North American Startup Funding Shattered Records In First Half Of 2026, Driven By AI

North American venture investment hit all-time highs in the first half of 2026, driven by late-stage megarounds for AI industry leaders, Crunchbase data shows.

If that introductory sentence sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same storyline we reported for the first quarter, when OpenAI drove investment to stratospheric heights with the largest venture round of all time.

Total investment for the second quarter of 2026 was comparatively lower, but still ranked as the second spendiest on record. Investors continued to pour huge sums into AI high-flyers, with a giant financing for Anthropic accounting for about half of the quarterly tally.

Overall, investment in U.S. and Canadian startups totaled a staggering $392 billion for the first half of 2026, per Crunchbase data, dwarfing anything we’ve seen before.

For Q2, meanwhile, investment totaled $137.2 billion. That’s also massively higher than any prior comp, with the lone exception of Q1.

Capital concentration was the name of the game. For both Q1 and Q2, historically high investment levels were the result of giant rounds, not increases in overall deal count. Deal count remained well below prior high marks for recent years, as charted below.

As usual, capital also concentrated at late stage. However, early-stage investment still rose in Q2, boosted once again by AI.

Of course, the past few months were a blowout period for giant exits as well. SpaceX led in Q2 with the largest IPO of all time. It followed up with the acquisition of Cursor, which was a record-setting startup M&A deal. In addition, we saw a handful of comparatively smaller but still sizable public offerings and acquisitions.

For a more granular look at funding and exit dynamics for the second quarter, below we break down investments by stage and look at the role of AI in boosting totals. We also look at standout IPOs and M&A deals.

Table of contents

• Late stage
• Early stage
• Seed
• AI
• Exits
• IPOs
• M&A
• Uncharted territory
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Late stage

We’ll start with later stage and technology growth deals, since that’s where most of the money went.

For Q2, funding for this category totaled around $101 billion. It was the second-highest tally in five quarters, as charted below, and also the second-highest of all time.

Anthropic was by far the quarter’s heftiest fundraiser, pulling in $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation. The financing included $50 billion in a May round led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, as well as corporate-led rounds by Amazon ($5 billion) and Google ($10 billion). Anthropic followed up in June by filing confidentially for an IPO.

Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries also picked up a big round, securing $5 billion in a May Series H financing led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

Early stage

Early-stage investment hit the highest level in more than three years in Q2, offering fresh proof that megarounds aren’t only a thing for more established startups.

Overall, North American early-stage funding totaled just over $31 billion, nearly double year-ago levels and up about 15% from Q1. Deal count, however, hit the lowest point in five quarters, as charted below.

A single deal contributed more than 40% of the quarterly early-stage funding total. That was the $12 billion financing for Prometheus, a startup focused on physical AI that counts Jeff Bezos as a co-founder.

The three next-largest deals were far smaller by comparison, but still quite big by early-stage standards. Hark, an AI startup working on “personalized intelligence,” raised $700 million. Behind that came Flourish, a startup building an AI system based on the human brain that picked up $500 million, which was followed by Generalist AI, an AI robotics upstart that closed on $400 million.

Seed

While early-stage funding was up, seed investment in Q2 actually declined a bit from prior quarter and year-ago levels.

Per Crunchbase data, around $4.9 billion went to seed and angel rounds in the second quarter, down 15% from the prior quarter and down 27% from a year ago. Round counts also dropped, though we expect that number to rise a bit over time as smaller seed deals commonly get added to the dataset weeks or months after they close.

Still, seed totals also got a boost from a handful of unusually large rounds. The biggest was a $200 million financing for Mirendil, a foundational AI startup focused on R&D. Overall, at least five companies raised seed or angel rounds of $100 million or more in Q2, per Crunchbase data.

AI

Once again, venture funding for the quarter was overwhelmingly dominated by AI.

About 80% of investment across stages went to AI-focused startups in Q2, per Crunchbase data. Overall funding to AI categories was nearly triple year-ago levels, though still down from Q1, which had the record-setting $122 billion OpenAI financing.

A majority of AI-focused funding for Q2 was from three previously mentioned rounds for Anthropic, Prometheus and Anduril.

Exits

In addition to backing giant rounds, investors also scored some big returns on prior investment in the form of IPO and acquisitions.

IPOs

On the IPO front, Q2 brought us the historic public market debut of SpaceX. The rocket, satellite and AI giant raised $75 billion in the largest IPO of all time in June. With a recent market cap around $2.1 trillion, it’s currently the sixth-most valuable American public company.

While no one else will come close to topping that, the quarter did also bring us a handful of other sizable debuts by venture-backed companies. Of this, the most closely watched was AI infrastructure and chip designer Cerebras Systems, which raised $5.6 billion in its May IPO.

Quantum computing company Quantinuum delivered another big debut with its June Nasdaq IPO, followed by X-energy, a developer of modular nuclear reactors. For a broader view, below we list the largest IPOs of the quarter by venture-backed North American companies.

M&A

The second quarter also delivered the largest startup acquisition of all time: SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of AI coding tool Cursor and its parent company Anysphere. SpaceX first announced an option to purchase the company in April and consummated the deal after its IPO.

In biotech, the largest purchase was from Eli Lilly, which announced in April that it was acquiring Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash.

Other standout deals include Qualcomm‘s acquisition of AI chip startup Modular for $4 billion and Salesforce’s 1 acquisition of Fin, a provider of AI-enabled customer experience tools.

Below, we rank the largest transactions:

Uncharted territory

For those wondering where we go from here, it seems pertinent to note that startup history doesn’t give much material for case studies to compare with the first half and second quarter of 2026. Never before have we seen such massive funding rounds, such a highly valued venture-backed company debut, or a startup acquisition to rival the Cursor purchase.

Looking forward, it appears that high-flying startups and their backers expect the current unprecedented conditions to persist, with Anthropic and OpenAI both signaling their intentions to go public at valuations close to or exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, massive startup funding rounds are still happening at a steady clip, with deals in excess of $1 billion no longer an anomaly.

Will these trends persist? Who knows. At this point, however, it’s assumed in startup circles that there will be some enormous winners in the age of AI. The question still is: Who will prevail?

Related Crunchbase queries:

• Largest North American Venture-Backed IPOs Of Q2, 2026
• Largest Q2 2026 Startup Acquisitions

Related reading:

• Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits
• North America Q1 Funding Surges Across Stages To Record Level
• SpaceX Shares Close Up 19% After Largest IPO Of All Time
• Anthropic Nears $1T Valuation And Leapfrogs OpenAI On Unicorn Board With Massive Funding Round
• Lilly Acquiring Kelonia In Largest Funded Biotech Startup Purchase In Years 

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of July 2, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration: Dom Guzman