Artificial Intelligence Startups, Venture Capital, Exits and Innovation (Dealroom)

Summary

• Q1 2026 saw OpenAI's $122B raise, Anthropic's $30B Series G and xAI's $20B Series E.§1
• Training a frontier model now costs roughly $100M to $1B in compute per generation.§1
• Y Combinator is the most active AI investor with 3,410 AI rounds and 2,519 AI companies.§2
• The Bay Area routinely captures 35-40% of all global AI venture capital in a given year.§3
• AI startups in the Bay Area raised $357.9 billion in the last 12 months to end of Q3 2026, versus $21.2 billion in New York City.§4
• Anthropic's May 2026 Series H of $65.0 billion was among the biggest AI rounds.§5

Key insights

1. AI-native application rounds are typically smaller, at $10M-$500M, but deal volume is much higher.§1
2. Almost all of the world's $10B+ AI rounds sit in the foundation model lab layer.§1
3. Antler has 881 AI rounds and Techstars 871.§2
4. Non-Bay Area US captures another ~25-30% of global AI funding.§3
5. London AI startups raised $15.9 billion and Beijing $13.0 billion in the last 12 months to end of Q3 2026.§4
6. The Bay Area has 292 AI unicorns, ahead of New York City with 80.§4
7. Mistral AI, Paris-based, and other European labs are anchored by London, Paris and Berlin hubs.§3