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$255B in 90 Days: AI Funding, Valuation Splits & What Breaks Next
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Q1 2026 AI funding hit $255B in a single quarter — more than all of 2025 — with OpenAI's $122B mega-round, SpaceX acquiring xAI for $250B, and vertical AI deal volume collapsing to 2018 levels. Today's briefing breaks down where capital is concentrating, why valuations are bifurcating sharply, and what founders and investors should watch next.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Two hundred and fifty-five billion dollars. That's what AI funding raised in a single quarter.
The round driving the headline is OpenAI's one hundred and twenty-two billion dollar raise. The largest single AI fundraise ever recorded.
Waymo also closed a sixteen billion dollar late-stage round, helping push the autonomous machines segment to a historic twenty-nine billion dollar quarter. That's more than three times its Q4 twenty twenty-five value.
The vertical AI picture is worth sitting with. Nine hundred and forty-eight deals.
Valuations are also bifurcating sharply. Median pre-money climbed from thirty million to sixty-nine point nine million in one quarter at the early VC stage.
One counter-narrative worth tracking: Lansdowne Partners has launched a university IP fund with a first close of one hundred and twenty-eight point nine million euros, targeting Oxford and Cambridge spinouts with a planned raise of one hundred and seventy-one point nine million euros by December. With British Business Bank backing, this represents a deliberate European bet on deep tech IP before it scales, rather than chasing horizontal platform valuations.
The near-term watchpoints are straightforward. If Q1's pace holds, twenty twenty-six AI funding tracks toward roughly one trillion dollars annually.
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