest quarterly total recorded by the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor came in the second quarter of 2022 — $2.21 billion across 76 deals — amid the pandemic-era VC boom. The three other DFW quarterly highs that preceded the Q3 2026 total happened in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Nationwide, VC deals in the first three quarters of 2026 totaled a record $515.8 billion across roughly 14,200 deals. That total is roughly 44% above the previous record — 2021’s full-year figure of $357.9 billion.

‘City on the rise’

PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor doesn’t disclose individual deals that make up its reports, but some of the largest rounds announced by North Texas companies this year include:

• Dallas-based Island, $400 million
• Dallas-based Verily, $300 million
• Frisco-based Mazama Energy, $135 million
• Dallas-based Perry Weather, $110 million
• Dallas-based Cardinal Data Power, about $70 million

Such deals are happening amid growth in the region’s startup sector.

In Startup Genome’s 2026 ranking of the world’s top startup ecosystems, Dallas appeared at No. 27, up 11 spots from the previous year. Startup Genome said this year’s higher ranking reflected the Dallas ecosystem’s growing strength and increasing startup activity.

Startup Genome valued Dallas’ startup ecosystem at $51 billion, based on the value of exits and startups from the second half of 2023 through 2025. The research organization pegged Dallas’ early-stage funding at $1.1 billion during that period. Also, exits from 2021 through 2025 totaled $23 billion, about three times the global average.

In June, Luisa del Rosal, the new executive director of the Economic Club of Dallas, called Big D “a city on the rise — a magnet for capital, talent and ideas.”

Disruptive force

Although it apparently hasn’t backed any DFW startups, Dallas-based VC firm Disruptive is a major force in the startup sphere. The tech-focused firm relocated in 2024 from Austin to Dallas. One of the potential draws: DFW’s defense sector, which the firm has targeted for investments.

Disruptive made a splash this week when The Wall Street Journal reported the firm is raising up to $10 billion for a “megafund.” The Journal said  Disruptive has already secured $7.5 billion in commitments. The firm plans to invest the fresh capital in roughly 10 late-stage startups over the next two years.

‘Opportune time’ for ecosystems

In a LinkedIn post published in June, Jonathan Ortmans, president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, said this is an “opportune time” for innovation ecosystems in Dallas and elsewhere.

Startup founders “should continue to be disruptive but not let a comfortable home market become the excuse that keeps them local, choosing a stage that matches their ambition,” Ortmans wrote.

“Their investors should continue to back those founders the consensus has overlooked across borders. Their policymakers should continue to remove the barriers through timely regulation and programs and use AI to ruthlessly measure the results real time,” he said. “And the entrepreneurial support organizations and ecosystem leaders need to think and connect globally.”