Almost Half Of Vc Funding Raised Last Year Went To Startups In One Category

AI startups captured a record-high accusation of nan backing pastry past year.

According to PitchBook accusation released connected Tuesday and obtained by Bloomberg, task capitalists poured $209 cardinal afloat into U.S. startups successful 2024 — and astir half of that funding, aliases a grounds $97 billion, went towards startups focusing connected AI.

The magnitude raised by this 1 people of startups is overmuch than nan afloat magnitude of startup backing raised by early-stage companies successful Europe and Asia. Europe saw backing for each startups scope $61.6 cardinal successful 2024 while backing successful Asia deed $75.9 billion.

Related: 4 Ways AI Startups Can Avoid Becoming Obsolete

In nan United States, AI companies for illustration xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic led nan measurement successful funding.

xAI raised $6 cardinal successful a May Series B accusation and different $6 cardinal successful a December Series C to create its AI chatbot Grok. OpenAI raised $6.6 cardinal successful October to support advancing ChatGPT, which has complete 300 cardinal play users.

Anthropic raised $4 cardinal from Amazon successful November and agreed to make Amazon Web Services its main training partner.

Related: How AI Startups Can Increase Their Chances of Success successful Today's Landscape

How Funding for AI Startups Has Grown

Additional accusation shows really backing for AI startups has swelled complete time. Business database level Crunchbase released information connected Tuesday showing that while world task backing accrued modestly wide from $304 cardinal successful 2023 to $314 cardinal successful 2024, backing specifically for AI companies grew overmuch than 80% successful that aforesaid clip from $55.6 cardinal to complete $100 billion.

Nearly a 3rd of each world task backing past twelvemonth went to AI startups, per Crunchbase. The accusation showed that only one-third of AI backing went to companies for illustration OpenAI that are creating foundational AI models.

The remainder of nan AI startups that were funded, nan majority, focused connected really AI applied to sectors for illustration healthcare, security, and robotics.

Related: AI Startups Received $2.9 Billion successful Funding Last Quarter. These 3 U.S. Companies Received a Lot of It— And You've Probably Never Heard of Them.