Apr. 22 at 2:43 PM
VCs poured a record
$243.9B into AI startups globally in FY25...but...
1Q26 marked an unprecedented "explosion" in funding - global investment in AI reached
$239B-
$242B in 1Q26 alone—nearly equal to the entire annual total of FY25!!
Investment is heavily concentrated in "frontier labs." In 1Q26, just 4 companies—OpenAI (
$122B), Anthropic (
$30B), xAI (
$20B), & Waymo (
$16B)—accted for ~64% of all global venture capital
The "Big Four" hyperscalers -
$GOOGL $AMZN $MSFT &
$META - have significantly increased their spending to build the infrastructure required for large-scale AI models - est'd cap-ex spend of
$610B-
$650B in FY26 - primary expenditure is for data center systems, which are f/cast to see +55.8% growth in FY26 as firms race to secure high-performance GPUs, custom silicon (TPU & Trainium), & massive power capacity
$AVGO