Growth Equity Update

The Rothschild & Co Growth Equity Update for May 2026 highlights the launch of the UK's £500m Sovereign AI fund and significant NASDAQ listing rule changes aimed at facilitating megacap tech IPOs. Despite geopolitical friction, VC fundraising remains buoyant, heavily concentrated in AI but showing growth across all sectors.

Key Takeaways

• 1.The UK government launched a £500m Sovereign AI fund to invest directly in British AI startups and provide supercompute access.
• 2.New NASDAQ listing rules removing minimum free float requirements and allowing fast index inclusion are designed to support major 2026/27 tech IPOs.
• 3.Venture capital funding is extremely concentrated, with the top 1% of companies absorbing 33% of all deployed capital, primarily in the AI sector.

Table of Contents

• UK launches a sovereign AI fund
• New NASDAQ trading rules
• Market concentration - what if you are not an AI business?
• Public markets – Earnings outweighing geopolitics
• Fundraising outlook: c$82bn of potential raises
• Fundraising – Surge continues
• Our views on the state of the venture capital markets

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