AI took more than 70 percent of Q2 venture funding

Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026.

More than 70 percent of second-quarter capital went to AI companies. OpenAI and Anthropic together account for $217 billion of that total, or well over a third of the half-year figure between them.

The number covers disclosed rounds across all stages and sectors, which is what makes the AI share unusually visible. In previous record years the leading sector typically accounted for a far smaller portion, and no individual company approached this scale.

Much of the capital is committed against multi-year compute and infrastructure agreements rather than operating costs, which ties the funding totals closely to the data centre construction announced over the same period.

The concentration narrows what the record describes: venture funding and AI funding have converged closely enough that the headline says little about startup formation generally.