Global venture funding hit a record $330.9B in Q1 2026 (KPMG Venture Pulse) — more than double the $128.6B of Q4 2025 and an all-time quarterly high. Crunchbase puts the figure near $300B across ~6,000 deals. The surge was almost entirely AI: AI captured roughly 80% of all dollars, with ten $2B+ megadeals contributing more than $206B by themselves (OpenAI $122B, Anthropic $30.6B, xAI $20B, Waymo $16B). The US alone accounted for ~$267B.

Global venture funding reached roughly $425B in full-year 2025, up about 30% from ~$328B in 2024 (Crunchbase) — the third-largest venture year on record at the time. AI was already the dominant driver, accounting for roughly half of all capital deployed. 2026 has since blown past that pace: Q1 2026's single-quarter record of $330.9B is approaching the entire 2024 annual total.

The median Series A pre-money valuation in 2026 is $35–60M, with rounds typically raising $8–15M. AI-native companies at Series A often command 20–40% premiums — $50–80M pre-money is common for AI infrastructure, vertical AI, or companies with strong enterprise traction. The Series A bar keeps rising: investors generally want $1–3M ARR with strong growth and proven retention.

AI dominates 2026 funding to an unprecedented degree — roughly 80% of all Q1 2026 dollars went to AI companies, led by foundation-model labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) and AI infrastructure. Defense tech remains the fastest-growing non-AI category, followed by health tech (AI diagnostics), climate tech, fintech (stablecoins, embedded finance), and cybersecurity. Legacy consumer apps, non-AI SaaS, and most crypto continue to see reduced appetite.

Extremely. In Q1 2026 just ten rounds of $2B or more accounted for over $206B — roughly two-thirds of the global total — and a single deal, OpenAI's $122B raise, dwarfed most countries' entire quarterly funding. Headline totals are now driven by a handful of giant AI rounds rather than broad-based deal volume, so the record numbers mask a tougher market for the typical non-AI startup.