Which investors are actually active right now

Most investor lists are a record of every firm that ever wrote a check. That is a poor place to start a raise: some of those firms are between funds, winding down, or only supporting companies they already own. The useful question is narrower. Who has put new money to work recently, on the public record?

This guide explains how ZInvestorHunting answers that from SEC filings, how many investors pass the test today, and who the most active venture firms and syndicates are. Every figure is computed from our database and updates when the data is rebuilt.

How we measure activity

An investor’s last activity is the most recent of two kinds of date from SEC Form D filings:

• the date it filed a new Form D notice for one of its funds or deal vehicles (amendments don’t count, because a fund files one every year while it is raising, whether or not anything changed in its investing), or
• the date a startup that lists one of its partners as a director first filed Form D, which we count as a board seat.

An investor is active when its last activity falls within the last 12 months. Its activity count is the number of new funds, deal vehicles and board seats in the 12 months before the data build (Oct 14, 2026). The full rules, including how vehicles are matched to firms, are in the methodology.

How many are active

Of the 8,009 US investors in the directory, 2,952 (36.9%) are active by this test. The other 5,057 keep their profiles, but our listings don’t show them; they are still reachable through the A to Z index. 803 active investors opened a new venture fund of at least $5M in the last 12 months, which is a stronger sign of fresh capital than a deal vehicle.

Investors listed

8,009

Active, 12 months

2,952

Active, 90 days

922

New fund, 12 months

803

Recent activity looks thinner than it is. The SEC publishes Form D data sets quarterly, so our newest filing is dated Sep 30, 2026, and anything filed since then appears only after the next rebuild. Read the shorter windows below with that lag in mind.

How active is active

1,971 of the 2,952 active investors (66.8%) have an activity count of one or less, and 79 have ten or more.

Active investors by type

Venture firms (1,833) and syndicates (1,090) together make up 99% of the active list. Angels are under-represented because an angel writing a personal check rarely files anything, and accelerators are few because the directory recognises them by name.

Why the counts favour syndicates

The activity count measures filings, not dollars. A syndicate or SPV platform forms a new vehicle, and files a new Form D, for each deal. A venture firm invests from an existing fund without a new filing for each deal, so its new deals show up only when a partner joins a startup’s board and the startup’s filing names them. So a syndicate with forty vehicles has not necessarily invested more than a firm with four board seats, and the two lists below are kept apart for that reason.

A high count also says nothing about whether an investor leads rounds, or about the size of what it invests. Use it to tell investors that are deploying from those that have gone quiet, not to rank them.

Most active venture firms

Most active syndicates

The full lists, ordered the same way, are on the venture firms and syndicates pages. “Latest new fund” is the first filing date of the investor’s newest venture fund of $5M or more; the new funds report and last quarter’s new funds list them as they are filed.

Active investors by sector, with typical checks

Sectors come from the startups an investor has backed, its fund names and its website. The check columns give the median low and high ends of the check-size ranges on active investors’ profiles in that sector. Those ranges are what the investor’s website states when it does, and otherwise estimates: the middle range of SPV sizes for syndicates and angels, about 1 to 3% of fund size for funds. Ranges we consider implausible (top more than 25 times the bottom, or above $100M) are left out, as they are on profiles.

Active investors by state

By the investor’s main office, from its SEC adviser record or its filings. Syndicates are left out of this table because their vehicles are mostly filed from a platform’s address, which says little about where the sponsor is.

Using this in a raise

1. Start from the active list for your sector and state, not the full directory. Every listing page on this site already shows active investors only.
2. Prefer investors with a new fund in the last year or a board seat in the last few months. Both are dated on each profile, with a link to the filing.
3. Check the size of what they do against your round, using the fund size and check range on the profile.
4. Treat a long gap since the last filing as a question to ask, not a verdict. Some firms invest through vehicles that don’t file Form D.

Limits

Form D covers only raises that file one, and filings can be late, amended or silent about who invested. Board seats are attributed when a startup’s filing names a person we know to be a partner at the firm, which misses deals where the firm took no seat. Sector, stage and check size are inferences unless the investor’s website states them. For what each Form D field means, read how to read a Form D filing. Nothing here is investment advice.