AI startups captured a record share of the funding pie last year.
According to PitchBook data released Tuesday and obtained by Bloomberg, venture capitalists poured a total of $209 billion into U.S. startups in 2024 — and nearly half of that funding, or a record $97 billion, went into startups -ups that focus on AI.
The amount raised by this one category of startups exceeds the total amount of startup funding raised by startup companies in Europe and Asia. In Europe, funding for all startups in 2024 reached $61.6 billion, while funding in Asia reached $75.9 billion.
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In the United States, AI companies such as xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic have been at the forefront of funding.
xAI raised $6 billion in a Series B round in May and another $6 billion in a Series C round in December to develop its AI chatbot Grok. OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October to further power ChatGPT, which has over 300 million weekly users.
Anthropic raised $4 billion from Amazon in November and agreed to make Amazon Web Services its primary training partner.
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How funding for AI startups has grown
Additional data shows how funding for AI startups has increased over time. Enterprise database platform Crunchbase released data on Tuesday showing that while overall global venture funding increased slightly from $304 billion in 2023 to $314 billion in 2024, funding specifically for AI companies increased at the same rate period increased by more than 80% from $55.6 billion to over $100 billion.
According to Crunchbase, almost a third of all global venture capital funding went to AI startups last year. The data showed that only a third of AI funding went to companies like OpenAI that develop basic AI models.
Most of the remaining AI startups funded focused on applying AI in areas such as healthcare, security and robotics.
Related: AI startups received $2.9 billion in funding last quarter. These three US companies got a lot of it – and you've probably never heard of them.