What is a bridge round, and how common is it?

A bridge round is money raised between priced rounds, usually from existing investors and usually without a new valuation. According to Carta, the US equity management platform, about 40% of all rounds raised by seed-stage companies in 2024 were bridge rounds rather than new priced rounds.

Founders meet the term twice: once when an investor suggests one, and once when a later investor asks why there was one. Both conversations go better if everyone is using the word in the same way, which is less obvious than it sounds, because the published numbers about bridge rounds are counted in two different ways.

This guide explains what a bridge round is, what the data says about how common they are, and why two correct figures can look like they contradict each other. It is general information, not investment advice.

What is a bridge round?

Money raised inside an existing round rather than at a new price. A priced round, such as a Series A, gives the company a new valuation and a new class of shares. A bridge round, also called an extension round, usually does neither: the company issues convertible loan notes or similar instruments to existing or new investors, or existing investors add money on the terms of the previous round.

Carta, the US equity management platform, draws the line the same way in its own data. It treats the first equity round within a series as the primary round, and any round raised after that within the same series as a bridge.

Source: Carta (US), State of Private Markets: Q4 and 2024 in review, methodology

How common are bridge rounds?

Common at the early stages and rising as a share of money. According to Carta, the US platform, about 40% of all venture rounds raised by seed-stage companies in 2024 were bridge rounds, up from 36% in 2023. At Series A the share of rounds went the other way, from 40% in 2023 to 38% in 2024.

Measured in money rather than in deals, the picture is different. Carta, the US platform, reported that 16.6% of all cash raised by companies on its platform in the second quarter of 2025 came through bridge rounds, against 11.8% a year earlier. At Series A, bridges accounted for 22.5% of the cash raised that quarter.

Sources:
Carta (US), State of Private Markets: Q4 and 2024 in review
Carta (US), Compared to a year ago, more VC cash is going to bridge rounds

Why do deals and dollars give different answers?

Because they answer different questions. The share of deals asks how many financing events were bridges. The share of dollars asks how much of the money went into bridges. Bridge rounds are usually smaller than priced rounds, so they make up a bigger slice of the deal count than of the cash.

That is why the two figures should never be added, averaged or swapped for one another. A sentence that starts with the share of seed deals and ends with a share of capital raised is not a stronger claim, it is a broken one. When you read a bridge-round statistic anywhere, the first thing worth checking is the denominator, and the second is the period it covers.

Why do companies raise one?

To buy time, most often. A bridge extends the runway to a milestone, a customer contract or a better market, without having to agree a valuation today. Carta, the US platform, links the rise in bridge rounds to slower exit activity and fewer new priced rounds: when the next step takes longer, companies top up rather than reprice.

The intervals bear that out. Carta reports a median wait of 696 days between primary funding rounds across all stages in the second quarter of 2025, and the full picture of those gaps is in seed to Series A timing. In Europe, Orrick's review of its 2025 financings found later-stage companies increasingly structuring these as formal extensions of an existing series rather than as standalone bridges, so the existing terms and governance stay in place.

Sources:
Carta (US), Compared to a year ago, more VC cash is going to bridge rounds
Orrick, Deal Flow 6.0, European Venture Capital Deal Term Review 2025 to 2026, page 15

Does a bridge round make the next round harder?

Not by itself. A bridge is a financing event, not a verdict, and the data shows it is an ordinary one. What the next investor looks at is what the bridge bought: the instruments issued, the price they convert at, the discount and any cap, and whether the milestone the money was raised for was reached.

That means the paperwork matters more than the label. Convertible instruments that are not properly documented turn into a cap-table problem at the next round, which is one of the recurring findings in due diligence red flags. What a repriced round looks like, and how often it happens now, is in what a down round is.

There is also a version of this question that has nothing to do with investors. Money that does not cost shares can cover part of the same gap, and for a company running research in the Netherlands the usual first source is described in what WBSO is and what it is worth. The wider argument for that order is in Equity-free money first.

Sources

1. Carta (US), State of Private Markets: Q4 and 2024 in review, checked 22 September 2026
2. Carta (US), Compared to a year ago, more VC cash is going to bridge rounds, checked 22 September 2026
3. Orrick, Deal Flow 6.0, European Venture Capital Deal Term Review 2025 to 2026 (PDF), checked 22 September 2026

Checked on 22 September 2026. This page is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change: check the official source, or ask an adviser, before you act on it.