Seed vs Series A vs Series B: Typical Round Sizes in 2026, With October Examples

Carta's Q2 2026 benchmarks put the median seed round at $4.5 million, the median Series A at $14.7 million and the median Series B at $23.3 million. Rounds announced in the first week of October 2026 were far from those numbers: a $30 million seed at Catalyst, a $60 million seed at Teddy AI and a $90 million Series B at Spiko. This article, dated 15 October 2026, sets the medians beside those rounds and a $15 million Series A at Daptic.

What are typical seed, Series A and Series B round sizes in 2026?

Using Carta's Q2 2026 data, the median seed round is $4.5 million, the median Series A is $14.7 million and the median Series B is $23.3 million. Carta's page shows these in one table with valuation and dilution (page checked 15 October 2026). The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, a separate US dataset, gives different figures.

The PitchBook-NVCA rows are read from charts in the Q3 2026 Venture Monitor, according to PitchBook-NVCA. The report's chart heading says median deal value rose across all series except seed, which matches a seed median of $3.0 million against a prior-period $3.4 million. Carta also notes that seed rounds typically range from $500,000 to $5 million.

How do the October 2026 rounds compare with those medians?

Catalyst and Teddy AI raised seed rounds that are 6.7 and 13.3 times Carta's median seed. Daptic's Series A is almost exactly the Carta median, and Spiko's Series B is 3.9 times the Carta median. The multiples below are our arithmetic from the announced amounts and Carta's Q2 2026 medians.

Sources: Fortune, 8 October 2026; Business Wire, 7 October 2026; Pulse 2.0, 2 October 2026; Business Wire, 6 October 2026.

Is a $30 million or $60 million seed still a seed?

By the label the companies and reporters used, yes. By size, both rounds sit above Carta's median Series A of $14.7 million. Stage names describe where a company is in its financing history, not a fixed dollar band.

Catalyst is a startup building AI trading agents for retail investors. Fortune reported that Sequoia led the $30 million seed, with Jump Trading, PeakXV, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Coinbase and Premji Invest also in the round, and that the founders started the company in 2025. Sequoia published its own post confirming it led the seed round on 8 October 2026. For more detail, see our Catalyst seed round report.

Teddy AI is a different kind of seed. The company's release describes it as a compliance and client-focused legal services platform incubation that raised $60 million and, the company says, passed $25 million in revenue. It is keeping its focus, leadership and cap table confidential. Kyle Tucker, founder of Tucker’s Farm Corporation’s private equity arm, said in the release that fundraising calls drew about $115 million of equity asks and that the company closed $60 million. According to Axios Pro, the company aims to raise a $100 million Series A by year-end. Our Teddy AI report separates what the company announced from what it did not.

What do Daptic and Spiko show about Series A and Series B sizes?

Daptic is a median-sized Series A, and Spiko is a large Series B. Both are labelled by the companies or their reporters in the usual way, but the dollar gap between them is wide.

Per Pulse 2.0, Daptic raised a $15 million Series A led by Canvas Ventures, with IA Ventures and 8VC also participating, bringing total funding to $22 million. Axios Pro reported the same $15 million round and lead on 1 October 2026, citing CEO Baptiste Bouvier. The company develops a product compliance lifecycle management platform. The $22 million total less the $15 million round implies about $7 million raised earlier. Our Daptic report has the full funding history.

Spiko, based in London and Paris, announced a $90 million Series B led by NEA, with participation from investors including Index Ventures and Bpifrance. The company says the round brings total funding to $120 million, which implies about $30 million raised before this round. It also says it is the world's largest issuer of tokenized cash funds, with $2.7 billion held. Both are company claims. Spiko is not a US startup, so it sits outside the usual scope of this site, but it is a clear data point for Series B sizing.

For how to avoid mixing up a round with a cumulative total, see Round Size vs Cumulative Funding.

Why do headline rounds sit so far above the medians?

A small number of very large deals pull the headlines upward while the median stays low. PitchBook-NVCA reports that deals of $100 million or larger were about 5% of total deal count in Q3 2026 but accounted for 75% of Q3 deal value. It also reports US VC deal value of $515.8 billion through Q3 2026.

Crunchbase News reported on 28 January 2026 that over 40% of seed and Series A investment in 2026 up to that point had gone to rounds of $100 million or more. That analysis covered only the first weeks of the year.

The Q3 2026 data shows the same pattern at later stages labelled as early. According to Crunchbase News, the largest North American early-stage rounds in Q3 included River AI's $1.1 billion Series A, Valar Atomics' $660 million Series B and Fab2's $500 million Series A. The same report named Walden Robotics' $300 million seed and Veeda AI's $90 million seed. In Europe, Crunchbase News reported that London-based Callosum raised the largest seed at $100 million.

Investor mix is part of the story. PitchBook research found that multistage fund participation in Series A deals reached a record 37.8% of deal value in 2026 year to date, while pre-seed and seed remained comparatively untouched.

How do AI companies change the round-size picture?

AI companies raise larger rounds at every stage. According to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor (as of 30 September 2026), the median AI deal value is $4.5 million at seed, $20.0 million at Series A and $46.0 million at Series B. Those compare with $3.0 million, $17.4 million and $39.5 million across all companies in the same report.

The premium is modest at the median. A median AI seed of $4.5 million is well below the $30 million and $60 million seed rounds above, so those two rounds are outliers even against the AI median. Teddy AI is not a clean AI comparison: its release quotes Tucker as saying Teddy is not an AI company.

How should a reader compare two funding announcements?

Check the stage label, the amount of that single round, and the total raised separately. A round's size says little on its own, because stage labels vary by company and sector.

1. Note whether the amount is the single round or a cumulative total. Spiko's $90 million is one round, and its $120 million is the company's stated total.
2. Compare against a named median and its date, such as Carta's Q2 2026 figures or the PitchBook-NVCA figures as of 30 September 2026.
3. Check who led the round and whether the investors are disclosed. Teddy AI has not named its investors.
4. Read the company's own wording. Teddy AI describes itself as an incubation, which is not a typical venture seed.
5. For US rounds, a Form D filing can confirm the amount sold. See How a Startup Funding Round Is Announced.

What's still unclear?

Several points limit how far these comparisons go.

• Two medians, two samples. Carta and PitchBook-NVCA disagree on all three stages: seed $4.5 million against $3.0 million, Series A $14.7 million against $17.4 million, Series B $23.3 million against $39.5 million. The sources do not reconcile these figures, and this article does not pick one.
• Chart reading. The PitchBook-NVCA medians are read from charts in the Venture Monitor PDF. The text of the report does not list the values in a table.
• Teddy AI's investors and structure. The company has not named its investors or leadership, so the $60 million seed cannot be compared with a standard venture round. Its revenue figure is the company's own claim.
• Valuations. Valuations for Catalyst, Teddy AI, Daptic and Spiko were not stated in the cited announcements and reports.
• Spiko's geography. The Series B is a European company's round, while Carta and PitchBook-NVCA medians describe different samples. The comparison is indicative only.
• Small sample of examples. Four October rounds cannot show a trend. The Q3 2026 Crunchbase and PitchBook figures are the better evidence for how skewed round sizes are, and the Crunchbase 40% figure covers only early January 2026.
• Preliminary data. Crunchbase says seed totals for the latest quarter tend to rise as deals are added later.