Business · Crunchbase News
These 3 Charts Show How Venture Capital Has Concentrated At The Top In 2026
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Q1 2026 marked an all-time quarterly high for venture investment, thanks to the biggest funding deal ever for a private company.
Key facts
- That was the case not in North America, where dollars invested surged 190% year over year, even as deal count dropped 26%
- Only Asia saw a modest 5% bump in deal count along with more dollars invested
- AI startups for the first time captured half of global venture funding in Q4 2024
- Q1 2026 marked an all-time quarterly high for venture investment, thanks to the biggest funding deal ever for a private company
Summary
In fact, Crunchbase data shows the extent to which venture funding this year has been a case of more capital concentrated into a select few companies and a single industry. AI startups for the first time captured half of global venture funding in Q4 2024. It wasn’t that AI as an industry captured the lion’s share of venture funding last quarter. Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded were closed in Q1 2026, with frontier labs OpenAI ($122 billion), Anthropic ($30 billion), xAI ($20 billion) and self-driving company Waymo ($16 billion) collectively raising $188 billion, or nearly 65% of global venture investment in the quarter.