# Global H1 2026 venture funding hits record $510B with 70% going to AI

> Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, according to Crunchbase, already surpassing the roughly $440 billion raised across all of 2025 in half the time. The engine behind the surge is unmistakable: around 70 percent of second-quarter capital went to AI companies, and OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for roughly $217 billion, or about 43 percent of all global venture dollars. Those numbers describe an industry bending almost entirely around a single theme. On one hand, the appetite reflects genuine conviction that AI is a generational platform shift worth funding at unprecedented scale. On the other, such extreme concentration carries real fragility, since a handful of megadeals now define the market and leave less oxygen for everything else. For founders outside the AI core, the boom can feel more like a drought, and for the broader ecosystem it raises the uncomfortable question of what happens if the biggest bets take longer to pay off than the capital cycle expects.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Crunchbase · Published Thursday, August 13, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, according to Crunchbase, already surpassing the roughly $440 billion raised across all of 2025 in half the time. The engine behind the surge is unmistakable: around 70 percent of second-quarter capital went to AI companies, and OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for roughly $217 billion, or about 43 percent of all global venture dollars. Those numbers describe an industry bending almost entirely around a single theme. On one hand, the appetite reflects genuine conviction that AI is a generational platform shift worth funding at unprecedented scale. On the other, such extreme concentration carries real fragility, since a handful of megadeals now define the market and leave less oxygen for everything else. For founders outside the AI core, the boom can feel more like a drought, and for the broader ecosystem it raises the uncomfortable question of what happens if the biggest bets take longer to pay off than the capital cycle expects.

## Source

[Read the full story at Crunchbase](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-startup-exits-ipo-ma-soar-ai-q2-h1-2026/)

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