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I read what 500+ VC firms published this week. This time, I was interested in what funds stopped talking out.
Three things stood out: DeFi, Solana, Climate. I checked whether the funding data matched, and it did.
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DeFi funding has fallen for three straight quarters. Q2 2026 was the weakest quarter since late 2023. The number of DeFi deals hit its lowest point since 2020.
The reason is not that DeFi failed. Lending, exchanges, and stablecoins all function. Investors stopped writing about it because it already works. They write about problems that are not solved yet.
The type of DeFi that gets funded also changed. In 2021, money went into protocol governance tokens. In 2026, money goes into companies with revenue that follow financial regulations.
If you build in DeFi, do not describe your company as a “DeFi protocol.” Describe it as financial infrastructure with revenue.
Climate tech mentions dropped, but climate tech funding went up. It reached $26.1 billion in the first half of 2026, up 55% from the year before.
It looks like the money stopped going to projects labeled “climate.” It went to data centers. Low-carbon data centers went from 3% of climate funding to 34% in one year. The data center category grew more than 800% and became larger than energy. Funding for carbon projects fell 61%, the lowest since 2020.
The grid, the power, the cooling, and the batteries did not lose funding, but now they are called “AI infrastructure.”
If you build energy or power products, describe it as AI infrastructure.
So who is actually deploying right now? A few names, from 2026’s funding data. Coinbase Ventures has been the most active crypto investor this year — 12 deals in Q1 alone, more than double the next firm. Paradigm raised a new $1.2 billion fund, which means they have to deploy it. a16z, Castle Island, and Galaxy Digital each did around five deals. And traditional firms — Sequoia, Founders Fund, Bain — showed up in crypto rounds too, treating the downturn as a buying opportunity.
That’s the data. Now go build something.
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