The first quarter was one for the North American venture capital record books.
U.S. and Canadian companies secured a staggering $252.6 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding rounds per Crunchbase data. That’s more than 3x the total raised in ...
The first quarter was one for the North American venture capital record books.
U.S. and Canadian companies secured a staggering $252.6 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding rounds per Crunchbase data. That’s more than 3x the total raised in the prior quarter, and the largest quarterly total of all time.
Predictably, artificial intelligence was the driver. More than 87% of Q1 investment went to companies in Crunchbase AI-related categories.
To say these are record funding tallies is somewhat of an understatement. It’s more like Q1 smashed the prior quarterly record — $95.7 billion — set in Q3 2021.
Just a single financing for OpenAI was bigger than the prior quarterly record for all startup funding rounds put together. And the four next-largest financings totaled almost as much as the prior quarter, which at the time we considered a very strong period for startup funding.
So, in summary, it was a lot of money. For a more detailed picture, we drill down more deeply into how that largesse was distributed across stages and sectors. We also take a look at exits for the quarter, including both IPOs and acquisitions.
Table of contents
AI
We’ll start with AI, since that’s where the overwhelming majority of the money went.
A staggering $221 billion went to North American companies in Crunchbase AI-related categories in the first quarter. That’s about 6x the AI investment total from the prior quarter, which was itself no slacker on this front.
For perspective, we charted out AI-related funding over the past 13 quarters to compare.
A few megarounds for high-profile companies accounted for most of the quarter’s AI funding, led by OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Waymo.
Later stage and technology growth
These same names factor heavily in tallies for late-stage and technology-growth funding, which comprised the vast majority of total startup investment.
Per Crunchbase data, $222.4 billion — or 88% of all North America startup investment — went to rounds at these stages. That’s more than 5x the prior quarter’s tally, and more than triple year-ago levels.
The gains were driven by bigger deals, not more of them. Later- and growth-stage round counts were actually down a smidge sequentially in Q1. For perspective, below we chart round counts and investment totals at this stage for the past five quarters.
Enormous rounds for AI companies accounted for a majority of the late- and growth-stage totals. The biggest of these was OpenAI’s record-setting $110 billion February financing led by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank. The generative AI giant topped it off with a further $12 billion raise in March.
Anthropic secured the quarter’s next-biggest late-stage financing — a $30 billion February Series G — followed by xAI, which announced a $20 billion Series E in January. Waymo landed another of the quarter’s very big deals, with a $16 billion February Series D.
Early stage
Early-stage investment was also running high in Q1, albeit not setting records.
Overall, investors put $25.1 billion into deals around Series A and Series B stage in the first quarter. That’s up 17% from the prior quarter and 56% from year-ago levels. It’s also the highest quarterly total in over three years, though still below peaks scaled in 2021.
Early-stage round counts, meanwhile, were down a bit, indicating investors’ increasingly concentrating their bets among perceived star performers.
As usual, a few jumbo-sized deals significantly boosted the early-stage totals. For Q1, this included four rounds of $500 million or more.
Of these, Austin-based humanoid robotics startup Apptronik was the biggest fundraiser, pulling in $520 million in a February Series A. Three other companies secured $500 million financings: AI infrastructure developer Nexthop AI, semiconductor startup MatX, and industrial robotics-focused Mind Robotics.
Seed
Seed-stage investment, meanwhile, did not show an upswing but remained at historically robust levels.
Per Crunchbase data, an estimated $5.1 billion went to seed and pre-seed investments in Q1. That’s roughly flat with the prior quarter and up a bit from year-ago levels.
Seed round counts declined in Q1, both sequentially and year over year. However, we expect these tallies to rise some over time, along with investment totals, as seed deals commonly get added to the data set weeks after they close.
Exits
Exit activity was fairly staid in comparison to the high-rolling startup fundraising environment.
That said, the IPO market did boast a few sizable startup debuts. Of these, the largest was the January IPO of construction equipment rental marketplace EquipmentShare, followed by space tech company York Space Systems, and crypto platform BitGo.
Below, we aggregated a list of 12 private, venture-backed companies that carried out IPOs on U.S. exchanges.
Acquirers also announced several large deals to purchase venture-backed private companies.
The priciest planned M&A deal was Capital One’s agreement to purchase business credit card provider Brex for $5.15 billion. Biotech also delivered some large outcomes, including Eli Lilly’s planned acquisition of RNA therapeutics startup Orna Therapeutics, and Novartis’ purchase of allergy treatment startup Excellergy.
Below, we put together a list of five of the quarter’s biggest M&A deals.1
Big picture: A paradigm shift
Having written many of these funding reports over the years, it’s common for one quarter to quietly blur into another. Not so for Q1 of 2026.
The just-ended quarter cemented a notion that startup insiders have been circling for some time: Private markets now have the capital stores and appetite for ultra-high valuations to rival public markets. For evidence, look no further than OpenAI’s $122 billion raise at a valuation higher than all but a handful of the largest large-cap technology companies.
IPO enthusiasts may pine for a future period when these most sought-after foundational AI names finally do make it to public markets. But for now, they’ve demonstrated there are plenty of investors willing to shell out billions in private offerings as well.
Related Crunchbase queries:
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of March 31, 2026.
Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.
Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.
Glossary of funding terms
Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.
Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.
Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.
Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)
Illustration: Dom Guzman
