Your Daily Startups & Venture Capital Briefing

US Venture Capital Hits Record $412.7 Billion in H1 2026, Driven by AI Mega-Rounds

• US venture capital deployed a record $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, a nearly 30% increase over all of 2025, with artificial intelligence companies capturing an overwhelming 86% ($355.9 billion) of this investment. This surge highlights a market increasingly dominated by a few large deals, as rounds of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5% of all capital deployed, a significant jump from 33.1% in 2025.

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• The concentration of capital is further evidenced by seven rounds exceeding $1 billion in Q2, totaling $87.2 billion, with five of these going to AI firms. Notably, Anthropic PBC secured a $65 billion round, elevating its post-money valuation to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI Group PBC; however, approximately $15 billion of this had been committed in earlier pledges, meaning less new capital was actually invested than the headline figure suggested.

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• This top-heavy trend has created a bifurcated market, with emerging fund managers seeing their fundraising fall 35% year-over-year to about $12 billion, the lowest since 2020, and first-time fund formation on pace for its worst year since 2016. In contrast, exit activity saw a historic event with Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s $1.7 trillion initial public offering in Q2, which generated more value than all U.S. venture-backed exits of the past decade combined.

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