Series C+
Late-stage dilution typically 12-18%. Wide distribution — a few AI mega-rounds pull the high end. Most C+ rounds in 2026 are more conservative than 2021 peaks.
The full distribution
Series C+ post-money valuations vary widely. Median is $500M but the P25-P75 range spans $220M to $1200M — a 5.5x 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
Series C+ round checks typically range $30M to $200M. Option pool refresh is typically 3-8% of post-money. The option pool comes out of pre-money allocation, not post-money — so a 8% pool refresh on a $$400M pre-money is essentially $$32.0M of founder dilution that doesn't fund anything operational.
AI-labelled series c+ rounds in 2026 transact at +55% over non-AI deals at the same stage. AI Series C+ pre-money median is approximately $620M vs $400M 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-private-markets-q4-2025/Source: Carta Q4 2025 + PitchBook-NVCA Q1 2026 · Verified 2026-06-03.