According to Crunchbase's latest data around black founders, $643 million has poured into US Black-founded startups since the beginning of the year ' an amount not seen since 2022, when Black founders raised $653 million in funding. For context, Black founders raised $942 million of all venture dollars last year (that's 0.32% of the $290 billion total, per Crunchbase estimates). That means in just a few months, Black founders have already raised almost 70% of what was they raised in all of last year. Driving this funding are just a handful of deals (34, to be exact, per Crunchbase), most notably the $350 million Series E raised by AI hardware company SambaNova, followed by the sports prediction startup Noviq (which raised a $75 million Series B) and the YC-backed AI insurance platform Harper (which raised $47 million). Still, though the $643 million raised so far is a record sum compared to the past few years, Crunchbase makes note that it's still quite small compared to the $252...
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