Investment crowdfunding entered 2026 with noticeably less momentum than 2025. Kingscrowd recorded $365.2 million of investment volume across Reg CF and Reg A+ offerings during the first half, down approximately 28% year over year - but still above H1 2023 and 2024. Both exemptions declined at nearly the same rate, while the number of newly launched Reg CF offerings fell by almost one-third. May 2026 produced the lowest Reg CF investment volume for the month of May since 2019 before activity rebounded sharply in June.

But the market was not uniformly weak. Reg A+ strengthened during the second quarter, and the median successful Reg CF raise increased 12.3% even as overall investment volume declined. Our H1 2026 report uses interactive charts to show where capital concentrated, which platforms led the market, what investors were buying, and what the data could signal for the second half of 2026. Kingscrowd Edge members will also get a special, Edge-only email later with a link to an exclusive successful-raise benchmarks and a watchlist of leading offerings that remained open after H1.

Healthcare real estate is often viewed as one of the more resilient areas of private investing—but the operator, tenants, underwriting, and execution still make all the difference.

Join Kingscrowd CEO Chris Lustrino and Dr. Steven Kaufman, Founder & CEO of Zeus Companies, today at 2pm ET / 11am PT for a live discussion on how experienced investors evaluate medical office buildings, outpatient facilities, and healthcare developments.

They’ll also examine lessons from a Zeus project built through COVID and ultimately exited near its original projections, offering a real-world example of disciplined underwriting through a volatile market.

Mobile gaming is a massive market, and Influence Mobile has built a profitable niche helping game developers find and retain high-value players. This week on Inside Startup Investing, Chris Lustrino speaks with Influence Mobile CEO Daniel Todd about Rewarded Play, the surprising audience driving mobile game spending, the company’s $28 million revenue base, and why Influence Mobile is raising from the users who already love its app.

Listen in your browser

By Teddy Lyons \ Deal Report

Brief: Skybound, valued at $700 million, is raising funds on DealMaker Securities to expand its entertainment and IP business across comics, games, film, and television. The company controls hundreds of intellectual properties, including major franchises like The Walking Dead and Invincible, with The Walking Dead ranking as the most-watched cable show of all time and Invincible driving top global revenue on Prime Video in Q2 2024.

Teddy’s Quick Take: 

Today’s pitch review is going to be a brief dive into what the late Charlie Munger referred to as “BS earnings”: EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation + amortization) and its cousin adjusted EBITDA.

I know it sounds boring, but bear with me, as I think it’s a valuable lesson to learn as we see more later stage companies raising in equity crowdfunding.

The company we’ll be reviewing is Skybound Entertainment, a massive comic book IP company with over $110M in revenue raising at a $700M valuation. The company owns the IP to one of the most popular shows ever, The Walking Dead. Overall, Skybound controls the IP of 250+ franchises, with Walking Dead and Invincible as its two flagship names.

In 2025, the company reported a net income loss of -$20.2M. At first glance, it looks like Skybound is hemorrhaging cash. However, the company reports an adjusted EBITDA of positive $10.5M. Adjusted EBITDA takes net income and adds back expenses management considers either non-cash (like depreciation) or non-recurring (like severance), aiming to show the underlying profitability of core operations. But it’s a non-GAAP metric, so investors should scrutinize it closely.

In Skybounds case, the company is essentially recording a $30M swing from -$20M in net income to $10M in "profitability". Some of their add-backs are standard: depreciation and amortization ($8.9M), income tax expense ($8.6M), and net interest expense ($366k). Every company can and should add these back, since they reflect financing choices, tax situations, and past investments rather than how the core business is performing day-to-day. Just looking at these, Skybound has an EBITDA of roughly -$2.4M

Now comes the "adjusted" part. The largest item is a $5.4M non-cash remeasurement of a co-financing liability tied to the company's Invincible VS co-financing arrangement. I'll dig into this more in the analyst report, but essentially the remeasurement is Skybound updating its estimate of how much of Invincible VS's future revenue it owes its financing partner. While this is a non-cash adjustment today, it is a claim on future revenues, so I'd say it's impactful.

There's also $4.5M in equity-based compensation, which nearly every company adds back, but it will add to future dilution. The rest is an assortment of items management deems non-recurring or non-operational: pre-launch marketing ($1.3M), inventory and returns adjustments ($920k), recruiting and severance ($491k), change in fair value of a derivative ($443k), unrealized foreign exchange ($260k), impairments of software, IP, and TV/film ($666k combined), and non-recurring corporate development projects ($72k). To the company's credit, one adjustment actually cuts the other way: a $1.2M gain on acquisitions and dissolutions that they subtracted from the total rather than quietly keeping. Add it all up and the adjustment layer nets to roughly $12.8M, which bridges the -$2.4M EBITDA to the reported $10.5M adjusted EBITDA.

So, to recap our journey: the company had -$20.2M in net income, reported an adjusted EBITDA of $10.5M, while regular EBITDA sits at -$2.4M. The lesson here is when you see adjusted EBITDA, pull up the reconciliation table and rebuild the number yourself. Deciding which add-backs you buy is half the analysis. 

Kingscrowd Hits the NASCAR Track

Kingscrowd made its NASCAR Cup Series debut this weekend as an associate sponsor of Garage 66’s No. 66 Ford at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Driven by Chad Finchum, the car completed 303 laps before a rear-gear issue ended its race, resulting in a 35th-place finish. Keep an eye out for the Kingscrowd name again when Garage 66 returns for the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on September 6.

Barricade Thereapeutics

By Teddy Lyons

Barricade Therapeutics is a preclinical biotech developing an oral drug for the roughly 80% of colorectal cancer patients with APC mutations. The company is approaching Phase I human clinical trials with $17M in non-dilutive funding and American Cancer Society support.

Accelevate

By Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau

AI has already made office work faster and cheaper. The next step is bringing it into the physical world, where the savings can be even more tangible. That's what caught my attention with Accelevate. Rather than building another AI copilot, the company is applying AI to fleet management, an industry where better decisions can directly reduce fuel, maintenance, and downtime. I also expected the valuation to be much higher. At a $10 million valuation, it's surprisingly reasonable for an AI company, especially one that already has more than 1,000 vehicles under signed management contracts. Is this a great deal, or is there a catch?

Avadain

By Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau

Avadain is one of those companies that has grown thanks to the support of online investors. Since its last round, it has disclosed its first manufacturing license agreement with Harcros Chemicals, reported that customer qualification testing is underway, and indicated that its pilot production facility is under construction. But Avadain is also falling into a trap that too many companies raising multiple rounds online eventually fall into: the valuation is simply getting too high.

That's a wrap on this week's issue!

Thanks for reading — your time and attention are what make the Kingscrowd newsletter worth building. If you found something useful this week, forward it to a fellow investor.