Liquidity, Leadership and the New VC Reality

After 2021’s surge and 2023’s reset, 2025 has been a different year: fewer deals, sharper targeting, and more creativity around liquidity. For investors heading to LEAP 2026, this new VC reality is changing how you deploy capital – and how you lead.

From hypergrowth to more focused investing  

Corporate venture around the world is recalibrating. The latest State of CVC 2025 report from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) shows early-stage dominance: the share of seed and early-stage deals has climbed from 55% (2015) to approximately 66-67% (2025 year-to-date) – which is about two-thirds of all CVC activity.

Unsurprisingly, AI is the gravitational centre. CVCs investing in AI jumped from 55% (2024) to 69% (2025), and AI now accounts for 28% of CVC-backed deals – an all-time high. As well as AI, CVC portfolios concentrate in SaaS and cybersecurity – useful guides for pipeline prioritisation.

But as well as what CVCs are backing, we have to look at how they’re doing it. Deal counts continue to trend down even as 2025 investment is set to be the highest in three years – not because cheques got larger (SVB’s report shows that the opposite is true), but because CVCs participate selectively in the biggest, most valuable rounds. Across the board, deal sizes have trended down.

Liquidity gets smarter 

IPO activity is still uneven – as detailed by EY, there were 539 IPOs totalling USD $61.4b in the first half of 2025 (flat year-on-year on deal count, with Q2 the weakest by number since 2020). But investors are diversifying their exit playbooks. And that’s showing up inside CVCs: 57% have considered or used the secondary market this year (+5pp YoY), and 22% have used it (up from 15% in 2024).

A nuance that matters for co-investors and LPs is that 41% of financial funds use secondary transactions; and strategic funds are under-represented among users (only 24% of secondary-using funds are strategic, despite being 38% of CVCs).

Leadership is the edge 

Markets like this test leadership as well as capital. According to SVB, half of CVCs cite speed and efficiency as a top challenge, with corporate prioritisation and bureaucracy close behind. Winning funds reduce friction, reserve follow-on capital intelligently, and stay close to their theses.

At LEAP, investor voices have consistently spoken on the same theme of value-add over vanity. When we interviewed William Bao Bean (General Partner at SOSV; Managing Director at Orbit Startups) for the blog, he said: 

“No one works with Orbit for our money, they work with us for our help.” 

And fundraising discipline matters on both sides of the table; as Ana Barjasic (Founder and CEO at Connectology) told us when we asked her about investment readiness, “One of the most common mistakes is related to poor fundraising roadmap and strategy.” 

Finally, investors need to recognise that portfolio performance is a team sport. Kinga Stanislawska (Co-Founder and Managing General Partner at Experior VC) told us “Diverse teams are just a better bet,” and this remains true; investors should continue to work to build diversity into their portfolio in order to drive future resilience and growth. 

So what should investors do at LEAP 2026? 

Follow the signs that point to AI, SaaS, and cybersecurity – and look for startups that have the potential to lead in those spaces. 

Ask about liquidity plans. And where approach, evaluate secondary strategies to manage DPI and recycling. 

And optimise speed without losing diligence. Design IC pathways that keep velocity, and pre-plan follow-ons to avoid accidental dilution. 

LEAP concentrates the right people at scale. If you’re serious about deploying decisively in 2026, this is where you compress months of sourcing and diligence into a week.