PitchBook: VCs raised $151B across Q1, Q2, and Q3 2022, exceeding any prior full-year cycle, concentrated among large funds at Sequoia, Lightspeed, and others
Limited partners who back venture funds still seek access to startups, which have outperformed other asset classes during recessions
Context & Ripple Effects
This was the crest of a decade-long fundraising wave. After a then-record $17B Q1 in 2016 and record late-stage deal volume in 2018, limited partners pushed nine months of 2022 commitments past any prior full year — but the money clustered in a handful of brand-name firms like Sequoia and Lightspeed rather than spreading across the fund ecosystem.
The related coverage shows how quickly the peak inverted: Preqin counted just $20.6B in new fund closings in Q4 2022, down 65% year over year, and by early 2024 PitchBook was describing the megafunds era itself as over. The $151B headline reads differently in hindsight — it marks both an all-time high and the last quarter of easy LP money.
First-order effects
- Sequoia, Lightspeed, and the other large funds locked in multi-year war chests at the top of the market, while smaller funds were left competing for the thin remainder of LP commitments.
- Limited partners kept allocating on the thesis that startups outperform other asset classes during recessions, even as the broader funding environment was deteriorating around them.
Second-order effects
- The concentration proved to be a leading indicator rather than a cushion: within one quarter, LPs retreated to their fewest Q4 fund commitments since 2012, validating that access had narrowed to the funds that had already closed.
- Firms that missed the 2022 closing window entered the downturn without fresh capital, forcing the industry to live off the megafunds' deployed reserves through the 2023 trough.
Third-order effects
- PitchBook's later finding that Q1 2024 fundraising fell to $30.4B confirmed the megafunds era ended, yet capital did not disperse — it re-concentrated at the deal level, with $32B of Q4 2024's $74.6B going into just five US startups.
- If the pattern holds, venture fundraising becomes structurally barbelled: episodic mega-closes at elite firms during booms, followed by sharp contractions that leave mid-sized funds permanently squeezed between them.
The trend: Venture capital cycles through boom-and-bust fundraising waves, but each successive recovery concentrates committed capital in fewer large funds and fewer large deals.