AI deals pushed North American startup funding to a first-half record

North American startup funding hit a record in the first half of 2026, and the main driver was artificial intelligence. For everyday investors, the headline shows where private-market capital is concentrating before many of these companies ever reach public stock exchanges.

U.S. and Canadian startups raised $392 billion in the first six months of the year, according to Crunchbase data as of July 2, 2026. Venture capital, which is funding for young private companies in exchange for ownership stakes, did not rise because investors backed far more startups. Crunchbase said the jump came from unusually large rounds for a small group of companies, mostly at later stages.

AI dominated the totals

Second-quarter funding reached $137.2 billion, according to Crunchbase, making it the second-largest quarter on record after the first quarter of 2026. About 80% of Q2 investment across stages went to AI-focused startups, Crunchbase said.

The quarter’s largest financing was Anthropic’s $65 billion raise at a $965 billion post-money valuation, according to Crunchbase. Post-money valuation means the company’s estimated value after the new investment is included. Crunchbase reported that the financing included a $50 billion May round led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, along with corporate-led rounds from Amazon for $5 billion and Google for $10 billion. Anthropic confidentially filed for an initial public offering in June, Crunchbase said.

Defense technology company Anduril Industries also raised a large late-stage round, securing $5 billion in May in a Series H financing led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, according to Crunchbase.

Late-stage checks carried the market

Late-stage and technology-growth funding accounted for about $101 billion in Q2, Crunchbase said. Late-stage generally refers to more mature private companies, while technology-growth rounds are private-equity investments in companies that previously raised venture funding.

Early-stage funding also rose. Crunchbase reported just over $31 billion in North American early-stage investment for the quarter, nearly twice the year-earlier level and about 15% above Q1. The number of deals, however, fell to the lowest point in five quarters, reinforcing the pattern: more dollars went into fewer companies.

One early-stage deal made up more than 40% of that category’s quarterly total. Prometheus, a physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos, raised $12 billion, according to Crunchbase. Other large early-stage AI rounds included $700 million for Hark, $500 million for Flourish and $400 million for Generalist AI.

Seed funding, which includes the earliest rounds such as pre-seed, seed and angel financing, moved in the opposite direction. Crunchbase said seed and angel rounds totaled about $4.9 billion in Q2, down 15% from Q1 and 27% from a year earlier. Crunchbase noted that early-stage data can rise after a quarter ends because smaller deals are often added later.

Exits were unusually large too

The funding boom came alongside major exits, the term investors use when private-company backers get a chance to cash out through a sale or public listing. Crunchbase said SpaceX raised $75 billion in June in the largest initial public offering of all time. An initial public offering, or IPO, is when a company sells shares to public investors for the first time. Crunchbase reported SpaceX recently had a market capitalization of about $2.1 trillion, ranking it sixth among U.S. public companies.

Other venture-backed listings included Cerebras Systems, which raised $5.6 billion in its May IPO, according to Crunchbase. Quantinuum and X-energy also went public during the quarter.

Merger and acquisition activity, or M&A, also set records. Crunchbase reported that SpaceX completed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor and parent company Anysphere after first announcing an option to buy the AI coding company in April. Other notable deals included Eli Lilly’s planned purchase of Kelonia Therapeutics for up to $7 billion in cash, Qualcomm’s $4 billion acquisition of AI chip startup Modular and Salesforce’s acquisition of Fin, according to Crunchbase.

Crunchbase said all funding figures are reported in U.S. dollars and based on its reported data. The first half of 2026 showed a private-market boom shaped less by broad startup activity than by investor willingness to write very large checks to AI companies.

This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.