Startups worldwide raised a record $510B in H1 2026, more than the $440B raised across all of last year and above the prior half-year peak of $375B from late 2021, according to Crunchbase. OpenAI and Anthropic between them soaked up $217B, or 43% of H1 startup funding, with Anthropic alone raising $65B in Q2 to pass OpenAI as the most valuable private company after SpaceX went public. SpaceX drove the strongest exit market since 2021, staging the largest venture-backed IPO ever at a $1.77T valuation with $75B raised, then confirming the biggest startup acquisition on record, a $60B deal for Anysphere, maker of the Cursor AI coding tool. AI companies pulled in more than 70% of Q2 capital, up from under 50% a year earlier, and 16 billion-dollar rounds worth $108.6B spread beyond frontier labs into defense, robotics, and healthcare.
