So far this year, 60% of global startup funding across stages 1 ' around $320 billion ' went to rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. Such rounds were instrumental in pushing global funding for the first half of the year to record levels. The U.S. funding tallies are even more tilted to megadeals this year, with 73% of funding going to billion-dollar-plus rounds. Of the $290 billion invested in these deals, just two rounds for AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic account for more than half the total. As you can see, the notion of billion-dollar-plus rounds accounted for a minority of funding before this year. The lone exception was the first quarter of 2025, when OpenAI closed a $40 billion financing. So far this year, U.S. startups have closed 23 known rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. That puts 2026 already on par with 2025, a record-setting year, and we've still got about five months left. Not surprisingly, these megarounds are generally later-stage...
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