This week, most of the largest U.S. startup funding rounds centered around the sector one would suspect: artificial intelligence. Beyond that, the next-biggest area for startup funding was biotech.
In the final installment of our series on the state of venture investment to Black-founded startups, six investors offer their advice for overlooked founders and explain how the venture industry can broaden access to capital by rethinking sourcing, networks and long-held investing patterns.
While SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Anysphere dominates the headlines, a number of other multibillion-dollar transactions have also closed this year. We take a look at the 10 largest M&A deals so far in 2026.
XCures, a startup that uses AI to streamline patient data and medical records, has closed a Innovius Capital-led $46 million Series B financing round, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
In this Crunchbase News Q&A, Gigascale Capital founder Mike Schroepfer discusses the coming power crunch, why infrastructure has become a strategic moat, and how breakthroughs in everything from batteries to robotics could reshape the economy over the next decade.
Venture firm Menlo Ventures has raised $3 billion across two new funds, the largest capital raise in its 50-year history, to invest in AI startups from seed through growth stage. The firm says the new capital will target companies in sectors from enterprise tools to healthcare.
Longstanding Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan passed away Monday at age 100. But for those of us old enough to remember the dot-com boom, his legacy looms large.
The next wave of software will be AI-native, industry-specific platforms, writes guest author Richard de Silva who believes the biggest winners will be vertical AI companies with deep domain expertise, proprietary data and strong customer relationships, as these advantages create durable competitive moats that generic horizontal SaaS products cannot match.
Globally, robotics startups have so far raised $18.8 billion in 2026, compared to $15 billion in the full year of 2025. The figure also handily surpasses the $14.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021, and we still have more than six months of fundraising left. We use Crunchbase data to see where the funding went.
Seedcamp, one of Europe’s earliest seed investors, has closed on its 7th fund of $220 million and a select fund 2 of $100 million to invest in winners from the core fund.
This week was not an exceptionally busy one for large funding deals, though we saw sizable rounds in a lively mix of sectors ranging from AI to fintech to quantum computing, biotech and cybersecurity.
In an interview with Crunchbase News, Vikram Taneja, head of AT&T Ventures, shares why he believes that while AI has drastically lowered the barrier to building software, it has also shifted the definition of seed-stage technical risk.
Boards should not wait for poor performance before confronting disruptive technologies like AI and quantum computing. Instead, writes guest columnist and strategic adviser Itay Sagie, they should evaluate the cost of inaction, challenge successful business models while they are still thriving, and proactively imagine how a technology-driven competitor could disrupt their company.
The consistently low numbers of U.S. venture funding to Black founders led some to turn to investing in an effort to help level the playing field. Crunchbase News talked with two such founders to hear more about their experiences in raising capital and what they’ve learned from investing.
The greatest long-term value in AI will come from companies solving deep technical challenges at the model and infrastructure level rather than application-layer products built on existing AI platforms, writes angel investor Alexander Kardos-Nyheim. In this guest commentary he shares processes and questions he uses to determine the investability of an AI startup.
The acquisition of Cursor gives SpaceX a foothold into the enterprise software development market, where AI-assisted coding has taken off and led large companies to significantly pare back their reliance on human engineers.
In the decade-plus since Playground Global's founding, it has built its investment thesis around the idea that breakthroughs in science and engineering — not just software — would create the next generation of valuable companies. Company co-founder Peter Barrett breaks it down in this Crunchbase News Q&A.
Because AI and LLMs are reshaping the traditional SaaS model, founders are forced to focus less on software alone and more on delivering measurable business outcomes, defensible workflow ownership, strong retention, and efficient growth. Crunchbase guest author, Ivan Nikkhoo argues that rather than chasing trends like adding services, founders should build deep moats, understand customer workflows, adapt pricing toward usage- or outcome-based models, and prove that AI creates lasting value.
So far in 2026, U.S. companies have pulled in nearly 80% of global seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase data. That’s a sharp divergence from the years leading up to the AI boom, when American companies typically secured less than half of all investment.
In the U.S., the largest financings went to enterprise software company NinjaOne and blockchain technology provider Digital Asset. The largest deals of the week, however, were for European companies.
The SpaceX offering caps a remarkable journey for a company that has raised nearly $12 billion in private investment since its founding in 2002 to become the world’s most valuable venture-backed startup. Along the way, the company helped redefine both the space industry and the late-stage venture market.
A public SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic would become some of the best-capitalized acquirers on the planet, writes MGV's Marc Schröder, who explains that the bigger impact for startups is likely to be stronger M&A activity, with acquisitions rather than IPOs being the most important exit path for many founders and investors.
With a strong focus on logistics, payroll, construction and other sectors, San Francisco-based Base10 Partners has raised two funds totaling $850 million: a seed and Series A fund 4, and a Series B fund 2 to invest in automation for the real economy.
The semiconductor startup space continues to sizzle. So far in 2026, investors have poured around $10 billion into seed through pre-IPO rounds for companies in Crunchbase’s semiconductor category.
A total of 29 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in May, but the standout trend was not new AI models, but rather the businesses helping enterprises put AI to work.
Successful vertical AI startups are increasingly using channels like private equity networks and industry conferences to drive distribution, recognizing that larger deal sizes require a fundamentally different go-to-market playbook than traditional vertical SaaS. Guest author Medha Agarwal, a general partner at Defy.vc, explains just what that means.
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2026 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal […]
Although defense-side legal AI remains underdeveloped despite a large market opportunity, writes guest author Patrick Ip, investors are increasingly watching whether startups can build scalable platforms around litigation intelligence, risk benchmarking and proprietary outcome data for corporate legal departments.
A grab bag of funded startups caught our attention this past month, from a previously bootstrapped custom metal manufacturer that got its first outside funding from big-name Silicon Valley backers, to a startup that aims to provide geothermal energy from underwater volcanoes to small island nations.
All told, global venture funding reached $92 billion in May, marking the second-largest monthly total on record, just behind February, Crunchbase data shows. Of that, Anthropic raised $50 billion, or 54% of the month’s total funding.
Already this year, more than $14.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase’s military, national security and law enforcement categories, blowing past the sector's previous annual record of $9.6 billion raised in all of 2025.
Reports of “SaaS being dead” are misguided, writes guest author Bob Morse, who contends that AI will enable software companies to move beyond selling productivity tools to deliver knowledge-work outcomes directly, unlocking massive unmet demand for services, ultimately growing the software industry.
Anthropic said Monday that it has submitted a confidential filing for a proposed IPO, marking an escalation in the race among generative AI behemoths to make it first to the public market.
When investor trust is built through repeated in-person encounters, authentic conversations and thought leadership on meaningful problems, relationships and visibility matter more than aggressive fundraising outreach, argues guest author Alyx van der Vorm, whose startup raised $14 million as the result of personal interactions.
So far this year, investors have put about $7.8 billion into Boston-area startups, per Crunchbase data. That puts the region on track for a moderate annual gain and the strongest tally in about four years.
Venture funding has always been a world of haves and have nots. And these days, the haves are having more than ever. Case in point this week was generative AI giant Anthropic's $65 billion Series H funding, followed by a billion-dollar funding for an AI software developer.
Co-founded by Molly Huyck and Amie Konwinski, Aequitas Invest's funding portal provides women-led businesses a way to raise capital. Crunchbase News recently spoke to the founders to learn more about their plans to help female entrepreneurs raise and hold on to more equity.
Founders should evaluate investors’ financial health as carefully as their market thesis, writes guest author Marc Schröder, who emphasizes they should also prepare for acquisition-focused exits since venture-backed M&A far outweighs IPO activity in the current market.
Generative AI company Anthropic announced on Thursday that it has raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, more than doubling its post-money valuation to a staggering $965 billion.
While Africa’s innovation ecosystem is growing rapidly, it still faces major challenges, writes Mind the Bridge's Alberto Onetti, who argues that the continent's weak electrical grid infrastructure and limited domestic venture capital will need large-scale public and private investment to unlock its economic and technological potential.
The share of U.S. startup funding going to companies with Black founders in 2025 remained low, even as overall funding ticked slightly higher, Crunchbase data shows.
Financing startup Capchase has secured a new round of funding, consisting of $26 million in equity and a $174 million credit facility, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively.
Historically “uninvestable” sectors are getting more opportunities to bring in funding, creating a rare opportunity for specialized founders and investors to disrupt trillion-dollar industrial markets with vertically integrated, AI-driven software. In this guest commentary, Thomas Cuvelier of RTP Global explains how VCs are using AI to overcome legacy barriers.
The threshold for going public has steadily risen, leaving many mid-sized firms and their shareholders without viable exit opportunities, writes guest author Shawn Bercuson, founder of Earlyasset, who contends it has created growing pressure for a more mature private secondary market.
Seed rounds are larger than ever, with some startups now raising $8 million to $10 million deals once associated with later stages. But the path forward has also become tougher.
SpaceX filed its public IPO prospectus Wednesday, highlighting many amazing things that it has accomplished in its reach for a trillion-dollar-plus valuation. For a sense of how the company compares at IPO time to other members of the trillion-plus-club, we took a look at their original S-1s from the 1980s and onward.
The findings from our annual Crunchbase survey of where recently funded founders attended college or university found that alumni of the most selective U.S. schools secure a disproportionately high share of startup funding rounds.
Digital banking startup Mercury has raised $200 million in a Series D round at a $5.2 billion valuation, the company announced Wednesday.
That’s up 49% from the $3.5 billion valuation it achieved when announcing its $300 million Series C — which included primary and secondary funding — in March of 2025.
Gaia uses artificial intelligence and machine learning — trained on millions of anonymized historical data points and fertility outcomes — to better understand risk and probability for fertility treatment.
Just through mid-May, China-based robotics companies have already raised $5.6 billion across 176 deals this year, Crunchbase data shows, a sum matching total venture funding to the nation’s robotics companies in all of 2021, the peak of the funding cycle.
Capital concentration shows no signs of abating this year. Just through April, U.S. venture capital totals in 2026 are on par with funding for all of 2025, and 80% of startup investment this year so far has gone to rounds of $500 million and more.
While deal counts remain robust for quantum startup investments and big rounds are still getting done, overall funding is on track to decline some from last year’s peaks.
Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries led the fundraising lineup in a week heavy with rounds for companies focused on applications in the physical world. Anduril’s $5 billion financing was by far the biggest. Other large rounds went to companies focused on supplying data power, robotics, space tech, biotech, and even strawberries.
Most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month are working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen. They include a supplier of cell-based milk, a startup that bills itself as the operating system for modern law firms, and a defense tech startup that makes containerized manufacturing platforms for drones and other equipment near the battlefield.
After years of heavy fundraising in the private markets and scrapping earlier IPO plans, AI chip startup Cerebras Systems is finally making its public-market debut on the Nasdaq.
Xpanner, a startup automating construction work by retrofitting construction equipment with robotics and physical AI technology, has raised $18 million in a Series B round, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation — double its previous valuation — as defense-tech startups haul in record amounts of venture cash.
Saile, which just raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding, is building an AI-powered credentialing and staffing platform designed to help physicians quickly pick up side jobs.
Venture funding to agriculture-related startups in 2026 is on track to be on par or slightly lower than in recent years, while deal count looks to be down more significantly, with even AI-driven companies not able to make up for tepid investor enthusiasm for the sector in the post-pandemic years.
A growing percentage of European venture funding in 2026 was AI-driven. That includes investments in three new frontier model companies as well as startups in a wide variety of AI-centric sectors.
So far in 2026, companies in sales, marketing and CRM categories have pulled in around $2.7 billion globally in seed- through growth-stage funding, per Crunchbase data.
Fazeshift, a startup that uses AI agents to automate accounts receivable, has raised $17 million in a Series A round of funding, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Crunchbase News interviews Kevin Tsang, managing director of Amex Ventures, about the firm’s investment thesis, the kinds of startups it aims to back, and how it works with founders to build and scale projects with a vision toward becoming a "global agentic concierge."
Technical expertise still matters, but when everyone can build, thanks to AI, it no longer differentiates, writes guest author Aaron Tainter, director of accelerator programs at Innovation Works. And that forces a harder question for investors: If the product isn’t the moat, what is?
A total of 28 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in April, with robotics startups and frontier labs leading by number of entrants for the second consecutive month.
Blitzy, an autonomous software development startup, said it has raised $200 million in a funding round that values it at $1.4 billion, making it the latest company to receive major investor backing to streamline coding for large enterprises with the help of AI. Cambridge, Mass.-based Blitzy has now raised more than $204.4 million. Northzone led […]
Founder expectations often misalign with how M&A actually works, writes guest author and strategic adviser Itay Sagie, who highlights common issues M&A deals don't close.
Global venture funding reached $56 billion in April, marking the third-largest monthly funding in a year. Funding was up 100% year over year, an increase driven by a handful of large rounds.
Large U.S. venture deals this week were led by a massive defense tech raise for space security startup True Anomaly. We also saw sizable deals for startups applying AI to fintech, marketing, customer service, healthcare and developer tools.
In 2025, the Bay Area expanded its dominance of U.S. seed funding — capturing a growing share of both deals and dollars — even as most startups remained geographically dispersed, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows, resulting in a more bifurcated landscape.
Legora, an AI platform built for lawyers, has raised a $50 million extension from Nvidia’s venture arm, NVentures, reports CNBC. The raise brings the Swedish company’s recent Series D funding round total to $600 million. At the time of the first close in March, Legora was valued at $5.5 billion.
Since 2024, an estimated 207 AI-focused companies have joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board. That’s roughly half of all companies that first hit valuations of $1 billion or more during this period.
Dreambase, an AI-powered analytics platform that aims to help people build data-driven companies without hiring a data team, has raised $3.7 million in funding, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
More than half of seed dollars last year went into deals of $10 million or above. At the same time, deal counts for seed-stage startups have fallen since the 2021-2022 peak, as has funding going into rounds below $10 million, Crunchbase data shows.
Today, Japan’s unique fusion of obsessive individual creativity and precision engineering underpins both its global cultural dominance and technological strength, guest author Yuki Shirato points out, creating a rare opportunity the world is only beginning to recognize.
We recently spoke with Tiffany Luck, a partner at New Enterprise Associates about the increasing relevance of vertical AI, how startups can carve out durable advantages in a world dominated by platform giants, and more.
Kashable, a fintech that provides access to “socially responsible” credit and financial wellness programs for employees as a voluntary benefit, has secured $60 million in a Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives’ Sustainable Investing.
This week, just half of the top 10 rounds crossed the $100 million mark, which is somewhat unusual in this high-flying era for venture megarounds. Nonetheless some large checks did get written, led by Amazon’s $5 billion investment and partnership deal with Anthropic.
S-1 filings have been plentiful the past few weeks for venture-backed startups providing semiconductors, nuclear and geothermal power, biotech, and space and defense tech queuing up for a possible trip to the public markets.
Cloneable, a startup that uses AI to shadow human experts in heavy industries such as energy and replicate their specialized workflows into autonomous agents, has raised $4.6 million in seed funding, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Funding to EV-related startups reflects a mix of optimism and restraint. While investors are backing big rounds for a handful of upstart brands, funding remains far below prior peaks and exit activity appears muted.
Los Angeles-based SimpleClosure has launched Asset Hub, a marketplace aimed at helping founders sell assets such as source code, data and equipment during the wind-down process. Crunchbase News spoke with founder Dori Yona about the new offering as closures rise and investors place greater value on “clean” shutdowns.
For startup founders, the opportunity today is to solve real problems by building vertical, AI-driven solutions in specific industries. MGV's Marc Schröder shares tips on successfully building a startup with an eye toward acquisition.
Schematic, a startup that aims to simplify pricing and packaging for software and AI companies, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Low prices can actually reduce demand, writes frequent guest author Itay Sagie, who shares how higher pricing is often a signal of quality, attracting more committed customers to position a company in a more competitive, higher-value market.
A total of 37 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in March, the highest monthly count in close to four years, Crunchbase data shows. The robotics sector led unicorn creation last month, with six new billion-dollar startups.
Eli Lilly announced Monday that it is acquiring Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies with a particular focus on cancer treatment, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash.
This past quarter, funding to security- and privacy-focused startups dipped slightly on a sequential basis, but remained well above year-ago levels. Overall, investors put $4.9 billion into global companies in the space in Q1, per Crunchbase data, a comparatively solid performance relative to recent quarters.
The week’s largest round was a $650 million financing for electric pickup truck maker Slate Auto. Other sizable investments went to spaces including drug development, autonomous public transit and software engineering.
Several multibillion-dollar megadeals drove a spike in first-quarter investment in autonomous vehicles, signaling that investors aren't just paying for research, but betting on companies that are ready to scale up and put their AI technology into actual cars people can buy or hail.
In the first quarter of 2026, a handful of large, well-funded AI companies, almost all based in the U.S., captured the vast majority of venture dollars, even as global startup deal count fell, Crunchbase data shows.
Copenhagen-based Spektr, which uses AI to tackle the manual drudgery of financial compliance, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12 billion across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per Crunchbase data. In terms of dollars invested, that’s up 5% year over year, but that money went into almost a third fewer deals.
