Welcome back to GTM Exclusives. Every two weeks we dig into our own data and bring you important GTM trends, allowing you to act on them before anyone else can.
In this issue: growth at all costs is now only viable for AI businesses awash with private capital, leaving non-AI companies to pay for growth out of their own revenue.
By the end of this issue, you'll know how far funding cycles have stretched and where it's worst, why these companies are still growing anyway, and what all of this changes about how you sell to them.
Funding gaps are widening for large businesses
Large companies that used to raise money every 2 years and 4 months are now going an average 5 years and 5 months without raising.
That's more than double the gap they used to run on. 59% of the roughly 4,900 companies we looked at have gone longer than they normally would between rounds. 46% have gone more than twice as long.
Nowhere is this more visible than in software. Across 163 companies in our dataset, 71.8% of them have gone longer than usual without funding, making software the most affected major sector in our data. This industry used to raise around every 2 years, and now averages 5.2 years since the previous round. Business services is a close second at 64.3%.
The effect is also sharpest in the middle of the market. 66% of companies with 1,000 to 5,000 staff have gone longer than usual, against 50% of those with more than 10,000.
To clarify the gap between the two sizes: the biggest companies aren't being cut off from money altogether; they grew out of needing to raise it. Apple hasn't raised in a decade because it simply doesn't need to, and self-funding at that scale has always been normal.
The companies in the middle pose a totally different story. They've raised on a schedule for years. They'd raise again; they just can't get the funding on the terms that they used to.
So, how did we land on these numbers?
It wouldn't have been right to only ask when a company last raised, because plenty of companies never raise at all, so a long gap on its own wouldn't tell you anything worthwhile. Instead, we compared each company against its own funding history, across nearly 5,000 of the largest companies in our data.
Every company in this group has raised before, more than once, on a regular pattern. And now, the pattern's changed.
Why this is most likely happening
In the first half of 2026, 86% of all private deal value went to AI companies, according to PitchBook. And no, that's not 86% of the deals; it's how much of the actual money.
And capital didn't dry up; there's more money around than ever before. It's gone almost entirely to one category, and everything sitting next to that category is competing for what's left.
This is the most likely reason these gaps have stretched, which really matters for how you think about these companies. A company that hasn't raised in five years probably isn't in trouble. It's competing for money in a market where most of the money is going somewhere else.
But plenty of capital-starved companies are still growing and hiring
43% of the companies where we could check both funding history and headcount have grown their teams, even though it's been over two years since they last raised funding.
This is the largest group in the data. Bigger than the well-funded companies adding headcount, and bigger than the ones cutting back after a long gap since their last raise.
Growing while paying for it out of their own revenue is now the most common state a large company is in.
And these don't appear to be companies in distress. These are companies with customers, revenue, and hiring plans they're actually executing on. What's changed is where the money for those plans comes from.
What this suggests
These companies have been paying for growth out of their own cash for years. This suggests a change in how they're run, rather than a short-term reaction to a bad patch.
There are three things that this information suggests:
A company that's funded three years of growth from its own revenue may not go back to raising the moment it has the opportunity to. It's built a different set of habits around spending, and habits like that tend to hold.
There's no sign of the money moving away from AI any time soon. If anything, the pull appears to be getting even stronger, which means the pool available to everyone else keeps shrinking.
This doesn't look like a temporary trend. Companies appear to be settling into a new way of paying for growth, rather than holding out for market conditions to improve.
How to sell to these companies differently
The message has to match how the company is growing.
Growth at all costs is not how these larger businesses operate any more. They pay for growth out of their own revenue, so a pitch built for a company spending fresh investment money doesn't fit. The business case has to be stronger.
Here's what that means in practice.
Start with how the account is funded
Many teams sort their target accounts by company size, industry and buying signals. Fewer look at where the company gets its money from.
Add funding history to your account research, then split your list into two:
Accounts that have raised recently.
Accounts that have gone a lot longer than they used to between rounds.
It's likely these two groups will need different outreach, discovery questions and sales processes. The points below are what these differences look like.
The money comes from a different pocket
Investment money pays for aggressive transformation. Operating cash pays for things that pay for themselves. Nothing about the company or the need has changed, but the business case has to.
Sellers tend to underestimate how much scrutiny this case gets. Finance approvers reject a lot of what reaches them, and it's usually because someone made up the cost assumptions, inflated the ROI to make it work, or promised better efficiency without putting a number on it.
Your business case has to make it easy for finance to say yes. Get it on one page and be specific about the return and the timeline. You must model it realistically — best, base and worst case — rather than one perfect number.
And most importantly, the champion has to own it. Build the case with them so they can defend every figure when you're not in the room.
The payback window shrinks
You can't realistically pitch a three-year payoff to someone who's still spending this year's budget.
Under twelve months, ideally under a quarter even. The case also has to stand up to more scrutiny than it used to, because the money is coming out of a budget line someone is personally accountable for.
That usually means a smaller first purchase than you'd like. These accounts buy the piece that pays back, prove it, then expand from what it returns.
Urgency has to come from you
It's highly likely that a company spending fresh investment money is contending with runway, board milestones and aggressive growth targets. A company paying its own way may not have as many of those pressures.
Nothing forces the decision, so you have to bring the reason to move.
Quantify the cost of delay. What does another quarter without this actually cost them, in money they can see on a report? If you can't put a number on that, find a deadline the company already has: budget planning, contract renewals, audits, or the end of the fiscal year.
So how do you get the conversation to move? Attach your decision to a deadline they already have, so it inherits their urgency instead of needing yours.
The final word
Where the funding went is public knowledge, but what nobody else can show is that layer deeper: the comparison of 4,900 of the largest companies against their own funding history, counting only the ones with a record long enough to compare against.
And to summarise, most large companies are now growing without new funding, which changes what they can buy, and how they buy it.
I'll see you again soon with another trend from our data.
— Dennis
