The first quarter of 2026 was unlike any other for venture investment, driven by unprecedented spending on AI compute and frontier labs. Crunchbase data shows investors poured $297 billion into 6,000 startups globally in the quarter, up around 150% quarter over quarter and year over year.
That marks an all-time high for global venture investment not approached by any other quarter on record. In fact, startup investment in the first quarter of 2026 alone totaled close to 70% of all venture capital spending in 2025. The quarterly sum also tops all full-year investment totals prior to 2018.
Q1’s startup investment largely went to AI startups and disproportionately to a handful of U.S.-based companies in record-setting deals. Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded were closed in Q1 2026, with frontier labs OpenAI ($120 billion), Anthropic ($30 billion), xAI ($20 billion) and self-driving company Waymo ($16 billion) collectively raising $186 billion, or 64% of global venture investment in the quarter.
Overall, AI shattered records last quarter, with $239 billion — 81% of total global venture funding in Q1— going to companies in the sector. The previous record was set in Q1 2025, when AI accounted for 55% of global venture funding.
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Valuation surge, capital concentration
Along with the three major frontier labs and Waymo, another 10 companies raised funding rounds of $1 billion or more in Q1, in sectors spanning generative and physical AI, autonomous vehicles, semiconductors, data centers, robotics, defense and prediction markets.
Those outsized rounds pushed overall startup valuations higher in Q1. The Crunchbase Unicorn Board added $900 billion in value during the quarter, marking the largest valuation bump in a single quarter.
US above 80%
U.S.-based companies raised $247 billion, or 83% of global venture capital in Q1, Crunchbase data shows. That’s up significantly from 71% in Q1 2025, which was already well above historical averages in the decade before 2024.
The second-largest market globally for venture funding in Q1 was China, with $16.1 billion invested. The U.K. followed, with $7.4 billion invested. Both countries were up quarter over quarter and even more significantly year over year.
Late-stage hike
The Q1 funding surge was concentrated in late-stage funding, which reached $244 billion — up 203% year over year — across 582 deals. A total of $232 billion was invested in 157 late-stage companies that raised rounds of $100 million and more.
Early stage up 38%
Early-stage funding totaled $40.6 billion across 1,800 deals, Crunchbase data shows.
Funding was up marginally quarter over quarter but up 38% year over year from $29.4 billion. Much of that increase went to Series A rounds, Crunchbase data shows. Series B deals were down quarter over quarter but still up year over year.
Seed funding up 30%
Seed funding totaled $12 billion, up 30% year over year, though the increase was entirely due to larger rounds, with deal counts falling 31% year over year to 3,700.
IPO slowdown, M&A pick up
Record venture investment in U.S. companies did not translate into a stronger IPO market in Q1.
In fact, the U.S. market for new listings slowed in Q1 amid a broader stock market selloff in software, although China’s IPO market picked up.
A total of 21 venture-backed companies exited globally above $1 billion in Q1. Thirteen of those were from China, four more from elsewhere in Asia, and four from the U.S.
The largest IPO in Q1 was Japan-based PayPay, a fintech for mobile payments valued at $10 billion upon listing. Two foundation lab companies from China — Z.ai and MiniMax — debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, each valued at more than $6 billion.
While the IPO market was somewhat lackluster, startup M&A was strong in Q1 with exits cumulatively valued north of $56.6 billion, Crunchbase data shows. That marked the third-highest startup M&A quarter since the downturn of 2022.
The largest M&A deals in Q1 were Savvy Games Group’s $6 billion planned acquisition of ByteDance’s gaming platform Moonton, and Capital One’s planned $5.15 billion acquisition of fintech startup Brex.
Public pressure
While frontier lab megarounds defined Q1 2026, a closer look at the data shows every startup funding stage grew last quarter, as did round sizes across the board.
And unlike the cloud and mobile era, this cycle is also being built in the physical world, with massive capital flowing not just into software, but infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, robotics and manufacturing.
Now, with startup valuations surging and a backlog of companies with unprecedented sums of private capital behind them, pressure is intensifying on the IPO markets to reopen in 2026.
Related Crunchbase queries:
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of March 31, 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
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