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 a new report. 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 its raise $122 billionsurpassing the previous record for the largest funding round ever, which was also set by OpenAI when the maker of ChatGPT raised funding. 40 billion dollars A year ago.

It also witnessed a quarter Anthropicits main competitor, raised $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion. This funding amount made it the third largest venture capital round ever. The other two large deals during the quarter included A 20 billion dollars Fundraising by xAI and Waymo’s 16 billion dollars circular.

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 Get bigger dollars and higher valuations in the early stages Ever.