👋 Hi, I’m Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with Data & AI.
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ICYMI, check out some of our most read episodes:
Welcome to another edition of our Sunday “Resources” stream where we share our most valuable data & resources across four rotating formats:
30 Hottest Startups of the Month (January’s list here)
Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (“building a hyper-automated micro VC with Alex Patow from Inflection” here)
State of the Market (this is today!)
Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (“how to integrate data sources and make them actionable with AI” here)
For 1. and 3., we collaborate with best-in-class partners to ensure you get the highest quality data. For 2. and 4., we leverage our ever-growing product portfolio and share selective snapshots of the most sought-after resources from VCSTACK.COM
State of the Market - January 2026
Most data for today’s episode was provided by our partner Multiples.vc, your go-to source for verified M&A valuation multiples and public comps based on analyst estimates, at a fraction of the price of legacy data providers.
With this monthly format, we aim to unify market & valuation data into a single episode, so you don’t need to check various sources for a complete picture. Here’s what we’ll cover today:
#1 Markets (remain under pressure)
Top 10 private market companies - AI dominates
State of IPOs: New list with top 50 candidates for 2026
State of M&A: Number of transactions, deal volume - Confluent & Manus AI
#2 Multiples (slightly down and stablizing)
Top 10 vs Top 50 EV/NTM Revenue
EV/NTM Revenue over time and by sector
Efficiency Benchmarks incl. revenue per FTE, Rule of 40 & more
Spoiler: Multiples are slightly down but markets reward extreme outliers
We have a lot on the agenda, so let’s jump in👇
1. Markets
Top 10 Private Market Companies
The biggest change is OpenAI overtaking SpaceX to become the most valuable private company, jumping from ~$500B to ~$830B in their recent fundraise. SpaceX stays flat at ~$800B with plans to go public in 2026.
Anthropic nearly doubles its estimated valuation from ~$183B to ~$350B, and xAI jumps from ~$200B to ~$230B, with eye-watering percentage changes driven by relatively recent entry points. This signals continued capital concentration into frontier model builders, with investors clearly underwriting winner-take-most outcomes despite unresolved monetization questions.
ByteDance, Stripe, Databricks, Ant Group, Tether, and Reliance Retail show minimal movement in absolute valuation and rankings. Headcount growth is modest and incremental, suggesting the non-AI megacaps are in an execution and efficiency phase, while the market’s excitement—and repricing power—remains almost entirely concentrated in AI.
