Startup Statistics 2026

Business Applications for August 2026, adjusted for seasonal variation, were 531,728, a decrease of 7.8 percent compared to July 2026.

High-Propensity 145,387 -4.1%°

With Planned Wages 34,263 -1.9%°

In other words, the Census Bureau is projecting that 28,501 new business startups with payroll tax liabilities will form within 4 quarters of application from all the business applications filed during August 2026.

The rate of new entrepreneurs in 2025 was 0.36 percent, meaning that an average of 360 out of every 100,000 adults became new entrepreneurs in a given month in the United States.

The opportunity share of new entrepreneurs increased to 83.3 percent in 2025 from its low of 69.8 percent in 2020, but remained lower than its pre-pandemic level of 86.9 percent in 2019.

The United States is home to 36.2 million small businesses.

The owners of 29.8 million of those businesses have no employees.

March 2026 969,316 3,463,067 100.0 _ 3.6

March 2026 770,720 3,494,942 78.9 78.9 4.5

March 2026 396,316 2,980,047 47.2 90.3 7.5

March 2026 250,661 2,735,595 34.2 92.9 10.9

The startup early survival rate was 77.9 percent in 2025, which is slightly lower than the previous year and lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The five-year survival rate for UK businesses born in 2019 is 38.4%

The region with the highest five-year survival rate was the South West, at 43.5%.

Enterprises created between 2019 and 2023 and still active in 2024 ( survived enterprises ) accounted for 29% of all active enterprises in the business economy.

Through the first three quarters of 2026, US VC deal value reached $515.8 billion across an estimated 14,199 deals, already the highest total in our dataset and roughly 44% above the prior record, 2021’s full-year figure of $357.9 billion.

Q3 2026 deal value fell to $98.4 billion, down roughly 40% from the prior quarter, even though deal activity itself remained historically robust: An estimated 5,012 deals closed during the quarter, the second-most of any quarter in our dataset

AI has accounted for 82.7% of total deal value for the year, the highest annual share in our dataset.

Funding to private companies has skyrocketed this year, totaling $679 billion in venture funding globally in Q1 through Q3 2026, per Crunchbase data.

While global venture funding in Q3 was down 25% quarter over quarter from the $212 billion raised in Q2, it was up 53% year over year from the $104 billion raised in Q3 2025.

AI-driven startups across the stack raised $102 billion, or 64% of global venture capital, down from the two previous quarters, but still 14 percentage points above Q3 2025 global funding.

An all-time record of 27 companies raised such sizable rounds in Q3 2026, an increase from the previous record, set in Q2, of 16 companies and Q1’s total of 14 companies.

Global VC investment reached US$170.9 billion across 8,341 deals in Q3'26.

Venture funding is on track for one of its strongest years on record, reaching US$728.3 billion through the first nine months of 2026.

venture capital investment reached US$532.8 billion year-to-date, already surpassing the previous annual record.

Early-stage funding totaled $40.6 billion in Q3, up by 25% from a year earlier.

Late-stage venture funding totaled $105 billion in Q3, down 23% from Q2 but up 73% from Q3 2025, Crunchbase data shows.

In Q3, reported deal counts in North America fell 16% year over year and 14% quarter over quarter, reaching the lowest quarterly total since 2023, even as North American funding dollars jumped 50% year over year to $92 billion.

Through Q3 2026, $34.3 billion was deployed across an estimated 8,625 first-time financing deals, a total that already exceeds 2021’s full-year record of 8,507, with one quarter still to be counted.

Most of that capital has gone to megafunds of $500 million or larger, which make up 78.1% of total capital raised YTD, despite accounting for just 6% of new funds closed.

Active unicorns now sit at a record 992, up 14.9% YoY, worth $5.7 trillion combined.

Global Ecosystem Value surged $2.8 trillion — but two-thirds went to three U.S. cities.

U.S.-based companies continued to raise the dominant share of venture capital with $91 billion invested in American startups, or around 57% of the global total in Q3.

The San Francisco Bay Area alone accounted for 24% of global venture investment in the quarter.

European startup funding reached $25 billion last quarter, well above the $14 billion invested in Q3 2025 and up slightly from the $24 billion invested in Q2.

AI drove 75% of European funding this past quarter — totaling $18.8 billion — the highest proportion on record.

The U.K. led the region’s quarterly funding totals with $7.5 billion even as Germany and France gained market share for venture capital funding in Q3 with $5 billion and $4.8 billion invested, respectively.

Asia attracted a solid $39.8 billion across 2,698 deals during the quarter, helped by a continued resurgence in China, which saw $27.2 billion in VC investment.

Globally, we saw 14 funding rounds over $1.5 billion during Q3’26, including nine in the US.

The number of UK business births increased from 316,000 to 317,000 between 2023 and 2024; this has led to a small increase in the business birth rate from 11.0% to 11.1%.

The number of UK business deaths fell from 310,000 to 280,000 between 2023 and 2024; this has led to a decrease in the business death rate from 10.8% to 9.8%, the lowest death rate since 2016.

There were 193,789 company incorporations and 226,091 companies struck off the register.

At the end of September 2026, there were 5,485,994 companies on the register.

In 2024, 3.5 million newly born enterprises created about 3.7 million jobs in the EU.

Birth and death rates In 2024, the enterprise birth rate in the EU stood at 10.4%, while the preliminary enterprise death rate was 9.2%.

Looking at birth rates in the EU, the number of newly born enterprises as a proportion of the total number of active enterprises ranged from 6.3% in Austria to 17.5% in Lithuania in 2024.

In 36 of 53 economies, both the provision of and access to Entrepreneurial Finance are rated as insufficient

with an average of 84% of early-stage entrepreneurs now taking social and/or environmental impacts into account in making their business decisions

Debt and credit demand The share of firms with no outstanding debt (31%) has grown moderately since the 2020 survey (21%), returning to prepandemic levels.

Of firms that have debt, 59% used a personal guarantee to secure their debt, while 51% used business assets.

Forty-two percent of applicants received the full amount of financing they sought, 36% received some or most, and 22% received none.

The share of applicants that sought financing at online fintech lenders has increased over the last five years, from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey.

Use of artificial intelligence Nearly half of firms (46%) reported that their business or its employees currently use AI, while an additional 15% planned to begin using it in the next 12 months.