AI startups captured a record portion of funding last year.
According to PitchBook data published on Tuesday and obtained by Bloombergventure capitalists poured a total of $209 billion into US startups in 2024 – and nearly half of that funding, or a record $97 billion, went to startups that focus 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 at $61.6 billion in 2024, while funding in Asia reached $75.9 billion.
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In the United States, AI companies such as xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic led the way in funding.
xAI raised $6 billion in a round of Serie B in May and Another $6 billion in a December Series C to develop it AI Grok's chatbot. OpenAI took off 6.6 billion dollars in October to continue advancing ChatGPT, which has over 300 million weekly users.
Raised anthropic 4 billion dollars by Amazon in November and agreed to make Amazon Web Services the primary training partner.
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How funding for AI startups has grown
Additional data shows how funding for AI startups has grown over time. Crunchbase Business Database Platform published data on Tuesday showing that while global venture funding grew modestly overall from $304 billion in 2023 to $314 billion in 2024, funding specifically for AI companies grew more than 80% over the same time from $55.6 billion dollars to over 100 billion dollars.
Nearly a third of all global venture funding last year went to AI startups, according to Crunchbase. The data showed that only a third of AI funding went to companies like OpenAI that are creating basic AI models.
The rest of the AI startups that got funded focused, for the most part, on how AI was applied to sectors like healthcare, security and robotics.