Venture capital advertises itself as a wide-open contest. A new study says it runs closer to a lottery with a few repeat winners.
Blake Jackson teaches at Ohio State University. Ilya Strebulaev teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Together they tracked every venture capitalist they could find at U.S. firms from 1996 to 20251.
They found just over 12,000 of them with at least one investment. Those investors split $1.2 trillion in net profit, adjusted for inflation2.
Five percent of that group took 90 percent of the money12. The top 1 percent, roughly 120 people, cleared more than half on their own.
A companion ranking finds that many top-ranked firms count OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic or Perplexity as their best-scoring deal3. Anyone budgeting for AI this year is budgeting around a small group of firms.
Who Actually Wins at Venture Capital
Jackson and Strebulaev built the largest dataset of individual venture investors ever assembled1. It covers more than 100,000 people who worked at U.S. VC firms over three decades2.
Just 38 percent of VCs with at least one investment land a real win2. A real win means an IPO, a unicorn valuation or a sale worth five times the capital raised. Only 15 percent land three or more such wins. The other 95 percent of the group split the remaining 10 percent of all profit1.
Strebulaev and Jackson give the top 1 percent's share only as "more than half," with 50 percent as the floor they report2.
Ilya Strebulaev put the goal of the project plainly. "To understand why some VCs are super successful and others are not, it is very important to get a full picture on every single player in the VC ecosystem," he said2.
Five Percent of VCs Claim 90 of Every 100 Profit Dollars
Share of $1.2 trillion in net VC profit, 1996 to 2025, one cube per percentage point
Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research [1]; Stanford Graduate School of Business [2]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Kept by the top 5 percent of VCs | 90 |
| Split among the other 95 percent | 10 |
| Whole | 100 |
What Separates the Five Percent
Among VCs with six or more successful deals, 52 percent studied a STEM subject as undergraduates2. Thirty-seven percent held a degree from an elite business school. Stanford's own MBA graduates showed up most often among them.
Where a VC started mattered too. People who began as junior associates were up to 83 percentage points less likely to make partner2. Those who started one level higher, as a vice president or principal, fared far better.
Jackson and Strebulaev describe that gap as a matter of background, more than years served. "VC professionals with particular backgrounds, namely, specialized skills, knowledge, networks, or work experience, not necessarily those with junior VC experience, are more likely to become senior-level VCs," they wrote2.
The gender gap is wide too. Women make up 16 percent of all VCs in the sample. Only 5.4 percent of VCs with six or more wins are women2.
The Same Names Fund Today's AI Labs
A separate ranking scores 230,000 investments by nearly 13,000 venture capitalists3. It ranks 100 firms, from the same two researchers. Sequoia Capital tops that list. Andreessen Horowitz ranks second, ahead of Accel, DST Global and Tiger Global.
Of those 100 firms, 23 count a frontier-AI or AI-infrastructure company as their single best investment3. OpenAI is the top deal for four firms. xAI takes that spot at three, and Anthropic and Perplexity each hold it at two.
Marc Andreessen co-founded the firm sitting second on that list. The ranking draws on a 30-year window, close to the span of the profit study3.
The Top 1 Percent of VCs Already Clear Half of All Profit
Cumulative share of $1.2 trillion in VC profit against cumulative share of VCs, ranked richest first, 1996 to 2025
Each point is one slice of VCs ranked richest first; the lit line traces how fast their combined profit share climbs, and the point at 1 percent already clears half.
Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research [1]; Stanford Graduate School of Business [2]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Name | Share of VCs, richest first | Cumulative share of profit |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1% of VCs | 1% | 50% |
| Top 5% of VCs | 5% | 90% |
| All VCs | 100% | 100% |
Skill, or Just an Early Seat
Jackson and Strebulaev read their own numbers as evidence of skill. "A small number of 'superstar' venture capitalists, with particular backgrounds, enjoy the bulk of the rewards of venture capital investing," they wrote2.
Keith Teare, a venture investor who writes The State of Venture, made a similar point about Strebulaev's separate ranking of angel investors4. "Every lifetime leaderboard has the same bias. It rewards being early to companies that were often founded a decade or more ago," he wrote.
Dan Gray of The Odin Times raised a related point about the firm ranking's math5. "Strebulaev and Jackson also designed a methodology which emphasises scale, by using a cumulative score of outcomes without balancing that against the capital deployed or the number of investments," he wrote.
Teare points to timing, and Gray to scale. Read together, their points suggest a long head start can inflate a lifetime score.
Jackson and Strebulaev's own profit study tracks whole careers across three decades12. Within those careers, education, work experience and demographics predict outcomes, which the paper calls consistent with persistent investor-specific skill.
What to Do
- Ask any VC pitching you how its track record breaks down by decade. A top-100 score built from lifetime deals rewards an early stake in a company founded years ago. Ask when its best deals actually closed34.
- Weigh a firm's AI stake against its founding date. Eight of the top 20 firms predate 2000, though 21 of the top 100 were founded in 2015 or later3. Ask how a fund's AI stake compares with its age.
- Treat a single superstar hire as one data point among many. The study ties repeat success to STEM training, an elite MBA and a senior entry point. One hire with that profile raises a fund's odds. Thirty years of access still takes thirty years to build2.
By the Numbers
- Sample: Jackson and Strebulaev tracked 12,000-plus VCs with at least one investment, 1996 to 20251.
- Total profit: Those VCs split $1.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted net profit2.
- Top 5 percent: That slice of investors took 90 percent of the total12.
- Richest sliver: The top 1 percent, roughly 120 people, took more than half of all profit2.
- Hit rate: Only 38 percent of VCs with one investment land even one real win; just 15 percent land three or more2.
- Credentials: 52 percent of VCs with six or more wins studied STEM as undergraduates, and 37 percent held an elite MBA2.
- Gender gap: Women are 16 percent of all VCs in the sample, and 5.4 percent of VCs with six or more wins2.
- AI link: OpenAI tops four of the top 100 firms' portfolios, xAI tops three, and Anthropic and Perplexity top two each3.
What to Watch
Public filings from AI labs would show whether their venture backers' stakes clear the returns this study tracks13. Watch which firms outside today's top 100 manage to land a position in the next frontier lab. A new name on that list would show whether a fund can still build access fast, apart from three decades of head start.
Sources
- Blake Jackson and Ilya A. Strebulaev, "Human Capital in Venture Capital: Evidence From 100,000 Venture Capitalists," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 35501, July 2026, https://www.nber.org/papers/w35501
- Dave Gilson, "Just 5% of VCs Make Most of the Profits," Stanford Graduate School of Business, Oct. 8, 2026, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/just-5-vcs-make-most-profits
- Ilya Strebulaev, "The 100 Best-Performing VC Firms, Ranked by Score," The VC Corner, Aug. 22, 2026, https://www.thevccorner.com/p/100-best-performing-vc-firms-ranking-2026
- Keith Teare, "From Venture Rankings to Venture Decisions," The State of Venture, July 10, 2026, https://www.thestateofventure.com/p/from-venture-rankings-to-venture
- Dan Gray, "Ranking Venture Capital Firms," The Odin Times, Aug. 23, 2026, https://blog.joinodin.com/p/ranking-venture-capital-firms