{"id":389542,"date":"2026-04-20T23:59:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T23:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/389542\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T23:59:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T23:59:34","slug":"these-3-charts-show-how-venture-capital-has-concentrated-at-the-top-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/389542\/","title":{"rendered":"These 3 Charts Show How Venture Capital Has Concentrated At The Top In 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q1 2026 marked an all-time quarterly high for venture investment, thanks to the biggest funding deal ever for a private company. But those milestones mask a different reality for many startups on the ground: While more money than ever is being invested in the private markets, that\u2019s thanks to larger checks, not more of them.<\/p>\n

In fact, Crunchbase data shows the extent to which venture funding this year has been a case of more capital concentrated into a select few companies and a single industry. Last quarter, a handful of large, well-funded AI companies, almost all based in the U.S., captured the vast majority of venture dollars, even as global startup deal count fell.<\/p>\n

AI takes 80% of global venture funding<\/p>\n

AI startups for the first time captured half of global venture funding in Q4 2024. Since then, that percentage has hovered around 50% \u2014 until Q1 of this year, when OpenAI<\/a>\u2019s record-setting round, along with a small handful of other enormous deals, pushed AI\u2019s share to 80% of the quarterly funding total.<\/p>\n

Top 4 vs. everyone else<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that AI as an industry captured the lion\u2019s share of venture funding last quarter. Just four companies took nearly two-thirds of the entire pie, Crunchbase data shows.<\/p>\n

Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded were closed in Q1 2026, with frontier labs OpenAI ($122 billion), Anthropic<\/a> ($30 billion), xAI<\/a> ($20 billion) and self-driving company Waymo<\/a> ($16 billion) collectively raising $188 billion, or nearly 65% of global venture investment in the quarter.<\/p>\n

Deal count falls even as dollars surge<\/p>\n

And while last quarter set an all-time record for venture dollars invested, more money went to fewer companies, continuing an overall downward trend for deal count we\u2019ve seen since the beginning of 2021.<\/p>\n

That was the case not just in North America<\/a>, where dollars invested surged 190% year over year, even as deal count dropped 26%. It also held true in Europe<\/a> and Latin America<\/a>. Only Asia<\/a> saw a modest 5% bump in deal count along with more dollars invested.<\/p>\n

Related Crunchbase queries:<\/p>\n

Related reading:<\/p>\n

Illustration: Dom Guzman<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
\n Crunchbase Daily. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q1 2026 marked an all-time quarterly high for venture investment, thanks to the biggest funding deal ever for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[365,138,336,111,139,69,1401,8259,12806],"class_list":{"0":"post-389542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-transportation","15":"tag-unicorn","16":"tag-venture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}