Miami metro area startups raised at least $1.14B in Q3, led by OpenEvidence, and at least $3.14B so far this year
OpenEvidence’s $250 million raise in late September was South Florida’s largest round of the third quarter, and it is so fresh it wasn’t’t yet been recorded in PitchBook’s Q3 venture capital report released today. With that raise added to the results, the South Florida ecosystem is well on track to beat last year’s results, which would make 2026 the second-highest venture capital total on record, after the Miami metro’s fundraising high in 2022.
OpenEvidence’s most recent raise – the second $250 million raise this year for the company that relocated to Miami from the Boston area in 2025 – brings this ChatGPT for doctors startup founded in 2022 to a $15 billion valuation. Including that raise, in Q3 the Miami metro area startups attracted over $1.14 billion, the best quarterly total of the year so far.
Also in Q3, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area retained its position as a top 10 US VC hub for deal count, coming in 6th, more deals than Austin, Washington DC, Seattle and Austin, according to the Q3 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report out today. Among US tech hubs, South Florida also ranked 10th for deal dollars.
To be sure, venture capital data lags and these quarterly results are likely to grow. PitchBook and other sources revise their data constantly because new reporting comes in, rounds get reopened, startups relocate, etc.
But let’s take a deeper look at local, state and national trends and top deals.
The South Florida picture: A mix of sector strength
For Q3 2026, PitchBook reported that the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area pulled in $1.14 billion across 117 deals, including the late September $250 million round by OpenEvidence. That’s up from a revised $876.65 million across109 deals in Q2. That’s comparable to Q1, when three medtech megarounds – OpenEvidence (with its first $250 million round of the year), eMed and ILiAD Biotechnologies – accounted for $565 million of that total, according to PitchBook’s data that was used in the Venture Monitor.
While medtech led the top deals in Q1 and Q2 brought a trifecta of medtech, fintech and AI action, in Q3 it was also mix, with financial services and medtech leading the way. The average Q3 deal size was $9.8 million, up from $8.5 million last quarter.
According to PitchBook’s data, here are more of the top Q3 rounds by companies headquartered in the tri-county area:
- Unrivaled, the Miami-based women’s basketball team: $106 million.
- Split Pay, a Miami fintech: $100 million.
- Flex, another Miami fintech: $70 million
- Exuma Biotech, a life sciences startup: $70 million
- Physical Superintelligance, a Miami-based AI software startup: $58 million
- RapidPulse, a Miami-based therapeutic device maker: $48 million
- TravelX, a Miami-based travel tech startup: $45 million
- PilotAI, a fintech in the crypto space: $35 million
- Comp AI, a Miami-based compliance software startup: $35 million
Notably, PitchBook’s data did not include two other Q3 mega-rounds that Refresh Miami has reported on. Those would be the cross-border fintech Félix ($200 million equity and debt found) and the stablecoin-focused fintech Jeeves ($110 million), which would add several hundred million more to the Q3 and full-year totals. PitchBook included those two rounds in other metro areas.
Pitchbook’s Q3 data also included data on top US unicorns ranked by IPO probability using PitchBook’s VC Exit Predictor. The tool leverages machine learning and PitchBook’s database of companies, financing rounds and investors to objectively assess a startup’s likelihood of a successful exit. Among top medtech unicorns, OpenEvidence, which in its short life has raised over $1 billion in venture capital, has a 95% probability of going public, according to Pitchbook’s Exit Predictor. The startup was the only Florida company on Pitchbook’s top US unicorn list.
For the first three quarters, South Florida startups attracted at least $3.14 billion in venture capital, according to PitchBook’s data. With this total plus lagging data that will be added, the Miami metro area is on track to very likely exceed the $4.13 billion that South Florida startups reeled in in 2025 according to my reporting for the eMerge Insights report. If so, it would be the best year since the pandemic high in 2022.
On the exit front, Miami-based fintech Securitize, with the slogan “Tokanize the World,” fired up a relatively quiet year for exits in South Florida with its $1.25 billion public debut in July. In total in Q3, there were 8 exits for South Florida companies in Q3, according to PitchBook’s data.
As for raises by funds, the picture is also bright for South Florida. According to PitchBook’s data, 28 South Florida funds have attracted over $716 million in Q3. Fundraising was led by Align Ventures $125 million raise for its fund 2, $100 million for 1789 Capital for its fund 2, and Anti Fund’s $100 million raise for its Growth I fund.
The Florida picture: Orlando area delivers largest deals outside Miami
Statewide, according to data underlying PitchBook’s new report, Florida companies drew $1.74 billion across 205 deals in Q3. That’s up sharply from a revised $1.33 billion across 184 deals in Q2 2026, but the total for the year so far is $4.84 billion across 529 deals.
Just like for the Miami metro, the state is on track for another strong year. Florida looks likely to beat the state’s 2025 VC results of $5.8 billion, which was up 41% over 2024, according to my research for the eMerge Americas Insights Report. South Florida continues to drive in most of the state’s venture activity, representing 66% of deal value and 58% of the deal count in Q3.
According to PitchBook’s data, the top Q3 deal around the state outside of South Florida was by Orlando-based cybersecurity company Threat Locker at $189 million. That was followed by Orlando area-based network management software player Reco’s $55 million haul. The other eight in the top 10 were all from South Florida.
As for Florida’s two largest metro areas in Q3, Orlando area startup raised $364.5 million across 25 deals. Tampa Bay area startups, meanwhile, raised $153.1 million across 21 deals in Q3. In the first three quarters of 2026, Orlando area startups attracted $523.5 across 59 deals, and Tampa Bay area startups attracted $442 million over 64 deals in the first three quarters.
In Q3 across the state, there were 12 exits with a value of $2.2 billion. In the first three quarters, there were 30 exits valued at $3.6 billion, according to PitchBook’s data. The top exit in Q3 outside South Florida was Orion180, a $948 million IPO for the Melbourne fintech.
We will share more complete results for the state and South Florida in the year-end reports, include my full-year deep dive for the eMerge Americas Insights Report.
The national picture: AI isn’t the whole story
On the national front, AI’s concentration in the venture ecosystem continued to deepen in 2026, accounting for the highest annual share of deal value in PitchBook’s dataset. Although outsized deals in the first half of the year drove total deal value to record highs, Q3 deal value fell to post-pandemic levels, the Venture Monitor’s First Look report said. The quarter’s largest deal was the $5 billion investment in Databricks, but compare that to the multiple triple-digit billion-dollar deals in the first half. And that’s not the whole story.
“Peel back the layers on 2026 VC activity and it’s clear companies are operating in different markets depending on their product. Deal value is already 44% ahead of the previous annual record, with a quarter still to go, but much of that capital has been raised by frontier model companies,” said Nizar Tarhuni, Executive Vice President of Research & Market Intelligence at PitchBook.
“The real story sits on the exit side, where the IPO pipeline keeps slipping further out and sellers are leaning on M&A to get anything done at all,” Tarhuni continued. “Anthropic and OpenAI have both pushed their listings, creating a further roadblock for tech and pressuring the growing backlog of private companies waiting for their shot.This year’s numbers will look like a boom at the top line. But for most of the market, the liquidity won’t show up, and that will have a large impact going into 2027.”
On the exit front, SpaceX continues to dominate in 2026 and has been central to the three largest exits in US history. Its $60 billion all-stock purchase of Cursor in Q3 is the second-largest M&A deal involving a venture-backed company on record, trailing only its acquisition of xAI earlier this year. Setting aside these outliers, 2026’s exit value remains at the same constrained level that has defined every year since the pandemic.
Smaller VC firms are also facing fundraising challenges.
“Investment in AI continues to push the boundaries of innovation, alongside exciting advances in robotics, advanced manufacturing, and aerospace. The pace of technological progress and the opportunities ahead are tremendous,” said NVCA President and CEO Bobby Franklin. “But the strength of that innovation can obscure growing challenges within the fundraising market. While topline numbers may appear resilient, capital is increasingly concentrated, and emerging and midsize firms are finding it harder to raise their next funds. America’s innovation leadership depends on maintaining a broad and competitive investor base capable of finding and funding what comes next.”
Download the Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report here and stay tuned for my year-end reporting.
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