$506 billion in six months: 2026 on track for record VC year – driven by AI

Half a trillion dollars. That's what venture capitalists funneled into startups worldwide between January and June 2026, according to Dealroom's latest Half-time Report — more than any six-month stretch on record. Extrapolate that pace and 2026 crosses $1 trillion for the first time ever. Dealroom itself doesn't buy it, though, and for good reason: $237 billion of that $506 billion, nearly half, came from a tiny cluster of mega-rounds at OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Repeat that trick in the second half and you'd need another Anthropic-sized raise every few weeks.

The AI dominance isn't subtle. Roughly 77 percent of all global VC money this half-year went to companies Dealroom classifies as genuinely AI-native, not just AI-adjacent marketing copy. Analyst Beau Browne was blunt about the methodology: it's about who actually builds AI at the core, not who slaps the term on a homepage. And the size of individual checks has swelled just as fast as the share. Dealroom counted more rounds above $2 billion in the first six months of 2026 than in the entirety of 2025. Those giant deals — OpenAI's staggering $122 billion round, plus Anthropic's back-to-back $65 billion and $30 billion raises — now account for 57 percent of total funding, up from 21 percent a year ago.

Geography tells a similar story of concentration. The US alone swallowed more than 80 percent of global VC volume in H1, and it's also projected to grow fastest among all countries raising at least a billion dollars a year. Dealroom's Nils Chiavarini drew a pointed contrast with the last VC boom, when money spread into Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia at record levels. This time capital is staying home, piling into mature markets where the AI labs already sit.

Two other sectors round out the picture, moving in opposite directions. Defence, security and resilience startups hit an all-time high of $40 billion in the first half — a segment that barely existed a decade ago, now propelled by the war in Ukraine and a string of other conflicts. Climate tech, meanwhile, is going nowhere: Dealroom projects around $39 billion for all of 2026, essentially flat against last year.

Add it up and the shape of the market is unmistakable. Fewer companies, fewer countries, fewer sectors are absorbing an ever-larger share of venture money, with three or four AI labs and a handful of defence and deep-tech names writing the headline numbers. It looks less like a broad boom and more like a very expensive bet on a very short list of winners.