The venture capital middle market just disappeared and almost nobody noticed. While small deals under fifty million grew 2-3% and mega-rounds over a billion surged 5%, the critical hundred to two-fifty million dollar range where companies prove scale before going huge? Down 3.6% to just 825 deals last quarter. AI is making it worse because startups now build with GPT-4 what used to take fifty engineers and two hundred million dollars, so investors would rather bet tiny on unproven ideas or go massive on clear winners than pay growth premiums for companies stuck proving they can scale.