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86% of US VC Went to AI: The Capital Concentration Crisis
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Eighty-six percent of all US venture capital in H1 2026 landed in AI — and the structural shift is accelerating fast. Today's briefing covers Anthropic's near-trillion valuation, Norm AI's unicorn round, fusion and geothermal mega-rounds, Databento's profitable raise, and Zoom's acquisition of Common Room.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Eighty-six percent. That's the share of all US venture capital that went to AI companies in the first half of this year.
The clearest illustration of where the gravity is sitting: Anthropic. The company closed a sixty-five billion dollar raise, pushing its post-money valuation to nine hundred and sixty-five billion dollars.
Norm AI closed a hundred and twenty million dollar Series C led by Khosla Ventures, hitting a one point two billion dollar valuation. The company automates regulatory compliance work for enterprises.
Two hard tech rounds in recent weeks are worth holding together. Proxima Fusion, a German stellarator startup, closed four hundred and eleven million euros in a Series A led by XTX Ventures, with Google, RWE, and EU funds participating.
Not every story this cycle is about scale-at-all-costs. Databento raised ninety-seven million dollars in a Series B from NEA while already profitable, with twenty-four staff operating from Utah.
On the M&A side, Zoom agreed to acquire Common Room, a Seattle startup with a hundred and eighty employees that had raised fifty-two million dollars. Common Room built AI agents for identifying sales opportunities, and Zoom is adding that capability to its workplace platform.
The real watchpoint coming out of this cycle isn't which AI company raises next. It's whether the sub-one-hundred-million-dollar funding market finds a floor.
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