PitchBook Says AI Took $355.9 Billion Of US Venture Deals In First Half

U.S. venture capital deal value reached $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, nearly 30% more than investors deployed in all of 2025.

But the jump was concentrated in artificial intelligence: AI companies received $355.9 billion, or about 86% of all venture dollars, according to the second-quarter PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor released Wednesday night.

PitchBook described the shift as structural rather than cyclical.

AI coding tools are lowering the cost of building software, while foundation models give founders a base layer without requiring them to train their own systems.

The concentration was even sharper at the deal level.

Rounds of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5% of capital deployed in the first half.

Deals below that threshold, although still the majority by count, drew $51.4 billion.

Their share of total value has fallen from 43.8% in 2024 to 33.1% in 2025 and 12.5% in the first half of 2026.

Seven rounds worth at least $1 billion closed in the second quarter.

Anthropic PBC, Prometheus Inc., Anduril Industries Inc., Baseten Labs Inc., MiRus LLC, Kalshi Inc. and Cognition AI Inc. accounted for $87.2 billion combined; five of the seven were AI companies.

Anthropic’s $65 billion financing was the largest.

It lifted the company’s post-money valuation to $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI Group PBC.

Anthropic had raised at a $350 billion pre-money valuation three months earlier, and the latest round marked it at $900 billion, a 157% increase.

About $15 billion had already been committed through earlier pledges, however, so the amount of new money was below the $65 billion headline figure.

Exit activity set records, but Space Exploration Technologies Corp. supplied most of the value.

SpaceX’s $1.7 trillion initial public offering generated more value than every U.S. venture-backed exit of the previous decade combined, raised $75 billion and pushed its market capitalization above $2 trillion in early trading.

PitchBook called it the largest IPO ever and the largest U.S. venture-backed technology listing by a factor of 17.

Two other SpaceX transactions further inflated the totals: its $250 billion acquisition of xAI Inc. in the first quarter, the largest purchase of a venture-backed company on record, and a pending $60 billion all-stock deal for coding startup Cursor.

Excluding SpaceX, quarterly exit value would have remained close to the constrained levels of recent years.

Other listings were scarce.

Cerebras Systems Inc. completed a $34.3 billion IPO after canceling a 2025 attempt.

Its shares opened at more than twice the offer price before falling below it.

Among the 10 largest U.S. technology IPOs excluding SpaceX and Cerebras, only three traded higher a year after listing.

Anthropic and OpenAI have both filed confidentially to go public, and PitchBook expects those deals to produce two more trillion-dollar exits.

Fundraising followed the same pattern.

Venture firms collected $72.4 billion across 405 funds, nearly matching the $74.9 billion raised across many more vehicles in all of 2025.

Funds of $1 billion or more took $49.5 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz raised $14.2 billion across seven funds, Thrive Capital raised $10 billion across two and Founders Fund raised $10.6 billion across two.

Together, the three firms collected $34.8 billion, or 48% of fundraising dollars in the first half.

Corporate venture arms participated in 21% of deals, their smallest share in 10 years, as parent companies held cash to cover rising AI spending.

Venture debt reached $64.7 billion but was spread across only 280 loans, with a $20 billion SpaceX refinancing accounting for much of the total.

PitchBook’s analysts cautioned that a market this dependent on one theme could face a broad correction if AI growth or returns disappoint.

Even if AI succeeds, they wrote, venture’s power law could concentrate returns in a few winners and leave many companies that raised at elevated prices exposed.