Founders often look up the average startup acquisition price when a buyer opens price discussions, when planning an exit, or when testing a valuation. But the figure depends on which deals are counted. A venture-backed software company, a bootstrapped SaaS business, and a company selling under financial pressure attract very different offers, and geography, profitability, deal terms, and price disclosure all change the comparison. One average can describe a small set of publicly reported deals and sit far from the outcome a typical founder should expect.
The NVCA 2026 Yearbook reports a $564.8 million average and a $150 million median for U.S. venture-backed M&A transactions with disclosed values in 2025. Only 193 of the 1,396 tracked acquisitions disclosed a purchase price, or 13.8%. Both figures describe that disclosed subset.
This report draws on four published documents from two research families, PitchBook/NVCA and Acquire.com, reviewed on October 20, 2026. It covers acquisition prices and disclosure rates for 2021–2025 and a separate SaaS net-income-multiple comparison for 2024–2025. The Q3 2026 Venture Monitor provides reporting context and definitions; the headline prices are 2025 observations, not full-year 2026 estimates.
The tables do not blend the two research families into one figure. Documents from the same family share underlying data and are not independent corroboration of each other. Yury Zabella publishes this research as an original compilation of the cited source data.
Average and Median Startup Acquisition Price: 2025
The table below reports the 2025 mean and median for U.S. venture-backed acquisitions with disclosed prices, alongside the size of the disclosed sample. The mean ran well above the midpoint deal.
The U.S. Venture-Backed Startup Acquisition Price Benchmark: 2025
Source: NVCA 2026 Yearbook (PitchBook data), U.S. VC-backed M&A value table. Dollar figures are as reported; the disclosure share is calculated from the yearbook’s counts.
The mean averages every disclosed deal value, and the median is the midpoint of that price distribution. A few very large deals can pull the mean far above the median, so the mean overstates what a typical startup receives. The median is the better read on a typical disclosed deal, and it still leaves out every undisclosed acquisition. Both describe observed transactions. Neither is an appraisal of any individual company.
PitchBook counts the first majority liquidity event, such as a corporate or financial acquisition of most of the equity. Its M&A figures leave out IPOs, which are tracked as a separate exit type, along with secondary sales, further sales after the initial liquidity event, and bankruptcies. That keeps this benchmark focused on acquisitions.
Startup Acquisition Price Trends: 2021–2025
Disclosed acquisition prices moved unevenly between 2021 and 2025, and the most recent year breaks from the pattern. The table below reports the annual mean and median for U.S. venture-backed acquisitions with disclosed values, using the same population as the 2025 benchmark above.
The U.S. Venture-Backed Acquisition Price Trend: 2021–2025
Source: NVCA 2026 Yearbook (PitchBook data); data as of December 31, 2025. M = million U.S. dollars.
Figure 1. Mean and median acquisition prices for disclosed U.S. venture-backed M&A transactions, 2021–2025. Each point is an annual observation; undisclosed prices are not estimated.
Key Insights
- The 2025 median of $150 million was 2.5 times the 2024 median of $60 million and the highest in the five-year series. The median bottomed at $40 million in 2023, so the typical disclosed deal grew 3.75 times in two years.
- The mean was between 3.4 and 5.1 times the median every year, and 3.8 times in 2025. A few very large deals have always pulled the average up, so the size of that gap in 2025 is not new.
- The 2025 prices come from the smallest disclosed sample in the period: 193 priced deals, compared with 533 in 2021. Some of the year-over-year change may reflect which companies chose to disclose a price, not only what buyers paid.
Startup Acquisition Activity in 2026: Year to Date
No 2026 mean or median acquisition price has been published yet. PitchBook and NVCA report those figures once a year in the yearbook, so the first full-year 2026 benchmark should appear in the 2027 edition. The Q3 2026 Venture Monitor does report year-to-date activity through September 30, 2026.
U.S. venture-backed acquisition value reached $465.3 billion in the first three quarters of 2026, the highest level in a decade. That figure is a total across deals with reported values, not an average, and a single deal drives much of it: SpaceX’s $60 billion all-stock purchase of Cursor made up 53.1% of third-quarter exit value. Without Cursor, Q3 exits totaled $53 billion, the lowest quarter since Q4 2024.
Other third-quarter acquisitions show how widely outcomes vary. Salesforce paid $3.6 billion for Fin and Autodesk acquired MaintainX for $3.6 billion, while Bending Spoons bought Airtable for $1.3 billion, down from an $11.7 billion prior valuation. Because a few very large deals dominate the 2026 total, the year-to-date figure can’t be turned into a typical price and isn’t a substitute for the 2025 median above.
Source: Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor; data as of September 30, 2026.
Startup Acquisition Price Disclosure Coverage: 2021–2025
A price benchmark is only as broad as the transactions behind it. The table below shows how much of each year’s tracked acquisition activity contributes to the published price statistics.
The U.S. Venture-Backed Acquisition Price Disclosure Record: 2021–2025
Source: NVCA 2026 Yearbook (PitchBook data). Share = disclosed-price acquisitions ÷ all tracked acquisitions × 100, rounded to one decimal place.
Figure 2. Share of tracked U.S. venture-backed acquisitions that disclosed a price, 2021–2025, calculated from NVCA yearbook counts.
In 2025, 1,203 tracked acquisitions had no disclosed value (1,396 total minus 193 disclosed). That leaves 86.2% outside the observed-price sample, and PitchBook doesn’t estimate the value of deals whose size is unknown.
An undisclosed price says nothing about whether a company sold for a little or a lot, or at a loss. The limit is narrower: the published table can’t produce a mean or median across all tracked acquisitions. Anyone using these figures for exit planning should treat the disclosed subset as one slice of the market. For the company-level factors buyers weigh, see the separate guide to five things that lower your business valuation.
Smaller SaaS Acquisition Net-Income Multiples: 2024–2025
Smaller SaaS businesses need a different benchmark from venture-backed acquisitions measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. The table below uses Acquire.com’s marketplace data, a net-income-based benchmark covering a separate population of sellers. It is not an alternative estimate of the venture-backed dollar prices above.
The Acquire.com Confirmed SaaS Sale-Price-to-Net-Income Multiple: 2024–2025
Source: Acquire.com, Biannual Acquisition Multiples Report (Jan 2026) and its acquisition-multiples report. Multiples are sale price divided by net income, separate from revenue multiples and dollar purchase prices.
Acquire.com says its marketplace data typically reflects businesses with enterprise values below $10 million. The report relies on anonymized, customer-provided information, and the publisher says it can verify transaction details for acquisitions completed on its platform. That is the publisher’s own verification, without an independent audit.
The PDF reports a separate sample for each chart; the SaaS net-income chart lists 129 reporting deals for 2025. These medians are marketplace observations from a changing set of sellers, so an unchanged median doesn’t mean a given SaaS company would have received the same offer in both years.
Because the multiple divides sale price by net income, it can’t be compared directly with the dollar-price mean in the first table. Applying it to a specific company requires a verified net-income figure built on the same definition as the report. For earnings-based benchmarks across larger private transactions, see the average EBITDA multiple by industry report.
Technology founders preparing financial records for a sale can find more on fractional CFO support for tech companies and exit planning.
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Sources
- Yury Zabella. Average Startup Acquisition Price: October 2026. San Francisco, CA. October 20, 2026. Original secondary-source compilation and analysis of the publications below.
- National Venture Capital Association and PitchBook. NVCA 2026 Yearbook. U.S. VC-backed M&A value table (deal counts, disclosed-value counts, mean and median deal size). Data as of December 31, 2025. https://nvca.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/NVCA-2026-Yearbook-4.9.26.pdf
- PitchBook and NVCA. Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Exit methodology and disclosed-value definitions; data as of September 30, 2026. Shares a data provider with the yearbook. https://nvca.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Q3-2026-PitchBook-NVCA-Venture-Monitor.pdf
- Acquire.com. 2025 Insights: Acquisition Multiples Report. Confirmed SaaS net income multiples and chart-specific reporting counts. https://blog.acquire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Acquire.com-Multiples-Report-2025.pdf
- Veronica Buratini, Acquire.com. Biannual Acquisition Multiples Report (Jan 2026). Published February 11, 2026; updated September 1, 2026. SaaS median multiples, marketplace scope, and data limitations. https://blog.acquire.com/acquire-com-biannual-acquisition-multiples-report-jan-2026/
