AI Boom Drives Global Venture Funding to Record $510 Billion in First Half of 2026

North American Startup Funding Shattered Records In First Half Of 2026, Driven By AI

North American venture investment hit all-time highs in the first half of 2026, driven by late-stage megarounds for AI industry leaders, Crunchbase data shows. If that introductory sentence sounds familiar, that's because it's the same storyline we reported for the first quarter, when OpenAI drove investment to stratospheric heights with the largest venture round of all time. Total investment for the second quarter of 2026 was comparatively lower, but still ranked as the second spendiest on record. Investors continued to pour huge sums into AI high-flyers, with a giant financing for Anthropic accounting for about half of the quarterly tally. Overall, investment in U.S. and Canadian startups totaled a staggering $392 billion for the first half of 2026, per Crunchbase data, dwarfing anything we've seen before. For Q2, meanwhile, investment totaled $137.2 billion. That's also massively higher than any prior comp, with the lone exception of Q1. Capital concentration was the name of the game. For both Q1 and Q2, historically high investment levels were the result of giant rounds, not increases in overall deal count. Deal count remained well below prior high marks for recent years, as charted below. As usual, capital also concentrated at late stage. However, early-stage investment still rose in Q2, boosted once again by AI. Of course, the past few months were a blowout period for giant exits as well. SpaceX led in Q2 with the largest IPO of all time. It followed up with the acquisition of Cursor, which was a record-setting startup M&A deal. In addition, we saw a handful of comparatively smaller but still sizable public offerings and acquisitions. For a more granular look at funding and exit dynamics for the second quarter, below we break down investments by stage and look at the role of AI in boosting totals. We also look at standout IPOs and M&A deals. Table of contents * Late stage * Early stage * Seed * AI * Exits * IPOs * M&A * Uncharted territory * Methodology * Glossary of funding terms Late stage We'll start with later stage and technology growth deals, since that's where most of the money went. For Q2, funding for this category totaled around $101 billion. It was the second-highest tally in five quarters, as charted below, and also the second-highest of all time. Anthropic was by far the quarter's heftiest fundraiser, pulling in $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation. The financing included $50 billion in a May round led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, as well as corporate-led rounds by Amazon ($5 billion) and Google ($10 billion). Anthropic followed up in June by filing confidentially for an IPO. Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries also picked up a big round, securing $5 billion in a May Series H financing led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Early stage Early-stage investment hit the highest level in more than three years in Q2, offering fresh proof that megarounds aren't only a thing for more established startups. Overall, North American early-stage funding totaled just over $31 billion, nearly double year-ago levels and up about 15% from Q1. Deal count, however, hit the lowest point in five quarters, as charted below. A single deal contributed more than 40% of the quarterly early-stage funding total. That was the $12 billion financing for Prometheus, a startup focused on physical AI that counts Jeff Bezos as a co-founder. The three next-largest deals were far smaller by comparison, but still quite big by early-stage standards. Hark, an AI startup working on "personalized intelligence," raised $700 million. Behind that came Flourish, a startup building an AI system based on the human brain that picked up $500 million, which was followed by Generalist AI, an AI robotics upstart that closed on $400 million. Seed While early-stage funding was up, seed investment in Q2 actually declined a bit from prior quarter and year-ago levels. Per Crunchbase data, around $4.9 billion went to seed and angel rounds in the second quarter, down 15% from the prior quarter and down 27% from a year ago. Round counts also dropped, though we expect that number to rise a bit over time as smaller seed deals commonly get added to the dataset weeks or months after they close. Still, seed totals also got a boost from a handful of unusually large rounds. The biggest was a $200 million financing for Mirendil, a foundational AI startup focused on R&D. Overall, at least five companies raised seed or angel rounds of $100 million or more in Q2, per Crunchbase data. AI Once again, venture funding for the quarter was overwhelmingly dominated by AI. About 80% of investment across stages went to AI-focused startups in Q2, per Crunchbase data. Overall funding to AI categories was nearly triple year-ago levels, though still down from Q1, which had the record-setting $122 billion OpenAI financing. A majority of AI-focused funding for Q2 was from three previously mentioned rounds for Anthropic, Prometheus and Anduril. Exits In addition to backing giant rounds, investors also scored some big returns on prior investment in the form of IPO and acquisitions. IPOs On the IPO front, Q2 brought us the historic public market debut of SpaceX. The rocket, satellite and AI giant raised $75 billion in the largest IPO of all time in June. With a recent market cap around $2.1 trillion, it's currently the sixth-most valuable American public company. While no one else will come close to topping that, the quarter did also bring us a handful of other sizable debuts by venture-backed companies. Of this, the most closely watched was AI infrastructure and chip designer Cerebras Systems, which raised $5.6 billion in its May IPO. Quantum computing company Quantinuum delivered another big debut with its June Nasdaq IPO, followed by X-energy, a developer of modular nuclear reactors. For a broader view, below we list the largest IPOs of the quarter by venture-backed North American companies. M&A The second quarter also delivered the largest startup acquisition of all time: SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of AI coding tool Cursor and its parent company Anysphere. SpaceX first announced an option to purchase the company in April and consummated the deal after its IPO. In biotech, the largest purchase was from Eli Lilly, which announced in April that it was acquiring Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash. Other standout deals include Qualcomm's acquisition of AI chip startup Modular for $4 billion and Salesforce's 1 acquisition of Fin, a provider of AI-enabled customer experience tools. Below, we rank the largest transactions: Uncharted territory For those wondering where we go from here, it seems pertinent to note that startup history doesn't give much material for case studies to compare with the first half and second quarter of 2026. Never before have we seen such massive funding rounds, such a highly valued venture-backed company debut, or a startup acquisition to rival the Cursor purchase. Looking forward, it appears that high-flying startups and their backers expect the current unprecedented conditions to persist, with Anthropic and OpenAI both signaling their intentions to go public at valuations close to or exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, massive startup funding rounds are still happening at a steady clip, with deals in excess of $1 billion no longer an anomaly. Will these trends persist? Who knows. At this point, however, it's assumed in startup circles that there will be some enormous winners in the age of AI. The question still is: Who will prevail? Related Crunchbase queries: Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 2, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the "Series [Letter]" naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a "venture" round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits

Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, surpassing the $440 billion invested in all of 2025 and setting a new high for startup investment in any half-year period on record, Crunchbase data shows. The data also illustrates how capital is concentrating into a handful of companies at unprecedented scale while IPOs and acquisitions have returned in force, with the second quarter notching one of the strongest periods for venture-backed exits in years. OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for $217 billion -- 43% of all startup funding in H1 -- underscoring how a small handful of frontier AI companies is reshaping venture markets. At the same time, other massive funding deals across industries including AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and healthcare -- combined with record IPO and M&A activity -- signal that the AI investment boom has grown well beyond a select few top foundation labs. Q2 2026 was the second-largest quarter on record for global venture investment, following on the heels of the largest quarter in Q1. All told, investors poured $205 billion into more than 5,000 startups in Q2, following $305 billion invested in Q1. Table of contents Exits peak in Q2 Record funding defined the first half of the year as the period topped the previous half-year peak, reached in H2 2021, of $375 billion. The second quarter also marked a turning point for liquidity. IPOs and startup acquisitions accelerated alongside venture investment, producing the strongest exit market since the 2021 boom, Crunchbase data shows. The largest IPO ever for a venture-backed company and the largest startup acquisition ever both took place in Q2. Both deals involved SpaceX, as it went public at a value of $1.77 trillion, raising $75 billion, and less than a week later confirmed its intent to acquire Anysphere, maker of the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion. Capital concentration Despite the resurgence in exits, the defining characteristic of venture investment in the AI boom remains its extraordinary concentration in terms of companies, industries and geography. Close to a third of Q2 global venture funding went to just one company: Anthropic. The now-leading foundation lab raised $65 billion last quarter and became the most valuable private company on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board as SpaceX exited and Anthropic surpassed OpenAI on the leaderboard. The U.S. also again dominated global funding. Two-thirds of startup capital in Q2 went to U.S.-based companies, down from 83% in Q1 and in line with proportions in Q2 2025. And more than 70% of global startup capital in Q2 was invested in AI-focused companies, up from just under 50% a year earlier. Beyond Anthropic Anthropic accounted for a significant share of global funding, but the quarter also produced a sizable cohort of other megarounds. A total of 16 companies raised billion-dollar rounds in the quarter, totaling $108.6 billion, or 53% of second-quarter funding, Crunchbase data shows. Seven of those billion-dollar fundraisers are frontier labs. They include the China-based foundation companies DeepSeek, StepFun and Moonshot AI, U.K.-based Ineffable Intelligence, and the U.S.-based labs Prometheus and Isomorphic Labs. Eight of the companies in the cohort in Q2 are U.S.-based, while Asia and Europe each have four. Alongside foundation model companies, large funding rounds were raised by startups working on defense, AI infrastructure, robotics and healthcare. Late-stage funding Late-stage venture funding totaled $134 billion in Q2, down from Q1 but up 141% from Q2 2025, Crunchbase data shows. Early-stage funding Early-stage funding totaled $589 billion in Q2, up more than 100% from a year earlier. The number of companies raising Series A and B rounds at $100 million have picked up in the past two quarters, with 91 companies on a global basis raising large rounds in Q2. Seed Seed investment likewise remained elevated, although the market continued to show a widening gap between a handful of exceptionally large financings and the broader population of traditional seed rounds. All told, global seed funding totaled $12 billion in Q2, Crunchbase data shows. Of that, $2.8 billion went to seed rounds of $100 million and over, with $5 billion in seed rounds at $10 million and under. Record exits market returns Q2 exit amounts were the highest on record for venture-backed companies for both acquisitions and IPOs, Crunchbase data shows. A total of 32 companies went public at values above $1 billion in Q2. After SpaceX, the next two largest listings were inference chipmaker Cerebras Systems and quantum company Quantinuum. Twenty-four companies were also acquired at prices at or above $1 billion in Q2, totaling $113 billion in value -- the highest quarter on record -- per Crunchbase data. A new venture cycle takes shape H1 2026 established a new benchmark for global venture investment, but the record comes with an important caveat: an unprecedented share of capital flowed to just two companies. OpenAI and Anthropic together attracted more than 40% of all venture funding during the first half, highlighting the extent to which the current market is centered on the biggest players in the frontier AI race. Even so, the broader venture ecosystem is showing signs of strength. Startup funding increased across every investment stage, the public markets have reopened, and billion-dollar financings expanded beyond foundation model developers into adjacent sectors such as AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and healthcare. Perhaps the biggest shift is the return of liquidity, via both IPOs and M&A. If those trends continue, 2026 may be remembered not only as the year venture funding reached a new high, but as the beginning of a cycle in which record private investment and a functioning exit market reinforce one another. Related Crunchbase queries: Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 1, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the "Series [Letter]" naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a "venture" round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Global venture funding hits record $510B in first half as AI boom accelerates

Global venture funding hits record $510B in first half as AI boom accelerates Startups worldwide raised a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, according to a new report out today from market intelligence company Crunchbase Inc. The figure was more than investors put into venture deals across all of last year, when the total came to $440 billion. The first half also set a funding record, beating the previous record of $375 billion set in the second half of 2021. To the surprise of absolutely no one, artificial intelligence drove the boom, with the bulk of venture capital going into a small group of companies. OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC alone accounted for $217 billion, or 43% of all startup funding in the first half. That level of concentration in two frontier labs is unprecedented, though Crunchbase noted the boom has spread well beyond a few foundation model developers into AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and healthcare. The pace eased in the second quarter. Investors still put $205 billion into more than 5,000 startups, the second-biggest quarter on record, though that trailed the first quarter's $305 billion. The first quarter stands as the largest three-month stretch Crunchbase has tracked. Anthropic drove much of the quarter on its own. The company raised $65 billion, close to a third of all global venture funding for the period and became the most valuable private company on the Crunchbase Unicorn Board. It passed OpenAI on the leaderboard after Space Exploration Technologies Corp. exited via its initial public offering. AI companies took more than 70% of all startup capital in the quarter. A year earlier, the share was just under half. U.S. startups again pulled in most of the money, about two-thirds of the total, though that was down sharply from 83% in the first quarter. Mega-rounds accounted for most of the money. Sixteen companies raised billion-dollar rounds in the second quarter, totaling $108.6 billion, or 53% of the quarter's funding. Seven were frontier labs, among them the China-based foundation companies DeepSeek, StepFun and Moonshot AI, U.K.-based Ineffable Intelligence Ltd. and the U.S.-based labs Prometheus Inc. and Isomorphic Labs Inc. Eight companies in the group were U.S.-based, with Asia and Europe holding four each. Exits returned in force, producing the strongest liquidity market since the 2021 boom. The largest IPO ever for a venture-backed company and the largest startup acquisition ever both landed in the quarter and both involved SpaceX. The rocket company went public at a $1.77 trillion valuation, raising $75 billion and less than a week later confirmed its intent to acquire Anysphere Inc., maker of the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion. A total of 32 companies went public at values above $1 billion in the quarter. After SpaceX, the next two largest listings were inference chipmaker Cerebras Systems Inc. and quantum computing company Quantinuum Inc. Acquisitions ran hot too. Buyers scooped up 24 venture-backed companies at $1 billion or more, worth a combined $113 billion. No quarter on record has produced more exit value from mergers and acquisitions. Funding also rose across every stage. Late-stage deals saw $134 billion raised in the second quarter, a drop from the first quarter but up 141% from the same period in 2025. Early-stage funding grew even faster, more than doubling year-over-year. Some 91 companies raised Series A and B rounds of $100 million or more in the quarter, a sign that the market's biggest deals are reaching younger startups. Seed funding hit $12 billion, though the gap between a few large rounds and the broader pool of traditional rounds kept widening. Of that total, $2.8 billion went to rounds of $100 million and over, while $5 billion went to rounds of $10 million and under. The record leaves the market lopsided. An unprecedented share of first-half capital flowed to just two companies, a reminder that the current cycle is centered on the biggest players in the frontier AI race. But funding grew across every stage, the public markets have reopened and billion-dollar deals expanded beyond foundation labs. If the return of liquidity through IPOs and M&A holds, 2026 may be remembered not only for record private investment but also as the start of a cycle in which that investment and a working exit market feed one another.