Just through mid-May, China-based robotics companies this year have raised $5.6 billion across 176 deals, Crunchbase data shows. That sum matches total investment to the nation’s robotics companies in all of 2021, the peak of the funding cycle. Investment in the sector has also already eclipsed the $4.3 billion raised by China-based robotics companies in all of 2025.

Startup funding in Asia overall surged to $27.4 billion in Q1, its highest level in over three years, with China capturing $16.5 billion — 60% — of that total, according to recent Crunchbase data. Robotics contributed meaningfully to that $16.5 billion total, with startups in the sector raising $3.3 billion across 126 deals.

Embodied AI boom

A review of Crunchbase data shows that investors now are no longer funding mostly pre-programmed hardware, but increasingly backing China-based startups working on embodied AI — or artificial intelligence with a physical body that interacts with the real world in real time.

That shift toward artificial intelligence-driven robotics mirrors a global surge in investment into robotics and other physical AI startups. It’s also thanks to the rise of advanced, open-source reasoning models that have fundamentally changed how robots operate. Startups are moving away from coding robots line-by-line toward Vision-Language-Action models that allow physical machines to observe, reason and execute physical tasks end-to-end.

In China, robotics startups at the intersection of the software and hardware integration are drawing the largest checks in the space and often back-to-back funding rounds. They include:

• , a 1-year-old humanoid robotics company that integrates embodied intelligence that last month raised a massive $513 million seed round led by and . The Shanghai-based company was valued at $1.9 billion.
• , which develops robotic systems and automation solutions for industrial and service applications, closed a $140 million Series A extension round in January from investors including . Then just three months later, it raised $293 million in a massive Series B round co-led by and
• In February, Beijing-based , which says it’s building a “universal brain” for robots, raised a $290 million Series A led by and . The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion. Then in April, it announced a $145 million Series A extension financing, bringing the total round to $435 million.
• Humanoid robotics company in February raised a $145 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old China-based company was valued at $1.4 billion. In April, it announced a $290 million extension to that round, bringing its total to $435 million
• Shenzhen-based , a builder of humanoid and quadruped robots, raised a $200 million Series B last month led by and . The 2-year-old company’s robots will be deployed for traffic, security and retail. It was valued at $1.5 billion.

Top investors

Crunchbase data shows the most active investors in the space are largely Asia-based. The busiest this year has been Hong Kong-based , taking part in six deals, including a $200 million round last month for humanoid robotics and embodied intelligence developer .

Among lead or co-lead investors, three China-based firms — , and — have each taken part this year in deals totaling $290 million or more.

Exits gain steam

Venture investors are likely feeling confident as the sector notches notable liquidity events, including IPOs and acquisitions.

The of , targeting a $3 billion to $7 billion valuation, is a milestone for the industry. The company in March filed for an to list on the , and its IPO would likely spur other startups in the space to pursue their own public-market debuts.

The sector has already seen some notable exits.

They include Hong Kong-based ,  a Shanghai-based startup that makes lightweight industrial robots. The company on May 18 listed on the , raising about $86 million. And it did not disappoint. Robotphoenix closed its first full day of trading at HK$53.75 ($6.86 U.S.), up nearly 80%. (Interestingly, Chinese robotics firms as their primary liquidity hub.)

On the M&A front, in what is widely considered a historic first for China’s embodied artificial intelligence sector, AI robotics unicorn in July 2025 engineered a two-stage consortium takeover to in legacy manufacturer for about $290 million. AgiBot’s co-founder formally stepped in to chair Swancor, effectively turning the publicly traded shell into a direct extension of AgiBot.

Ultimately, it seems that 2026 is the year China’s robotics companies are pivoting from raising early venture rounds to mass production, as a domestic market that currently accounts for more than 43% of global robotics venture investment, per Crunchbase.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• China Leads Asia’s Startup Funding To Its Highest Level In More Than 3 Years
• Amid Record Robotics Funding, Apptronik Raises $520M Series A Extension To Boost Production Of Humanoid Robot Apollo

Illustration:

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

Large U.S. venture deals this week were led by a massive defense tech raise for space security startup . That theme continued with another two aerospace- and defense-related companies also getting major investor backing. We also saw sizable deals for startups applying AI to fintech, marketing, customer service, healthcare and developer tools. Let’s take a closer look.

1. , $600M, aerospace and defense: Centennial, Colorado-based True Anomaly raised a massive $600 million Series D led by and , with participation from a long list of other backers including , , , , and . True Anomaly develops space security and in-orbit defense systems, an area drawing increasing venture investor attention amid rising geopolitical tensions. The new round brings its total funding up to $1.1 billion, .

2. , $160M, AI and fintech: New York-based Rogo secured $160 million in Series D funding led by and joined by other investors including , , , , and . Rogo builds AI-powered tools to automate financial research and workflows. The latest financing brings its total funding raised to date to $314 million, . The deal is also the latest example of investor enthusiasm for startups targeting high-value knowledge work such as law and accounting.

3. , $150M, AI and marketing: San Francisco-based Hightouch raised $150 million in a Series D co-led by and . , , , and other investors joined. The company focuses on agentic AI-driven marketing and customer data activation. The round brings Hightouch’s total funding to date to and comes amid rising demand for AI tools embedded directly into enterprise marketing stacks.

4. , $125M, AI and customer service: New York-based Avoca brought in $125 million in a Series B led by and, with participation from other investors including , , and . Avoca develops AI agents for customer communication workflows. The new raise brings its total funding to $125.5 million, .

5. , $110M, AI and customer service: San Mateo, California-based Netomi raised $110 million in a Series C led by , with participation from and others, including individual investors , , and . The company offers AI-powered customer experience automation across channels. The new funding brings its total raised to date to $217 million, .

6. (tied) , $100M, developer tools: Palo Alto, California-based Parallel secured $100 million in a Series B led by , with additional backing from other big-name investors , and . The startup is building a suite of AI agents and developer tools to automate workflows. It has raised $260 million to date, .

6. (tied) , $100M, aerospace and defense: Sunnyvale, California-based Scout AI raised a sizable $100 million Series A led by and . A long list of other investors joined, including , and . The startup develops AI systems for aerospace and defense applications. Its large early-stage round underscores continued investor appetite for dual-use and defense-focused startups, which globally raised a record $7.7 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase data.

8. , $82M, aerospace and defense: San Diego-based Firestorm closed an $82 million Series B led by . also participated in this round, as did , , , and others. Firestone builds modular, mission-adaptable drone systems. It has raised nearly $150 million total, .

9. , $77M, health diagnostics: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Iterative Health raised $77 million in a Series C led by and, with additional backing from , and . The company develops AI-powered diagnostic and clinical workflow tools, particularly in gastroenterology. It has raised more than $268 million since inception, according to .

10. , $75M, foundational AI: Investors continue to back next-generation foundation model startups. One of the latest is San Francisco-based AI research startup Standard Intelligence, which raised a $75 million Series A led by and . The raise comes at a $425 million pre-money valuation. Other investors in the deal include , and AI researcher . Standard AI is developing “computer-use” models designed to interact directly with software. Its approach — training on large-scale video data rather than manually annotated screenshots — aims to significantly reduce costs and improve performance.

Large non-US deals

We also saw several sizable deals for startups based outside the U.S.:

, $1.1B, foundational AI: London-based frontier lab Ineffable Intelligence raised a $1.1 billion seed round, the largest for a European startup on record. (The previous record was set just a couple of months ago, when Paris-based frontier lab raised a $1.03 billion seed round.) and led Ineffable’s seed funding.

, $300M, aerospace: China-based Volant Aerotech raised a $300 million Series C led by . The company is developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, designed to be used as taxis.

, $200M, robotics: China-based humanoid robot developer Robot Era raised a $200 million round led by , with participation from a long list of investors including and . The company is developing robots designed for industrial and service work, and follows a string of other large fundings for China-based robotics startups.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of April 25-May 1. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

This phenomenon has been on the rise over the past couple years, driven by voracious investor appetite for AI early movers. Since 2024, an estimated 207 AI-focused companies have joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board. That’s roughly half of all companies that first hit valuations of $1 billion or more during this period.

Of those, more than a third first secured 10-figure valuations at seed or early stage. That includes some of the most well-known newish unicorns in sectors like foundational AI, robotics and vertical AI.

Many newish unicorns are worth a lot more than $1 billion

While a $1 billion valuation is the threshold for claiming unicorn status, many newer entrants to the group are now worth much more than that.

Per Crunchbase data, at least 45 companies that became unicorns in the past 28 months are now valued at $5 billion or more. That’s just over 10% of the total cohort.

So who’s at the top? To answer that question, we put together a sample list of 18 high-profile, newish unicorns with a most recent post-money valuation of $5 billion or more.

Notably, many of these are very young companies. U.K.-based AI infrastructure startup , for instance, launched from stealth just a year ago as a spin-out of crypto mining firm . It recently secured a $14.6 billion post-money valuation.

, a developer of AI-enabled software to control robots, has also scaled up quickly since its inception in 2024. This year, the San Francisco company is reportedly to raise fresh funding at a valuation exceeding $11 billion.

Foundational AI startup , meanwhile, has raised around $3 billion in less than two years since its founding. A round last spring set a $32 billion valuation for the Palo Alto, California-based company.

Newer unicorns are also fundraising at a fast clip

In addition to their youth and ultra-high valuations, many newer unicorns also stand out for the speed and magnitude of their fundraising.

San Francisco-based AI legal tech platform , for instance, has gone from Series A to Series G in about three years and raised close to $1.2 billion along the way.

Predictions marketplaces and are remarkably fast fundraisers as well. New York’s Kalshi has gone from Series C to Series E in the past year, pulling in over $2.4 billion. And Polymarket, another New York-based company  has scooped up close to $2.9 billion in the past two years.

Foundational AI is also scaling superfast. Medical AI company went from Series A to Series D in less than a year, with the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company picking up over $700 million from early 2025 to early 2026. , the developer of AI coding tool Cursor, went from Series A to Series D in under a year, securing over $3.2 billion in that time frame. The San Francisco-based company most recently entered an agreement with , giving the latter Cursor for $60 billion.

Move fast and build things

These are of course remarkable times for mega fundraising rounds, particularly around AI. Cynics might question valuations and check sizes, while optimists might quickly point out that we are in the early days of building foundational technologies of the modern era.

I suppose both have a point. For now, we’re less inclined to pick winners and more engaged in simply keeping score. One thing is clear: It’s a very well-capitalized playing field.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• This Is A Momentous Year For Early-Stage Unicorns
• The Largest Recent Seed Rounds Are All For AI Companies
• Investors Are Once Again Rapidly Minting Early-Stage Startups As Unicorns

Illustration:

AI infrastructure also added four new unicorn companies focused on data center technology and provisioning. Fintech, including startups in wealth management, payment and digital assets, added four companies, while developer tools and defense each added three.

Twenty of March’s new unicorns are U.S.-based, including 11 from the San Francisco Bay Area. China added six companies in sectors ranging from robotics to AI and quantum computing.

From Europe, four new March unicorns are U.K.-based, while France, the Netherlands and Belgium each minted one. The UAE, Seychelles, India and Australia also each added one new unicorn to the board.

The most valuable unicorn newcomer last month was Seychelles-based crypto exchange , valued at $25 billion. The largest funding was a $1 billion round raised by AI pioneer ’s new frontier lab startup, Paris-based .

The board also saw a sizable cohort of very young companies earning their unicorn horns: 18 of the companies that joined the board last month were less than 3 years old. Five were not even a year old.

March’s new unicorns

AI-centric sectors by far led unicorn creation in March, with 14 of the 36 newcomers hailing from the robotics, foundational AI or AI infrastructure industries:

Robotics

• , a robotics for manufacturing company spun out by , raised a $500 million Series A led by and . The 1-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $2 billion.
• Shenzhen-based , an intelligent sensor technology for robotics, raised a $145 million Series B led by , and . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Beijing-based , a humanoid robotics company, raised $145 million in funding. The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• , a humanoid robotics company for household tasks, raised a $165 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old Mountain View, California-based company was valued at $1.2 billion. The company plans to deploy robots to homes this year.
• Pudong, China-based , an intelligent layer for robotics in manufacturing, raised an $87 million Series D round. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• , a provider of simulated data for robotic intelligence, raised a $146 million Series A. The 3-year-old Santa Clara, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Foundational AI

• Paris-based raised a $1 billion seed round led by , ,, and . The less than 1-year-old company was founded by LeCun, ’s former AI lead, and is working to develop models for physical AI. It was valued at $4.5 billion in the round, which is Europe’s largest seed round on record.
• , a robot foundation model developer trained on internet scale video, raised a $450 million Series A led by . The 2-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.7 billion.
• , a math foundation model developer for verified AI useful for coding and other applications, raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 1-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.
• Beijing-based , a text-to-video startup with its own AI model, raised a $300 million Series C led by . The 2-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

AI infrastructure

• , a provider of networking hardware and software for data centers, raised a $500 million Series B led by and . The 2-year-old Santa Clara, California-based company was valued at $4.2 billion.
• , a chip cooling technology, raised a $143 million Series D led by . The 8-year-old San Jose, California-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.
• , which offers GPU rentals for startups, raised a Series A funding led by . The 2-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Redmond, Washington-based , a company building data centers in space, raised a $170 million Series A led by and . The 2-year-old company  was valued at $1.1 billion.  It launched its first satellite with a H100 in November 2025.

Financial services

• London-based , an AI-native platform for debt providers including banks, asset managers and advisory firms, raised a $170 million Series C led by . The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• Mumbai-based , a wealth asset advisory firm for high-net-worth individuals and family offices, raised a $53 million private equity funding led by . The 4-year old, venture-backed asset manager was valued at $1.1 billion.
• Brussels-based , an investment group for digital assets, raised a Series C led by . The 8-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.
• Abu Dhabi-based , a payments infrastructure provider for regulated gaming markets, raised a $250 million funding led by . The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Developer tools

• , which promises to make your app enterprise ready with authentication and other features, raised a $100 million Series C led by and. The 8-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $2 billion.
• , an observability platform for agentic AI, raised a $110 million Series B led by . The 3-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a software developer for hardware testing and development, raised an $80 million Series B led by . The 3-year-old Austin-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Defense

• , a drone technology company built for defense, raised a $110 million Series B led by . The 7-year-old Huntsville, Alabama-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• Sydney-based , provider of advanced navigation beyond GPS for military and industrial capabilities, raised a $112 million Series C led by . The 13-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• London-based , a builder of unmanned systems used in the Ukrainian war, raised a $50 million seed  funding led by and . The 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Biotechnology

• Austin-based , a biological AI research company spun out of  , raised a $10 million seed extension. The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• , a neurotech company focused on brain computer interfaces, raised a $230 million Series C led by and  Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 5-year-old Alameda, California-based company, whose primary product, an implant to restore vision for those who suffer retinal disease, was valued at $1.5 billion.

Sales and marketing

• Amsterdam-based , a builder of agents for companies to deploy in customer service and business operations, raised a $150 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• , an agentic layer that monitors customers and researches prospects, raised a Series B led by . The 2-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Security

• , native AI security with its own human triage for customers, raised a $250 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old Sarasota, Florida-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , which uses AI for offensive security, raised a $120 million Series C led by and . The 2-year-old Seattle-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Cryptocurrency

• Seychelles-based , a global cryptocurrency exchange platform, raised a $200 million corporate round led by , the parent company of the . The 12-year-old company was valued at $25 billion.

Telehealth

• Miami-based , ‘s telehealth provider for GLP-1 medications through employers, raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 5-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.

Professional services

• London-based , an AI notetaking startup, raised a $125 million Series C led by . The 3-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Consumer goods

• , a company with a mattress, thermal blanket and pillow designed to monitor and improve sleep, raised a $50 million Series D led by . The 11-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Accelerator

• London-based , an accelerator that sources founders from top schools, raised a $200 million Series D. The 11-year-old company, which hosts its latest cohorts in Silicon Valley, was valued at $1.3 billion.

Quantum computing

• Sichuan, China-based , a quantum computer and chip-production company, raised a $145 million Series B. The 5-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Autonomous driving

• Hangzhou-based , an intelligent driving platform, raised a Series A led by , and . The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:

• (1,739)
• (609)
• (101)
• (188)
• (117)
• (102)
• (896)
• (510)
• (236)
• (38)
• (472)

Related reading:

• This Is A Momentous Year For Early-Stage Unicorns
• The Rising Investors Behind The New Unicorn Class
• While OpenAI Shattered Records, Robotics and Semiconductor Startups Quietly Added The Most New Unicorns In February

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

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.

Illustration:

Overall, investors put $27.4 billion to work across seed- through growth-stage financings for Asian companies in Q1, per Crunchbase data. That’s up about 20% from the prior quarter and nearly double year-ago levels.

Total funding also hit its highest level in more than three years, as charted below.

Funding went to bigger rounds, not more of them. Per Crunchbase data, deal counts were flat with the prior quarter and up incrementally from prior year levels. In general, deal counts haven’t fluctuated widely from quarter to quarter over the past few years, as seen in the chart below.

Table of contents

• Most gains go to China
• Funding rose across stages, with most going to later stage
• Early stage was strong too
• Seed also showed an upswing
• A record quarter for AI
• Looking up
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Most gains go to China

An estimated $16.5 billion — or 60% of all Asian startup funding — went to China-based startups in Q1. It was also the third consecutive quarter for increased Chinese venture funding, which hit a multiyear low in the first half of 2025.

AI funding drove the gains in China. The quarter’s largest rounds all went to AI-focused companies, including foundational model startup , agentic AI company , and AI-enabled robot developer .

After China, the next-largest venture funding recipient in Asia was India, with $3.8 billion in reported Q1 investment, the highest number in the past four quarters. A big chunk of the funding went to the quarter’s largest equity round, a $600 million financing for AI systems developer .

Below, we chart out venture funding by country to seven leading investment hubs in Asia, showing how regional funding has trended since 2023.

Funding rose across stages, with most going to later stage

Later-stage, early-stage and seed funding all rose sequentially in the first quarter.

Of these, later-stage and technology-growth deals captured the highest share of funding, estimated at $11.7 billion in Q1. The quarter’s largest late-stage round by a long shot was a $2 billion Series C for Singapore-based data center company .

Overall, it was the largest later-stage tally in five quarters, as charted below.

Early stage was strong too

Early-stage investment also rose in Q1, hitting its highest point in two years.

Per Crunchbase data, an estimated $11.2 billion went to Asian companies around Series A and Series B stages. That’s nearly double year-ago levels and up about 17% from the prior quarter, as charted below.

Seed also showed an upswing

Investors also poured more money into seed-stage companies, with AI as a core driver.

Around $3.6 billion went to reported seed and angel rounds in Q1, up 85% year over year and 45% quarter over quarter. Reported deal counts dipped a bit, indicating concentration of capital among a smaller subset of hot startups. However, we expect this number to rise over time, as seed deals are often added to the dataset weeks after they close.

A record quarter for AI

It would be remiss to close out a quarterly report these days without some mention of how much investment went to artificial intelligence.

For Q1, Asian startups in AI-related categories pulled in about $11.2 billion, per Crunchbase data, the highest sum we’ve tracked to date.

Looking up

Overall, the quarterly numbers show increasing momentum in China’s startup ecosystem, fueling much of the rising funding totals in Asia. Investment to startups in India, Singapore and South Korea also rose sequentially in Q1, while funding to Israel declined some.

In sum, it was a solid quarter, peppered with signs of optimism about the regional startup pipeline going forward.

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:

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 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
• Later stage and technology growth
• Early stage
• Seed
• Exits
• Big picture: A paradigm shift
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

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, , and .

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 , and . The generative AI giant topped it off with a 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. 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 was the biggest fundraiser, pulling in $520 million in a February Series A. Three other companies secured $500 million financings: AI infrastructure developer , semiconductor startup , and industrial robotics-focused .

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 , followed by space tech company , and crypto platform .

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 ’s agreement to purchase business credit card provider for $5.15 billion. Biotech also delivered some large outcomes, including ’s planned acquisition of RNA therapeutics startup , and ’ purchase of allergy treatment startup .

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:

and led the raise, which included participation from , founder , and . Anvil had previously raised $1 million in pre-seed capital from Matter in 2025.

The San Francisco-based startup builds custom robots for businesses and describes itself as a hardware, software and manufacturing platform.

Before starting Anvil Robotics last July, , CEO, and CTO , spent six months talking to a variety of businesses. They concluded that physical AI teams in companies, big and small, were spending over six months piecing together various robot arms, cameras and open-source libraries “just to get a glued-together prototype.”

“This isn’t a problem if you’re , or have nine-figure R&D budgets, and you custom design and build everything, including hardware and software,” Xia told Crunchbase News in an interview. “But for many companies, even well-funded teams, standing up a robotic system with all the sensors and tools and controls you need is a huge challenge that costs you both time and money.”

So the pair started Anvil to fill that gap.

“We support physical AI teams who don’t have $100 million, to make this industry much more accessible,” Xia said.

Customers can go on Anvil’s site and “essentially build out what they want,” he added, using either prebuilt kits or customization.

“They are very much like Legos,” Xia said. Anvil then ships the robots within 1 to 2 days via 2-day air freight. The company is able to do so because it has a significant presence in Taiwan, and is its own manufacturer, he said. (But more on that later.)

Its robots are about the size of a middle-school-aged child, but big enough to do basic dextrous tasks. Anvil’s robots typically cost $5,000 to $10,000, but its least expensive model is just $1,900.

“I think the pricing is going down to a point where researchers and individuals are able to afford this,” Xia said. “I think it’s going to make a really big difference with the community and we’ll see a lot more activity in people building physical AI applications.”

Anvil started shipping robots in September and has so far delivered over 100 of them to customers globally.

Open-platform approach

Anvil competes with the likes of and but claims that it’s different from other startups in the space in a couple of ways.

“Most are basically building toys for rich people,” Xia said.

Anvil’s model stands out, he believes, because it’s an open platform, meaning that all of its robot designs are open-sourced. Most other startups, according to Xia, sell a proprietary design that gets customers “locked in hardware and software.”

“If you work with Anvil, you’re not locked into a single vendor, plus you have large communities behind you,” he said.

Also, as mentioned above, Anvil is an actual manufacturer, and it “controls the whole stack.”

“We don’t outsource — we do this hard part ourselves,” he told Crunchbase News. “We buy each part and operate our own factory, which our customers can leverage.”

Further, Anvil customers can choose where their components come from and how many to build. Historically, if a U.S. company has wanted to deploy a robot, it’s largely been dependent on hardware built in China.

“If a business wants 10 robots made with Taiwanese or Japanese parts, we can do it,” Xia said. “I believe many companies will become more aware of supply chain risk and need this. Many robots today are made in China, and we’re not exactly on great terms [with the country].

Business growth

Anvil won’t disclose hard revenue figures, but Xia noted that it has reached seven figures and that it has over 50 customers. That revenue mostly comes from hardware today, but the company plans to release more software, data tools and services, which should diversify its revenue base.

Its customers are a varied bunch, with some “exciting” ones such as giant tech companies under NDA. Those they can talk about are a small chocolate factory based in Portland, Oregon; ’s GEAR lab, which is doing the humanoid research behind GR00T; and , which has raised more than $300 million to automate welding and industrial tasks.

So far, all of its customers have been inbound, according to Xia.

“It’s all been word-of-mouth, and a lot of it is community-driven,” said Xia, who added that he previously co-founded another startup called and was formerly chief product officer at .

A ‘robotics foundry’

, founding partner at Matter, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm has been investing “at the forefront” of physical AI “for some time.”

“It quickly became clear that innovation on the hardware — the motors, actuators, sensors, systems, etc. — hasn’t kept pace with the rapid improvement in AI. They are still stuck in the same paradigms that powered the industrial robotics of decades past.”

In his view, AI robots today are like “incredible brains trapped in weak, incapable bodies.”

That’s where Anvil comes in. His firm incubated the startup to create a robotics foundry that could “move many companies forward.”

“Behind great generations of products are foundational platform enablers,” Huang said, “and we founded Anvil to be to physical AI what AWS () has been to SaaS and what TSMC () has been to chips.”

The hard part of hardware is less about creating a great robot once, and more about making many great robots “over and over again,” Huang added.

Anvil’s founders, he said, will be able to produce and iterate on hardware at “software-like speeds” and then deliver it at scale in production.

Added Huang: “This is something unmatched.”

Overall, robotics startup funding hit a record high last year, . Startups in the sector raised nearly $14 billion in funding in 2025, up from $8.2 billion in 2024, even topping the $13.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• 5 Startup Sectors Seeing Big Funding Growth
• The Year Of Humanoid Robots
• June Hits 3-Year High In Unicorn Births Across AI, Robotics And More
• Amid Record Robotics Funding, Apptronik Raises $520M Series A Extension To Boost Production Of Humanoid Robot Apollo
• Robotics Startup Skild AI Lands $1.4B, Tripling Valuation To $14B In Just 7 Months

Illustration:

The first quarter of 2026 was unlike any other for venture investment, driven by unprecedented spending on AI compute and frontier labs. Crunchbase data shows investors poured $300 billion into 6,000 startups globally in the quarter, up over 150% quarter over quarter and year over year.

That marks an all-time high for global venture investment not approached by any other quarter on record. In fact, startup investment in the first quarter of 2026 alone totaled close to 70% of all venture capital spending in 2025. The quarterly sum also tops all full-year investment totals prior to 2018.

Q1’s startup investment largely went to AI startups and disproportionately to a handful of U.S.-based companies in record-setting deals. Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded were closed in Q1 2026, with frontier labs ($122 billion), ($30 billion), ($20 billion) and self-driving company ($16 billion) collectively raising $188 billion, or 65% of global venture investment in the quarter.

Overall, AI shattered records last quarter, with $242 billion — 80% of total global venture funding in Q1— going to companies in the sector. The previous record was set in Q1 2025, when AI accounted for 55% of global venture funding.

Table of Contents

• Valuation surge, capital concentration
• US above 80%
• Late-stage hike
• Early stage up over 40%
• Seed funding up over 30%
• IPO slowdown, M&A pick up
• Public pressure
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Valuation surge, capital concentration

Along with the three major frontier labs and Waymo, another 10 companies raised funding rounds of $1 billion or more in Q1, in sectors spanning generative and physical AI, autonomous vehicles, semiconductors, data centers, robotics, defense and prediction markets.

Those outsized rounds pushed overall startup valuations higher in Q1. The Crunchbase Unicorn Board added $900 billion in value during the quarter, marking the largest valuation bump in a single quarter.

US above 80%

U.S.-based companies raised $250 billion, or 83% of global venture capital in Q1, Crunchbase data shows. That’s up significantly from 71% in Q1 2025, which was already well above historical averages in the decade before 2024.

The second-largest market globally for venture funding in Q1 was China, with $16.1 billion invested. The U.K. followed, with $7.4 billion invested. Both countries were up quarter over quarter and even more significantly year over year.

Late-stage hike

The Q1 funding surge was concentrated in late-stage funding, which reached $246.6 billion — up 205% year over year — across 584 deals. A total of $235 billion was invested in 158 late-stage companies that raised rounds of $100 million and more.

Early stage up over 40%

Early-stage funding totaled $41.3 billion across 1,800 deals, Crunchbase data shows.

Funding was up marginally quarter over quarter but up 41% year over year from $29.4 billion. Much of that increase went to Series A rounds, Crunchbase data shows. Series B deals were down quarter over quarter but still up year over year.

Seed funding up over 30%

Seed funding totaled $12 billion, up 31% year over year, though the increase was entirely due to larger rounds, with deal counts falling 30% year over year to 3,800.

IPO slowdown, M&A pick up

Record venture investment in U.S. companies did not translate into a stronger IPO market in Q1.

In fact, the U.S. market for new listings slowed in Q1 amid a broader stock market selloff in software, although China’s IPO market picked up.

A total of 21 venture-backed companies exited globally above $1 billion in Q1. Thirteen of those were from China, four more from elsewhere in Asia, and four from the U.S.

The largest IPO in Q1 was Japan-based , a fintech for mobile payments valued at $10 billion upon listing.  Two foundation lab companies from China — and — debuted on the , each valued at more than $6 billion.

While the IPO market was somewhat lackluster, startup M&A was strong in Q1 with exits cumulatively valued north of $56.6 billion, Crunchbase data shows. That marked the third-highest startup M&A quarter since the downturn of 2022.

The largest M&A deals in Q1 were ’s $6 billion planned acquisition of ’s gaming platform , and ’s planned $5.15 billion acquisition of fintech startup .

Public pressure

While frontier lab megarounds defined Q1 2026, a closer look at the data shows every startup funding stage grew last quarter, as did round sizes across the board.

And unlike the cloud and mobile era, this cycle is also being built in the physical world, with massive capital flowing not just into software, but infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, robotics and manufacturing.

Now, with startup valuations surging and a backlog of companies with unprecedented sums of private capital behind them, pressure is intensifying on the IPO markets to reopen in 2026.

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:

Instead, recent months have served as a busy period for big commitments to seed-stage companies that are short on operating history and long on ambition.

To illustrate, we used Crunchbase to cull a list of the largest seed rounds of the past six months 1. Globally, at least 12 companies within these parameters pulled in rounds of $100 million or more.

Physical AI is leading theme

A majority of top seed funding recipients operate at the intersection of AI and the physical world.

This includes the largest recent fundraiser, Paris-based , which raised $1.03 billion in a March seed round backed by a long list of prominent venture firms, individual investors and strategic backers. The startup is developing AI models that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data and make predictions.

, meanwhile, is operating at the intersection of AI and energy. The San Francisco company secured a $475 million seed round in December to develop energy-efficient silicon circuits that demonstrate similar non-linear dynamics to biological neurons.

Also up there is , which is applying AI to science and experimentation, with goals including automating materials design in areas like semiconductor manufacturing, transportation and power grid engineering. The San Francisco company raised $300 million six months ago.

China-based startups have also recently landed large seed rounds tied to physical AI. This includes , developer of an AI platform for robotic device development that simulates physical world environments, and , a developer of AI robotic technology.

Humans and AI

AI startups haven’t forgotten about humans either.

One example is , a startup co-founded by that raised $252 million in an -led financing earlier this year. The San Francisco company is focused on applying AI advancements to brain-computer interfaces,

, the second-largest seed recipient, is a bit harder to categorize. The Silicon Valley startup, which raised $480 million in January, is focused on foundational models “centering around people and their relationships with each other.”

A new era for seed

In addition to spotlighting investors’ growing enthusiasm for AI, the latest batch of jumbo seed round recipients also demonstrate changing dynamics around how capital is allocated at the earliest stage of company formation.

The general trend points to fewer deals and larger average seed round sizes. While the majority of seed-stage deal counts still occur for rounds $5 million and under, that percentage has trended down over time.

Meanwhile, larger and outlier seed rounds of $10 million and above have climbed from 2% of deals in 2018 to 9% over that time. Seed rounds of over $100 million — once exceedingly rare — are also more commonplace, with 27 such deals announced globally since the beginning of 2025, per Crunchbase data.

Of course, it’s too soon to say if such large checks written at such a nascent startup stage will prove worth it in hindsight. For now, it’s certainly at least a boon to the seed-stage companies at the receiving end, which have the rare opportunity to iterate highly ambitious missions without the added burden of having to do it all on a shoestring budget.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Seed Funding Hasn’t Stalled, But It’s Skewing Larger And Is More Competitive Than Ever, Crunchbase Data Shows
• Turing Winner LeCun’s New ‘World Model’ AI Lab Raises $1B In Europe’s Largest Seed Round Ever
• Humans& Raises Huge $480M Seed Round At $4.48B Valuation For ‘Human-Centric AI Lab’

Illustration:

Venture firms that set up shop in the Texas capital city included , , and 1, among others. famously moved ’s headquarters to Austin in 2021, while also purchasing a house and establishing a residence there.

But as more employees returned to in-office work, Austin slowly seemed to fall out of favor with the tech community, some of whom said it had been overhyped as a startup hub.

There were reports of tech workers who had moved to the city during the pandemic and , saying they were going back to places like the Bay Area. Musk back to California in 2023.

Funding tops pandemic peak

Undeterred by the “tourists,” the startup and venture community in Austin kept plugging away. And those efforts are reflected in a surge in funding to startups headquartered there last year, with 2025 posting an all-time high for Austin venture investment, Crunchbase data shows.

Investment into Austin-based startups spiked 64.8% to $7.19 billion in 2025 as more investors poured money into companies based in the region, according to Crunchbase . That’s compared with the $4.37 billion raised by Austin-area startups in 2024 and tops even the $6.1 billion raised in 2021, at the height of the venture funding frenzy.

Notably, deal counts actually decreased from 312 in 2024 to 272 year over year, signaling an increase in later-stage deals. Indeed, the data corroborates that with $4 billion of the total raised in 2025 classified as late-stage rounds.

Last year’s totals were also more than double — 130% higher — than the $3.1 billion raised in 2023. That money was raised across 403 deals, signaling much smaller round sizes at the time and a more mature market.

A tech scene decades in the making

, managing partner of , doesn’t believe that the Austin funding performance in 2025 was anomalous.

Rather, he calls it “the payoff from decades of compounding.”

“Talent density in venture categories such as software, fintech, health tech, defense and  robotics has reached a critical mass, driven by waves of Bay Area relocations, both full HQ moves and satellite offices, that brought technical, product and operational talent into the market,” Flager said.

That talent eventually left to build new companies, he said, and the cycle repeated.

“On the capital side, the stack has matured across all stages, from pre-seed through growth, with local firms that have now cycled through multiple funds and understand the market deeply,” Flager said. “Layer in a business-friendly regulatory environment, a relatively lower cost of living, as well as a lower effective tax rate, and Austin becomes an attractive place to start and scale a company.”

Former Austin Mayor saw so much potential in the city’s startup scene that he began a career in venture investing after his tenure ended in early 2023. (He now works for New York-based ).

Part of the city’s success as a startup hub stems from its reputation as a haven for mavericks and risk-takers, Adler has said.

“Most cities in the world, you try something, you fail; it’s hard to have access to the capital the second time,” he told co-founder in a in 2022. “In Austin, the civic folk heroes are the people that tried something and it didn’t quite work out and they worked on it until it did.”

, founder of , a solo GP venture firm based in nearby San Antonio, said that it feels like Texas and the Austin metro area specifically are becoming more attractive to manufacturing- and engineering-heavy businesses.

“Some of that may be thanks to Tesla, and some of it may simply reflect the physical advantages of the state,” he told Crunchbase News. “Either way, this [surge in financing] feels less like hype returning and more like capital concentrating around a narrower set of serious, technically differentiated companies.”

Deal sizes grow

That diversity among funded startups is reflected in last year’s investment totals for Austin, which were boosted by several large, late-stage deals across a broad range of industries.

The largest was a $1 billion Series C round for energy provider in October. New York-based led that financing, which valued the 2-year-old company at $4 billion.

Looking back, February in particular was a busy month for venture funding. That month alone saw the second-, third- and fourth-largest rounds in Austin for the year. They included:

• A February Series C round in which autonomous surface vessels maker raised $600 million at a $4 billion valuation. led the round for the defense tech startup.
• Also in February, , which provides endpoint management, security and monitoring, raised $500 million in Series C extensions at a $5 billion valuation — more than doubling its value from just 12 months prior. The funding came in separate tranches led by and ’s , with participation from other investors.
• Robotics company in February raised $415 million in Series A financing led by  and accelerator (A $520 million extension to that Series A was raised in February 2026, taking the total round to over $935 million.)

The findings correspond with Flager’s observations.

“A good chunk of the capital raised in Austin was driven by several large deals. Similar to what we saw across the U.S. in 2025, venture funding in Austin was more concentrated than it has been in the past,” he told Crunchbase News. “Roughly 38% of the capital deployed went to the top five venture financings in Austin. I believe the top 10 deals nationally accounted for more than 40% of the capital raised last year. We’ll see if this trend continues into 2026 and beyond. The start of the year suggests it will.”

, founding partner of , agrees, noting that from a dollars perspective, the surge in financings was driven by a handful of outsized capital-intensive deals in newer categories such as defense and deep tech.

“These companies require a combination of technology, land for manufacturing facilities, and talent for manufacturing tasks. Austin has unique skillsets for that,” he said. “It has a density of three things: talent in deep tech with , and many others moving to Texas in light of favorable business conditions with expertise in these industries; expansive land around Central Texas that is inexpensive, especially compared to California; and lower cost manufacturing-related labor especially given the surge in manufacturing jobs such as at Tesla in recent times.”

Burgeoning industries

Once upon a time, Austin was better known as home to software and CPG companies. And while those types of companies certainly still exist, a number of other industries are growing increasingly robust, as the local investors have pointed out.

As with many top tech markets, Flager said Austin has long been strong for application and infrastructure software, which is currently being challenged by AI. In his view, that talent has migrated to building “quality” vertical agentic software and AI-native businesses.

“We are seeing these companies grow quickly and build scale, while using less capital — which is exciting,” he added. “The domain experts who built and scaled application software companies here over the last two decades are spinning out to build the next generation of native AI businesses.”

The market overall is also broadening in interesting ways. Defense and autonomy have emerged as breakout categories, with Austin becoming one of the stronger markets in the country for dual-use and autonomous systems companies, noted Flager.

“The combination of software and hardware skills now in Texas, along with a business-friendly regulatory environment, has allowed Austin to take a leadership position in these important and developing markets,” he said. “Energy tech is also a natural fit given Texas’ grid scale and the surging power demands of AI infrastructure.”

Finally, robotics and advanced manufacturing are also gaining momentum, driven by deep engineering talent and the ability to scale manufacturing near Austin cost-effectively, allowing engineers, executives and other factory employees to coexist and collaborate in close proximity.

Srinivasan noted that his firm is seeing strong activity in vertical AI companies, or companies that serve vertical markets with AI that is tuned on specialized proprietary vertical data, often targeting the services and labor expenditures by their customers.

“These companies deliver ‘Services as Software’ with close to software gross margins and pricing models that are based more on usage and outcomes as opposed to the traditional seat-based models,” he said.

Srinivasan also expects the city to continue to see large funding deals in defense and deep tech, given the combination of local strengths and robust global demand for such products.

Continued momentum

Investors and companies continue to be drawn to Austin. In late December, San Francisco-based venture firm in the city. One of the firm’s founders, , also announced that he had personally moved to Austin. The firm’s other founder, , had lived and worked in the city since 2022.

In late March of this year, Musk to build two semiconductor factories totaling 100 million square feet in Austin to supply advanced chips for and Tesla. The venture, known as Terafab, aims to manufacture 1 trillion watts of computing power per year, he said. Media outlets valued the initiative at nearly

Also this week, Barcelona-based AI health tech startup announced it will open an office and hire in Austin.

CEO told Crunchbase News that with the company’s New York office already established, the next step was not just expansion, “but choosing the right place to build.”

“And we chose Austin for one reason above all: talent,” he said. “As an AI health tech company, our success depends on attracting exceptional people across engineering, data and life sciences. Austin has rapidly become one of the most competitive talent markets. The city is one of the fastest-growing in the United States. This brings together deep tech expertise, entrepreneurial energy and a growing concentration of healthcare innovation. Ideal for our goal of building an R&D hub. “

Coelho also points out that Biorce has witnessed a “trend” of people moving from the Bay Area to Austin, noting that “the quality of life has gained notoriety.”

“But for us, this isn’t about following a trend,” he added. “It’s about building where the best people are — and where they want to be.”

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Only 2 States Saw Their Share Of US Venture Funding Rise Last Year
• Texas Startup Funding Declines, Led By Dip In Austin-Area Investment
• Lower Costs, Laid-Back Lifestyle Continue To Draw Tech Companies To Austin, Texas
• The 10 Biggest Rounds Of February: Saronic And NinjaOne Lead Big Month
• NinjaOne Snags $5B Valuation In Massive $500M Round
• Amid Record Robotics Funding, Apptronik Raises $520M Series A Extension To Boost Production Of Humanoid Robot Apollo

Illustration: