Global Venture Funding Hits Record $510B in H1 2026, Two Labs Take 43%
Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, per Crunchbase data published July 2. That exceeds the $440 billion invested across all of 2025 and marks the largest half-year total on record. The concentration is the headline: OpenAI and Anthropic together captured $217 billion, or 43% of all startup funding in the period. Anthropic raised $65 billion in Q2 alone and became the most valuable private company on the Crunchbase Unicorn Board.
More than 70% of Q2 global startup capital went to AI-focused companies, up from just under 50% a year earlier. Exits returned in force too: 32 venture-backed companies achieved billion-dollar-plus IPOs in Q2 and 24 were acquired at $1 billion or above, totaling $113 billion in acquisition value.
The European read is stark. Of the sixteen companies that raised billion-dollar rounds in Q2, four were European. Europe's own H1 set regional records, but the gravitational math is unchanged: the frontier is being financed in the US, and everyone else is competing for what two companies leave behind.