How Much Equity to Give Investors in Each Round (2026 Data)

Per-round medians from Carta, PitchBook-NVCA and Equidam’s own pre-seed data, what founders typically still own after three rounds, and how to check whether the offer on your desk is in range.

Founders typically sell about a fifth of the company at seed and again at Series A. Carta’s Q2 2026 medians are 19.4% at seed, 18.7% at Series A and 13.4% at Series B, and later rounds sell less again. At pre-seed, Equidam’s H1 2026 data shows planned raises implying 26.9% in the US and 17.7% in Europe.

Data as of 30 October 2026. Each figure is dated and sourced where it appears.

The equity percentage an investor gets, also called the round’s dilution, is the investment divided by the post-money valuation, which is the pre-money valuation plus the new money. This page shows what that percentage usually is at each stage, why it falls as the company grows, and how to test your own offer. For the mechanics of a round with option pools and SAFEs, our guide to pre-money vs post-money valuation walks through four cap tables.

How much equity do investors take in each round?

The table puts three independent datasets side by side. They measure slightly different things, so read across a row for a range of views and do not average the columns.

Sources, by column:

• Carta Q2 2026: Carta’s Series A guide and seed guide, from its round benchmarking tool.
• Carta July 2026: Peter Walker’s post “VC Startup Fundraising Benchmarks From 1000 Rounds”, 10 July 2026, in Carta’s LinkedIn data archive. Software companies only, rounds raised in the previous six months, bridges and extensions excluded.
• PitchBook-NVCA: Q3 2026 Venture Monitor, page 11, US deals, data as of 30 September 2026. We calculated this column from two separate medians. It is a ratio of medians, not a published median dilution.
• Founder stakes: Carta Founder Ownership Report 2026, US-incorporated companies, rounds raised from 2021 to 2025. Carta reports Series B only split into AI and non-AI founding teams.
• Pre-seed instrument: 93% of pre-seed rounds on Carta in Q2 2026 were SAFEs (Carta).

Seed and Series A are where founders sell the biggest slices, close to a fifth of the company each in Carta’s data. From Series B the percentage falls with each round in every source that reports it, because round sizes grow more slowly than valuations. Our reading of these medians is 15% to 25% at seed and Series A, 10% to 20% at Series B, and under 15% from Series C. Use it as a rule of thumb for spotting an unusual offer, and do not treat it as a target.

All three datasets are US-based or US-leaning: PitchBook-NVCA covers US deals, Carta’s founder report covers US-incorporated companies, and Carta’s round benchmarks do not state a country mix. We have not found a public European dataset of closed-round dilution by series, so our European comparison covers pre-seed only.

What each stage looks like, and what investors negotiate on

Stage names are used loosely, so here is the rough guide we use.

Pre-seed

You do not have a fully built product yet. Investors are mostly angels, pre-seed funds and accelerators, and most rounds use SAFEs (simple agreements for future equity) or convertible loans, so the stake is only fixed when they convert in a priced round. The conversation is about how much capital you need to reach the next milestone. Keep this round small where you can, because every later round dilutes it again.

Seed

You have built enough to test your core assumptions. Seed funds usually arrive with an ownership target, so the negotiation is about getting enough capital for a reasonable stake, and a clear use of funds makes that case.

Series A

You can show product-market fit through customer demand you can measure. Early-stage VC funds still think in ownership, and Carta’s Series A guide says investors usually buy 10% to 30% of the company in this round (Carta). The discussion turns to whether the company can grow large enough to matter to the fund.

Series B

You can show how the business runs at scale and where it is heading. Valuation starts to carry more of the negotiation than ownership, and existing investors often invest again to keep their stake.

Series C and later

You have a credible path to leading your market, and later rounds fund expansion or the run-up to an exit or IPO. The valuation is built from a track record and comparable companies, the company usually decides how much to raise, and the stake follows from the price.

Pre-seed equity: why US founders plan to give up more than Europeans

The closed-round sources above do not publish pre-seed dilution, so here we use our own data. The Startup Valuation Delta H1 2026 covers pre-seed valuations completed on Equidam between January and June 2026. It reports implied dilution, defined as “what a founder would give up if they raised the median capital requirement at the median valuation”. That makes it a ratio of two medians: the median planned raise divided by the median valuation plus that raise. It does not describe the dilution of the median company.

Source: Startup Valuation Delta H1 2026, part of our Startup Valuation Delta series, published July 2026. Valuations are pre-money estimates and planned raises are what founders said they intended to raise, not closed rounds. Each figure is the average of the Q1 and Q2 2026 medians, weighted by the number of valuations in each quarter, which is why the edition’s table labels its columns “Avg.”. The last column counts the valuations behind each median planned raise (Equidam internal data). The valuation medians rest on larger samples, from 11 valuations in South East Asia to 313 in Europe. With fewer than 20 planned raises, a region’s dilution figure is a rough indication only, and the Oceania figure comes from a single company.

US founders planned to raise 2.7 times as much as European founders, while their valuations were only about 1.6 times higher, so they would give up more of the company. Europe has the largest sample in the dataset and sits in the middle of the table. The US figure rests on 30 planned raises, so the direction of the gap is clearer than its size.

The same report gives a global quarterly series of 9.7% in Q1 2026 and 8.5% in Q2 2026, below every regional figure. The global series comes from a separate and smaller set of valuations that includes founders who entered no planned raise, which pulls its median raise down. The regional figures count only founders who entered one. Compare regions with each other rather than with the global line.

The US pre-seed figure of 26.9% is higher than Carta’s seed medians of 18% to 19.4% because the two measure different things. Ours is what founders planned to raise when they completed a valuation, usually before a round closed. Carta’s are closed seed rounds, after negotiation. For the regional data on round sizes and a method for sizing your own round, see how much to raise at pre-seed.

How much will you own after three rounds?

Each round’s percentage looks moderate on its own, but the rounds compound. A holding diluted by Carta’s Q2 2026 medians at seed (19.4%), Series A (18.7%) and Series B (13.4%) keeps 56.7% of its original size.

Most founding teams end up lower, because option pools, SAFEs and bridge rounds come on top of the priced rounds. Carta’s data on rounds raised from 2021 to 2025 shows where the median team lands:

Sources: Carta Founder Ownership Report 2026 for founder stakes and the seed and Series C pools; Carta’s cap table guide for the Series A pool. US companies.

By Series C the median employee pool is larger than the median founding team’s stake. Bridge rounds add to the total: Carta found that priced bridge rounds in 2023 typically carried about half the dilution of primary rounds (Carta). For a step-by-step cap table from pre-seed to Series A, including the option pool, see the walk-through in our pre-money vs post-money guide. Dilution 101 covers the formula.

How much equity do VCs want, and why?

Venture returns follow a power law: most investments return little or nothing, and a few large wins pay for the rest of the fund. Each investment therefore has to be able to return a meaningful part of the fund on its own, which only works if the stake at exit is large enough.

The numbers in this example are an illustration, chosen to be round. A €100M seed fund takes 15% in your seed round. A Series A that sells 18% and a Series B that sells 12% bring that stake down to 10.8% before any exit. To return the whole fund from this one company, the exit would need to be worth about €924M. At a 5% stake the same fund would need a €2B exit, and at 2% it would need €5B.

This is why seed and Series A leads talk about ownership targets while later investors talk about price. SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin gives his view, which is opinion rather than data, in a 2024 post: big funds of $600M to $2B or more want to own 15% to 20% or more, and funds of $100M or less would like 10% or more after a seed or pre-seed investment (SaaStr). Targets vary with fund size, strategy and stage, so ask each investor what theirs is.

What does 5%, 10% or 25% equity actually mean?

A percentage stake is a share of the company’s value, so it only means something next to a valuation. On a €4M post-money valuation:

That value is on paper until an exit, a secondary sale or a dividend turns it into cash. The stake also shrinks with each later round unless the holder invests again. A 5% stake that goes through a Series A selling 18% and a Series B selling 12% becomes 3.61%. If the company is then worth €100M, that 3.61% is worth €3.61M, far more than the original €200,000, because the company grew faster than the stake was diluted.

What a stake gives the holder beyond money, such as a board seat, vetoes or the power to block certain decisions, depends on the share class, the shareholders’ agreement and company law in your country. A 25% holder can have strong blocking rights in one company and very few in another, so have a lawyer check those documents rather than relying on the percentage. This article is general information, not legal or investment advice.

How to check whether your offer is in range

You need one line of arithmetic:

Investor ownership = investment ÷ post-money valuation, where post-money valuation = pre-money valuation + investment.

€1.5M invested at a €6M pre-money gives a €7.5M post-money and a 20% stake, which is within the normal seed range. €0.6M at a €1.4M pre-money gives 30%, above every median in the table. The pre-money and post-money calculator runs these numbers for you. A post-money SAFE works the same way with the valuation cap in place of the post-money, as our SAFE caps and discounts guide explains.

If the stake comes out above the range, you have two levers. You can raise less, by sizing the round to your next milestone instead of the largest cheque on offer. Or you can support a higher pre-money valuation with better evidence. A valuation is an estimate built on assumptions, and your position is strongest when those assumptions are written down and the investor can test them. Equidam combines the five standard methods, Scorecard, Checklist, the VC method and two discounted cash flow methods, with weights that change by stage and DCFs that apply survival rates and an illiquidity discount. Our guide to negotiating on value rather than price covers how to use the result in the conversation.

When giving away more is the right call

Selling less is not always better. A larger stake can be the right trade when the investor brings something the company cannot get elsewhere, when the market is hard and the alternative is not raising at all, or when a bridge gets you to a milestone that clearly lifts the next valuation. What matters is that the founding team keeps enough ownership to stay motivated through several more rounds. We make the case for that balance, from the founder’s and the investor’s side, in why selling too much equity too early hurts founders and investors.

FAQ

How much equity should I give an angel investor?

Angels usually invest alongside others in a pre-seed or seed round, often through a SAFE, so look at the total the round sells rather than one angel’s share. At pre-seed, planned raises on Equidam implied 17.7% dilution in Europe and 26.9% in the US in H1 2026 (Valuation Delta). A smaller round leaves more room for later ones.

What equity percentage do VCs take at Series A?

Carta’s median Series A dilution was 18.7% in Q2 2026 (Carta) and 18% for software companies in its July 2026 benchmarks. In US PitchBook-NVCA data for 2026 to 30 September, the median Series A deal was $17.4M and the median pre-money $60.3M, a ratio of 22.4%.

Is giving away 30% at seed too much?

It is well above the medians: Carta’s Q2 2026 seed median was 19.4%. It can still make sense if the money gets you to a much stronger position, but first work out what you would own after two more typical rounds. If that leaves the founders with very little before scale, revisit the round size or the valuation.

Does the option pool count towards the equity I give investors?

Not directly, but it can cost founders as much. A pool created or topped up in the pre-money dilutes only existing shareholders, while the investor’s stake stays fixed. Carta’s median pool is 12.1% at seed and 15% at Series A. Our pre-money vs post-money guide shows the effect, and our employee stock options guide covers the pool.

Do European founders give away less than US founders?

At pre-seed they plan to, on Equidam’s data. In H1 2026 implied dilution was 17.7% in Europe against 26.9% in the US, mainly because US founders planned to raise far more (Valuation Delta). The US figure rests on 30 planned raises. We have not found public European closed-round data by series to compare later stages.

What does a 25% stake mean?

The holder owns a quarter of the company, usually counted on a fully diluted basis. On a €4M post-money valuation that is €1M on paper, which becomes cash only at an exit or a sale. It shrinks with each later round unless the holder invests again. Voting and blocking rights depend on the share terms and local law.