PitchBook data published on 9 July reveals that US venture capital deal value reached $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026 — nearly 30 per cent more than investors deployed in the entire previous year. Artificial intelligence companies captured $355.9 billion of the total, representing 86 per cent of every venture dollar spent in the period.
The concentration is unprecedented. Seven rounds exceeding $1 billion closed in Q2 alone, collectively worth $87.2 billion, with five of the seven going to AI companies. Anthropic led with a $65 billion round that elevated its post-money valuation to $965 billion — surpassing OpenAI for the first time. Deals of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5 per cent of all deployed capital, while smaller deals below that threshold drew only $51.4 billion, down from 43.8 per cent of total value in 2024.
The fund-raising side tells a similar story of concentration. Venture firms raised $72.4 billion across just 405 funds in H1. Three firms dominated: Andreessen Horowitz closed seven funds worth $14.2 billion, Thrive Capital raised $10 billion across two funds, and Founders Fund gathered $10.6 billion across two funds — collectively capturing 48 per cent of all fundraising dollars in the half.
PitchBook analysts cautioned that 'a market this dependent on a single theme faces a broad correction if AI growth or returns disappoint,' noting that venture's power-law concentration has reached levels not seen since the dot-com era. The warning is particularly pointed given that two companies — OpenAI and Anthropic — together captured 43 per cent of all global startup funding in H1 2026, effectively making it a two-company market.
The data arrives alongside other signs of an AI infrastructure arms race: Meta's $125–145 billion capex guidance, SpaceX's $6.3 billion compute lease with Reflection AI, and custom chip programmes at Meta (Iris), OpenAI (Jalapeño) and Google (TPU). Together, these numbers paint a picture of an industry where capital is flowing at historic scale but concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
For context engineers, the funding data confirms that the AI industry's centre of gravity has shifted decisively toward infrastructure and frontier models. The companies building the foundations — compute, models, and developer tools — are absorbing the vast majority of capital, while application-layer startups compete for a shrinking share of investment.
