Startup financing breaks all records in the first quarter

Global investment in startups reached $297 billion in the first quarter of 2026, breaking all records, according to new Crunchbase data. This is a massive 2.5 times increase compared to the $118 billion raised in the previous quarter. This exceeds one quarter of every full year of global venture capital activity prior to 2019.

This unprecedented rise was driven by just four mega-deals, each of which broke records in its own right.

Last month, OpenAI announced that it is now valued at $862 billion after raising $122 billion, surpassing the previous record for largest funding round ever, which OpenAI also held when the ChatGPT maker raised $40 billion a year ago.

The quarter also saw Anthropic, its main competitor, raise $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion. This funding amount made it the third largest venture capital round ever. Two other big deals this quarter included xAI’s $20 billion fundraising and Waymo’s $16 billion round.

Combined, these four rounds raised $188 billion, representing more than 63% of total funding in the quarter.

While it may seem that without them, fundraising would appear to be on a more typical path, anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. Investors and founders say, for example, that seed-stage AI startups are getting bigger dollars and higher early-stage valuations than ever before.