Pre-seed
Most founders give up 15-20% at pre-seed. The 2026 median post-money of $9M means a $1.5-2M check buys ~18-22% if you don't push back on the option pool sizing. 92% of pre-seed rounds in 2026 use post-money SAFE structure — that's good for founders because new investors dilute, not SAFE holders.
The full distribution
Pre-seed post-money valuations vary widely. Median is $9M but the P25-P75 range spans $4M to $15M — a 3.8x spread between the bottom-quartile and top-quartile deal. For founders, this means there's genuine room to negotiate up if your story is strong; the median is just the middle, not a ceiling.
Check size and option pool
Pre-seed round checks typically range $0.25M to $2.5M. Option pool refresh is typically 10-15% of post-money. The option pool comes out of pre-money allocation, not post-money — so a 15% pool refresh on a $$6M pre-money is essentially $$0.9M of founder dilution that doesn't fund anything operational.
AI-labelled pre-seed rounds in 2026 transact at +25% over non-AI deals at the same stage. AI Pre-seed pre-money median is approximately $8M vs $6M for non-AI. If you're non-AI, strip AI deals out of your comparable benchmarks before using a comp-based valuation method — otherwise the inflated comp set will produce an unrealistic anchor that VCs will reject. See the AI premium deep-dive.
Source
↗ https://carta.com/data/state-of-pre-seed-2025/Source: Carta State of Pre-Seed 2025 + VC Beast · Verified 2026-06-03.