Fundraising: AI keeps a two‑tier market
Q1 2026 venture activity totaled about $300 billion with AI accounting for over half of deal value, according to market commentary. (x.com)
Venture funding hit a record in the first quarter of 2026, but most of the money went to a small group of artificial intelligence companies. (news.crunchbase.com) Crunchbase said investors put $300 billion into about 6,000 startups worldwide in the quarter, up more than 150% from both the prior quarter and a year earlier. It said $242 billion, or 80% of that total, went to artificial intelligence companies. (news.crunchbase.com) Four companies absorbed much of the surge: OpenAI raised $122 billion, Anthropic $30 billion, xAI $20 billion, and Waymo $16 billion. Those four rounds totaled $188 billion, equal to 65% of all global venture investment in the quarter, Crunchbase said. (news.crunchbase.com) The split looked even sharper in North America. Crunchbase said United States and Canadian startups raised $252.6 billion in the quarter, and more than 87% of that money went to companies in its artificial intelligence-related categories. (news.crunchbase.com) The pattern did not start this year. PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association said artificial intelligence and machine learning captured 65.6% of all United States venture deal value in 2025, up from 47.2% in 2024. (nvca.org) By early 2025, the concentration was already visible worldwide. PitchBook reported that artificial intelligence and machine learning startups took 57.9% of global venture dollars in the first quarter of 2025, including a $40 billion OpenAI round led by SoftBank. (pitchbook.com) That left a market where headline funding soared even as dealmaking stayed narrow. Crunchbase said late-stage funding reached $246.6 billion across 584 deals in the first quarter of 2026, while its North America analysis said the gains came from bigger rounds rather than more of them. (news.crunchbase.com, news.crunchbase.com) Investors and advisers have described that divide for a year. EY said a single $40 billion artificial intelligence deal lifted first-quarter 2025 venture totals, and that without it venture investment had been on pace to fall 36% from the prior quarter. (ey.com) PitchBook quoted 645 Ventures co-founder Nnamdi Okike saying in April 2025 that the outcomes would be uneven and that investors were betting big before the economics were settled. A year later, the first-quarter 2026 totals show how far that concentration has spread. (pitchbook.com, news.crunchbase.com)
