Where is AI venture money going in 2026, and is it still rising?

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In 2026 AI venture money is concentrated in a few leading companies and totals are at records, but Q3 turned down. 86% of US venture dollars went to AI in the first half; in Q3 venture funding fell about 40% and AI's share dropped to 65.9%.
The money goes to the top. On PitchBook's count, US venture investment reached $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, of which $355.9 billion, or 86%, went to AI; on Crunchbase's count, global venture funding was $510 billion, already above the $440 billion of all of 2025. OpenAI's $122 billion and Anthropic's $95.6 billion together took 43% of global venture funding. Large rounds keep going to companies with revenue: Cognition announced a $2 billion Series E at a $48 billion post-money valuation on September 8, and Mistral closed a EUR 3 billion Series D the same day. a16z adds that money also flows to legal and accounting services and to capital-heavy fields such as semiconductors, power and defense.
On the China side, Bloomberg reported on October 6, 2026 that DeepSeek was close to a new round of at least RMB 80 billion (about $12 billion), with Tencent and CATL committing the largest sums. Bloomberg reported the same day that Moonshot AI had closed its final pre-IPO private round at a valuation of about $50 billion (both reported).
Totals are still rising, but the quarter slowed. US venture investment reached $515.8 billion in the first three quarters, about 44% above the previous full-year record. Yet Q3 alone fell about 40% to $98.4 billion, and AI's share dropped from 82.7% year to date to 65.9% for the quarter. PitchBook notes that, excluding OpenAI and Anthropic, funding has held roughly the same trend since late 2024; the narrowing rests mainly on two companies. FutureX's threshold: if AI's share of US venture stays below 70% in Q4, the concentration call drops to a high plateau. This is a market view, not investment advice.
On Crunchbase's count, global venture funding was $159 billion in Q3 2026, down 25% on the quarter and up 53% on the year. That quarter 27 companies raised single rounds above $1 billion, a record, together about a third of the total (Reported).