PitchBook: US venture funding hits $412.7B in first half as AI deals dominate
UPDATED 00:01 EDT / JULY 09 2026
U.S. venture capital deal value hit $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, nearly 30% more than investors put to work in all of last year — and a small cluster of giant artificial intelligence rounds accounted for almost the entire jump.
That’s according to the second-quarter PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report released Wednesday night. Artificial intelligence companies took $355.9 billion of the total, some 86% of every venture dollar spent in the six months. PitchBook casts the shift as structural rather than cyclical, as AI coding tools lower the cost to build software and foundation models give founders a base layer to work from without training their own systems.
Concentration at the top
The money continues to pool at the top. Rounds of 51.4 billion among them. Their slice of total value keeps sliding. It was 43.8% in 2024 and 33.1% last year. This year it’s 12.5%.
Seven rounds of 87.2 billion. Five went to AI companies.
The biggest was Anthropic’s 965 billion and moved it ahead of OpenAI Group PBC. Anthropic had raised at a 15 billion had been committed in earlier pledges, so less new money actually went in than the $65 billion implied.
Exit activity
Exit activity set records, but rested almost entirely on one name. Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s 75 billion and pushed the company’s market capitalization above $2 trillion in early trading.
Two other SpaceX deals padded the tally: its 60 billion all-stock deal for coding startup Cursor. Strip out SpaceX and quarterly exit value would sit close to the constrained levels of recent years.
Cerebras Systems Inc. completed a $34.3 billion IPO after canceling a 2025 attempt, but its shares opened at more than double the offer price before sliding back below it. Of the 10 largest U.S. tech IPOs excluding SpaceX and Cerebras, only three traded higher a year after listing. Anthropic and OpenAI have both filed confidentially to go public.
Fundraising
Venture firms pulled in 74.9 billion they raised in all of 2025 from far more vehicles. Funds of 49.5 billion of it. Andreessen Horowitz closed seven funds worth 10 billion across two funds and Founders Fund $10.6 billion across two — together 48% of every fundraising dollar in the half.
Corporate venture arms took part in 21% of deals, their smallest share in 10 years, as parent companies hoarded cash to cover their own climbing AI bills. Venture debt reached 20 billion refinancing for SpaceX did much of the work.
PitchBook’s analysts cautioned that a market this dependent on a single theme faces a broad correction if AI growth or returns disappoint.