A helpful trend is taking shape in the artificial intelligence industry. Nearly 20 U.S.-based startups have already completed funding rounds of $100 million or more in 2026. Yet venture capitalists are going all in. This is a reflection of their increasing belief in AI technologies to create, innovate and increase productivity and ultimately economic growth.
Among the prominent fundraising efforts, Simile attracted significant attention by raising a $100 million Series A round led by Index Ventures. This funding will enable the company to further develop its AI-driven solutions aimed at enhancing user experiences across various platforms.
Fundamentals round received massive press coverage due its amazing size for a Series A round – $255 million – which gives the company an eye-watering $1.4 billion valuation. This investment will go a long way towards strengthening its efforts to lead the nation in developing AI applications across a wide array of industries, from finance to healthcare.
Another clear leader in the category is Runway, which came in strong at $315 million raised in their Series E round. That news is particularly immediate, given that Runway is presently valued at $5.3 billion. Ambitious to continue its rapid growth and global innovation lead in the emerging AI creative tools sector, Midjourney.
Deepgram, known for its machine learning-based automatic speech recognition technology, recently announced its $130 million Series C funding round. This exciting investment raises its valuation up to a staggering $4.48 billion. This funding will allow the company to improve its products and increase its share of the market.
Known for raising $180 million Seed fund Flapping Airplanes flew big swoops in Korean seed funding scene. This great round was led by Google Ventures, Sequoia, and Index Ventures. It’s a huge vote of confidence in the company’s ability to transform aviation technology with AI talent and capital.
In an extraordinary move, Humans& secured a staggering $480 million in seed funding, with investments from high-profile backers such as Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and GV. Such capital will allow Humans& to innovate in new fields including AI and VR to discover the next frontier in human-computer interaction.
Anthropic recently revealed a mind-boggling $30 billion Series G funding round. That massive flood of money pushes the company’s valuation to a jaw-dropping $380 billion! This funding will prove essential to the fledgling federal AI research lab. It will give the team the time and resources to develop better AI safety and alignment technologies.
xAI, co-founded by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, recently raised $645 million in its fundraising efforts. At the same time, ElevenLabs raised $500 million in its Series D round, which brought its valuation up to a staggering $11 billion.
On top of that, Decagon just closed a $250 million Series D round, putting it on a $4.5 billion valuation. At the same time, PaleBlueDot AI completed its Series B round for $150 million at a $1 billion valuation.
In the realm of AI infrastructure, Baseten raised $300 million in its Series E round, increasing its valuation to $5 billion. In much the same way, OpenEvidence last week announced a $250 million Series D round that values the company at $12 billion. Finally, Arena had finished its own fundraising as home-runs go with a $150 million Series A round at a $1.7 billion valuation.