Pre-money valuation, the founder's lens.
Most calculators ask "what's your post-money?". The founder version asks "how much can I afford to give up?". Benchmarks below are the published 2026 medians, with the AI and non-AI cohorts kept apart, because at Series A the last printed pair sat nearly 2x apart and the blended figure describes neither. Sister to postmoneyvaluation.com, which takes the cap-table lens on the same rounds.
What each stage prices at, and what you give up
Median pre-money and round size per stage, the median dilution where Carta prints one, and the AI premium where a report prints both the AI and the non-AI median.
| Stage | Pre-money median | Median round | Median dilution | AI premium (30 Jun) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed | not published | not published | not published | not published |
| Seed | $18.3M | $3.0M | not published | not published |
| Series A | $60.3M | $17.4M | 17.9% | +89% |
| Series B | $187.0M | $39.5M | 12.9% | +99% |
| Series C+ | $500.0M | $77.0M | not published | +63% |
- Pre-seed
- Pre-money median
- not published
- Median round
- not published
- Median dilution
- not published
- AI premium (30 Jun)
- not published
- Seed
- Pre-money median
- $18.3M
- Median round
- $3.0M
- Median dilution
- not published
- AI premium (30 Jun)
- not published
- Series A
- Pre-money median
- $60.3M
- Median round
- $17.4M
- Median dilution
- 17.9%
- AI premium (30 Jun)
- +89%
- Series B
- Pre-money median
- $187.0M
- Median round
- $39.5M
- Median dilution
- 12.9%
- AI premium (30 Jun)
- +99%
- Series C+
- Pre-money median
- $500.0M
- Median round
- $77.0M
- Median dilution
- not published
- AI premium (30 Jun)
- +63%
Pre-money medians and round sizes: PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor Q3 2026, 2026 to 30 September. Series C+ is the Series C figure; Series D+ is reported separately at $1,723.7M pre-money. AI premium: the Q2 2026 edition, as of 30 June 2026, the last to print the AI and non-AI medians side by side; no edition prints a split below Series A. Dilution: Carta Q1 2025 (Series A) and Carta 2025 in review (Series B); other stages show "not published" because we found no free per-stage figure. Checked 2026-10-17.
What each method means for your negotiation
VC Method
Founder reading: this method backs into your pre-money from the VC's required fund return.
Berkus Method
Founder reading: the $2M pre-revenue maximum you will read everywhere is the default, not a rule.
Scorecard / Bill Payne
Founder reading: this is the method you can argue against.
Risk Factor Summation
Founder reading: read this as the angel's risk-shopping list.
DCF (early-stage adapted)
Founder reading: building a DCF reveals more about your plan than the resulting number.
Comparables (market multiples)
Founder reading: this is the method you use to defend your number to the VC.
The VC, the founder, and the cap-table platform all see this differently
VC calculators anchor on post-money + investor ownership %. Cap-table platform calculators (Carta, Pulley, AngelList Stack) anchor on the cap table. Both make sense, but neither starts from where most founders actually start: "how much equity am I willing to give up in this round?"
premoneyvaluation.com starts there. Set your target dilution, the calculator works backwards to the pre-money you need to negotiate. The companion postmoneyvaluation.com covers the cap-table side with the option pool shuffle math worked through.
Two lenses on the same rounds. Where the figures here differ from the sister site's, this one is the more recently re-sourced. Methodology.