Crunchbase's year-end review produced six charts, and the data leaves one overwhelming impression: AI is siphoning global venture capital.
Key Numbers
- Global AI investment in 2025: $202.3 billion (up 75% year-over-year)
- AI's share of global venture capital: nearly 50%
- Funding for foundation model companies: $80 billion (2.6 times the 2024 figure)
- OpenAI + Anthropic share of global VC: 14%
Two companies captured one-seventh of the world's venture capital — a concentration never seen before.
Geographic Concentration
- The United States took 79% of AI investment ($159 billion)
- The San Francisco Bay Area alone accounted for $122 billion
- One region in the Bay Area exceeded the rest of the U.S. combined
Starting an AI company outside the Bay Area makes fundraising several times harder.
Funding Structure
More than 50% came from mega-rounds of $500 million or more. 60% of global and 70% of U.S. venture capital flowed into deals of $100 million or more. Small-scale funding is no longer mainstream in AI.
Q1 2026 Is Even More Extreme
Foundation model companies alone raised $178 billion across 24 deals — double the total for all of 2025.
February saw a record $189 billion in global startup funding, driven primarily by OpenAI ($110 billion), Anthropic ($30 billion), and Waymo ($16 billion).
Is This a Bubble?
Capital concentration has already surpassed the dot-com bubble of 2000. But unlike that era, top companies have real and rapidly growing revenue.
Anthropic has an annualized revenue of $14 billion, and OpenAI is reportedly higher. This is not a house of cards built on PowerPoint pitches.
The real risk lies in the middle layer — AI startups that raised between $50 million and $100 million but have not yet found product-market fit. VCs predict a wave of consolidation and elimination in 2026.
Sources: CocoLoop, Crunchbase News annual report