Global investment in startups to reach $297 billion in first quarter of 2026, breaking all records, according to new crunchbase data. This is a massive 2.5x increase from the $118 billion raised in the previous quarter. This single-quarter increase outpaces every full year of global VC activity prior to 2019.
The unprecedented growth was fueled by just four huge deals, each of which was a record-breaker in its own right.
Last month, OpenAI announced it was now valued at $862 billion after the collection $122 billionBeating the previous record for the largest funding round ever, which was also held by OpenAI when it was raised by ChatGPT creator $40 billion A year ago.
also saw the quarter anthropicIts main rival, raised $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion. That funding effectively made it the third-largest VC round on record. The other two mega-deals of the quarter include: $20 billion Fundraising by XAI and Waymo $16 billion Round.
These four rounds collectively raised $188 billion, which is more than 63% of the total funding in the quarter.
While it may seem that without them, fundraising would seem to be on a more typical trajectory, anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. For example, investors and founders say seed-stage AI startups are Big dollars and high valuations command early stages than ever before.
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