Tague summarizes six 2024 VC trends built from AlphaSense platform data, led by a record dry powder surplus of over $300 billion at Q1 2024, remnants of the 2021-2022 fundraising boom, with 93% of CEOs in an EY survey planning to maintain or increase corporate VC investment even as US venture funding fell nearly 30% in 2022 and another 40% in 2023. Generative AI is framed as reshaping due diligence, with over 75% of VC executive reviews projected to incorporate AI and data analytics by 2025, while investors grow more selective, no longer treating a strong valuation alone as sufficient and instead favoring startups with experienced leadership and customer-centric products over loosely vetted mega-raises common in 2021. IT, healthcare and biotech, and business and financial services led Q1 2024 funding with over $100 million rounds each, alongside a $1.5 billion raise for Generate Capital in sustainable infrastructure, and the piece points to early IPO recovery signs, citing Reddit's 48% first-day pop and Astera Labs' 72% gain as evidence investor demand for tech offerings, especially those with an AI angle, remains strong.

Founders raising in 2024 get a concise explanation for why the funding bar had genuinely risen, since investors are shown moving decisively away from valuation-only conviction toward requiring proven leadership and customer traction, a useful expectation check for anyone still benchmarking against looser 2021-era standards. Investors evaluating due diligence workflows get a practical breakdown of specific AI use cases already reshaping the process, financial analysis, market research, forecasting, and competitive comparison, offering a concrete checklist for where to apply AI tools rather than a vague sense that AI will change venture investing. The specific IPO comparisons, Reddit and Astera Labs' strong first-day trading pops, give founders and investors a dated, checkable pair of data points for gauging whether the 2024 exit market recovery was real momentum or an isolated blip, useful context alongside the other Q1 2024 venture reports already in this archive.