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.
