Almost Half of VC Funding Raised Last Year Went to Startups in One Category

AI startups captured a record-high portion of the funding pie last year.

According to PitchBook data released on Tuesday and obtained by Bloomberg, venture capitalists poured $209 billion total into U.S. startups in 2024 — and nearly half of that funding, or a record $97 billion, went towards startups focusing on AI.

The amount raised by this one category of startups is more than the entire amount of startup funding raised by early-stage companies in Europe and Asia. Europe saw funding for all startups reach $61.6 billion in 2024 while funding in Asia hit $75.9 billion.

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In the United States, AI companies like xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic led the way in funding.

xAI raised $6 billion in a May Series B round and another $6 billion in a December Series C to develop its AI chatbot Grok. OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October to keep advancing ChatGPT, which has over 300 million weekly users.

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

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Additional data shows how funding for AI startups has swelled over time. Business database platform Crunchbase released data on Tuesday showing that while global venture funding increased modestly overall from $304 billion in 2023 to $314 billion in 2024, funding specifically for AI companies grew more than 80% in that same time from $55.6 billion to over $100 billion.

Nearly a third of all global venture funding last year went to AI startups, per Crunchbase. The data showed that only one-third of AI funding went to companies like OpenAI that are creating foundational AI models.

The rest of the AI startups that were funded, the majority, focused on how AI applied to sectors like healthcare, security, and robotics.

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