Venture capital funding just blew past 2025 by 53% — here's why that's good for you Ethan Wolff-Mann · Senior Editor Thu, October 8, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT 2 min read ^GSPC -0.22% For some investors, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) in the 7,800s merits a pat on the back. Congratulations to you for sticking it out through a litany of crises and for staying invested and focused on the long run.
And, most importantly, you might think, for putting money into the stock market a long time ago.
Perhaps. That's the first part of the old adage about trees: "The best time to plant a tree is decades ago."
But the punchline, "the second-best time is right now," also applies to the stock market — and DataTrek's Jessica Rabe has the receipts.
By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Subscribe Investing into an all-time high takes a lot of guts, as you and your money are quite literally venturing into the unknown, and there's always a part of every investor who can't help but wonder if "this time is different," especially given the stock market's concentration. Not just the winners and losers, but the entire arc of the US economy. Perhaps one thinks of Rome.
But Rabe offered comfort for this thinking that goes beyond "stocks usually go up over time," though we'll take the opportunity to note that they do.
Global venture capital funding so far this year, Rabe noted, has already blown by 2025's levels by 53% in the first three quarters, according to Crunchbase. Good for the rich accredited investors who can get in early, sure. But also good for literally everyone who has hopes for S&P 10,000.
Go deeper with AlphaSpace 7,801.77 -17.16 (-0.22%) At close: October 7 at 4:55:18 PM EDT "Venture capital effectively serves as a free R&D engine for stock investors," Rabe wrote. "VCs do the hard work of identifying, funding, nurturing, and scaling thousands of potentially disruptive companies."
Most will fail, and that's why it's probably good that most of us can't just invest in them. As you can guess, a huge chunk of these private big swings on ideas is AI-based, a kind of market concentration in its own right.
But this corporate petri dish treats risk and failure as the cost of doing business. The ones that don't fail may become the next Nvidia (NVDA) or Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), set to dominate markets and deliver returns.
"That innovation pipeline is one of the underappreciated strengths of US capital markets," Rabe added.
At the end of the day, that's the comfort investors have when investing into a record high. As Rabe put it, "That deep pipeline of disruptive, US-based companies reinforces our long-term bullish view on US equities."
Ethan Wolff-Mann is a Senior Editor at Yahoo Finance, running newsletters. Follow him on X @ewolffmann.
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