The Midas List is built on the premise that the venture capitalists who consistently generate the strongest investment outcomes should be identifiable through the quality and performance of the companies they back—not merely by industry reputation or brand prestige. The Midas List ranking of the top 100 venture capital investors is built from scratch to measure that using verified data on exits, acquisitions and private valuations.

Each year, Forbes and TrueBridge ranks the top 100 venture investors whose investments have produced the most significant outcomes across the global startup ecosystem. It is one of the industry’s most comprehensive performance-driven assessments of venture investing.

Measuring venture capital performance is inherently difficult. Unlike in public markets, venture ownership stakes, fund returns and portfolio marks are largely private. Many of the industry’s most valuable companies remain privately held for years or even decades. The Midas methodology is designed as a consistent, data-driven framework for identifying where meaningful value creation is occurring across both public and private technology markets using a mix of confidentially submitted data directly from firms as well as public information.

This year’s rankings arrive at a defining moment for venture capital. Artificial intelligence accounted for nearly two-thirds of total venture deal value, with a concentrated group of private companies commanding valuations that are reshaping pricing benchmarks across every stage of the market. That concentration of capital — and the investors positioned behind it — is increasingly reflected in the movement of the rankings themselves.

Producing the Midas List is a months-long process that begins each January, when venture firms around the world are invited to confidentially submit portfolio and investment data. Forbes and TrueBridge conduct parallel outreach to investors who have not historically participated in the process, with particular focus on emerging managers, newer sectors and underrepresented geographies. The goal is to build a dataset that reflects the actual distribution of venture returns across the market, not simply the firms that attract the most attention. Investors that choose not to submit data are still considered for inclusion based on public data and Forbes reporting.

To qualify for the Midas List, an investor must have backed companies that either:

• went public or were acquired for at least $200 million, or
• remain private with current valuations of at least $400 million.

The Midas Seed List applies a lower threshold designed to capture earlier-stage success:

• exits valued at $50 million or more, or
• private valuations of at least $100 million.

The model is intentionally designed to prioritize recent investing performance. Newer investments receive progressively greater weighting. The result is a rolling framework that rewards current judgment.

That means even landmark wins eventually age out of the rankings. An investor who backed a historic IPO five years ago will see that investment contribute less to their score each year until it ultimately exits the model entirely. This structure keeps the list dynamic and continuously tied to current portfolios and wins. Investors who have retired, or are no longer investing, are not counted for inclusion in the ranking.

This can materially reshape the rankings year to year. Since last year’s edition, major outcomes such as Airbnb, Snowflake and DoorDash aged out of the scoring window, shifting influence toward newer companies including SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. As the center of gravity in venture evolves, so does the composition of the list itself.

The methodology also reflects broader market conditions. In years when there are fewer IPOs, private company valuations influence the rankings more. In 2026, investors who established meaningful positions in high-value private AI companies have seen a greater advantage relative to periods driven primarily by public-market exits.

But valuation alone is not enough to drive the rankings. The model also incorporates factors including:

• the stage at which capital was deployed – initially and in follow-on rounds,
• the investor’s level of involvement, including board participation, and
• how much value has ultimately been created for limited partners.

These distinctions matter because the Midas List aims to measure genuine investment skill and conviction – not simply proximity to successful companies.

Participation is limited to investors deploying capital on behalf of third-party limited partners. Investors operating solely from personal capital or on behalf of a single corporate balance sheet are excluded, as their incentives and portfolio construction differ materially from institutional venture investing.

Every submitted deal is cross-checked against publicly available financing records, acquisition data, IPO filings, prior Midas submissions and other historical data maintained by the TrueBridge team.

The resulting dataset has expanded significantly alongside the venture industry itself. This year, the average investor appearing on the list reported nearly 16 qualifying investments. Yet the methodology remains designed to reward concentration and quality over sheer activity. A small number of high-conviction, high-return investments will consistently outperform a broader portfolio of marginal outcomes.

Venture capital plays an outsized role in determining which technologies scale, which industries evolve and which founders receive the resources to build enduring companies. But it’s an opaque sector with little visibility into pricing and valuations of startup companies. The objective of the Midas List is to identify the investors demonstrating the strongest judgment in allocating that capital.

Additional details on the Midas methodology and the quantitative factors influencing the rankings can be found at submitmidasdata.com. Investors interested in participating in future submissions can contact midas@truebridgecapital.com to be notified when the next submission window opens.