Startup funding cools
U.S. startup funding slowed sharply in March with fewer megarounds closing, and several fast‑growing AI firms are pivoting toward acquisitions as a liquidity path—TechCrunch flagged Lovable actively hunting acquisitions this week. The twin signals suggest M&A may replace big funding rounds for some AI startups. (news.crunchbase.com) (techcrunch.com)
Crunchbase recorded that U.S. startups raised just around $13 billion in seed-through-growth funding in March 2026, placing the month well below January and February totals. (news.crunchbase.com) Crunchbase attributes the March decline largely to a drop in giant AI megarounds after February’s outsized deals, citing OpenAI’s $110 billion, Anthropic’s $30 billion and Waymo’s $16 billion financings as February drivers. (news.crunchbase.com) TechCrunch reports Lovable is pursuing acquisitions and that co‑founder and CEO Anton Osika posted on X directing teams to contact Lovable’s M&A & Partnerships head, Théo Daniellot. (techcrunch.com) TechCrunch also reports Lovable’s annual recurring revenue rose to $400 million from $200 million at the end of 2025 and that the platform now generates over 200,000 new vibe‑coding projects per day. (techcrunch.com) TechCrunch notes Lovable previously bought cloud provider Molnett in November, signaling the company’s prior use of M&A to add infrastructure and teams rather than only buying product assets. (techcrunch.com) Crunchbase highlights the slowdown as mainly a U.S. phenomenon and reports European funding reached its highest point of the year in March, boosted by megarounds for AI infrastructure company Nscale and Advanced Machine Intelligence. (news.crunchbase.com)
