The State of Startup Funding: Q1 2026

1,729 companies raised more than $174 billion in the first quarter of 2026. Six AI rounds took nearly half of it, debt quietly became a top 4 deal type, and the early stage market kept funding founders in volume while sending them a smaller share of the money than at any point in recent memory.

Published June 2026 · Based on verified funding records tracked January 1 - March 31, 2026 · Fundraise Insider Research Desk

This report analyzes every funding event captured in the Fundraise Insider database for the first quarter of 2026. It covers round sizes, stage dynamics, sector flows, geography, investor activity, and the profile of the companies that actually got funded.

Fundraise Insider tracks newly funded companies every week and pairs each one with verified C suite B2B leads list, including direct emails and LinkedIn profiles. The thesis behind the product is the same thesis that runs through this report: a company that closed funding days ago has fresh budget and open decisions, which makes timing the most valuable variable in B2B outreach. The B2B contact database currently holds more than 47,000 verified contacts across 138 industries, with roughly 250 new leads added each week.

Table of Contents

Key Findings

• 1,729 companies raised funding in Q1 2026, with $174.5 billion in disclosed capital across the 1,422 companies that reported a round amount.
• The top 10 deals captured 51.1 percent of all disclosed capital, and the top 50 captured 67.7 percent.
• AI companies made up 36.4 percent of funded companies but absorbed 57 percent of disclosed dollars.
• AI density rises with stage: 44.3 percent of pre seed deals, climbing to 59.2 percent of Series B deals.
• Pre seed through Series A produced 47.8 percent of named stage deals but only 7.5 percent of capital.
• Debt financing reached 171 deals and $35.1 billion, with a $100 million median, larger than the Series C median.
• California took 28.9 percent of deals and 63.7 percent of capital.
• Median round benchmarks: seed $4 million, Series A $20 million, Series B $50 million, Series C $75 million, Series D $146.5 million.
• Deal flow stayed steady at roughly 130 to 155 newly funded companies per full week, with no slow weeks in the quarter.

The Headline Numbers

The quarter delivered 1,729 funded companies across 105 industries. The 1,422 companies with disclosed amounts raised a combined $174.5 billion, and the median disclosed round was $10.7 million.

The gap between the mean and the median tells the structural story of this market. A small number of enormous rounds pulls the average far above what a typical funded company actually raised.

19 companies closed rounds of $1 billion or more, 51 closed rounds of $500 million or more, and 231 closed rounds of $100 million or more. Below that tier sits the real volume of the market: hundreds of seed and Series A companies raising between $1 million and $30 million.

Monthly Cadence

Deal volume held steady across all 3 months: 552 companies in January, 531 in February, and 646 in March. March was the busiest month of the quarter by deal count, finishing 17 percent above January.

February carried the largest capital total at $72.3 billion, lifted by the Anthropic and Waymo rounds. January delivered $52.7 billion and March delivered $49.5 billion, meaning capital deployment was remarkably even outside the giant AI checks.

Weekly cohorts ran between roughly 130 and 155 newly funded companies during every full week of the quarter. There was no slow week, no holiday trough, and no visible pause around macro events.

For anyone selling into this market, that consistency matters more than any single headline round. Every week produced a fresh cohort of companies with new budgets, and that supply never dipped.

Capital Concentration: A Top Heavy Quarter

The 10 largest rounds of the quarter absorbed 51.1 percent of all disclosed capital. Expand to the top 50 rounds and the share reaches 67.7 percent, leaving the remaining 1,372 disclosed deals to split less than a third of the money.

The largest verified rounds of the quarter were Anthropic at $30 billion (Series G), xAI at $20 billion (Series E), Waymo at $16 billion (Series D), and OpenAI at $10 billion. Below the AI tier, the biggest checks went to Atlas Renewable Energy at $3 billion in debt, Aligned at $2.58 billion in debt, Shield AI at $2 billion (Series G), Nscale at $2 billion (Series C), Saronic at $1.75 billion (Series D), and Saks Global at $1.75 billion in debt.

Company	Round	Amount	Sector	HQ
Anthropic	Series G	$30B	AI research	San Francisco, CA
xAI	Series E	$20B	AI	Burlingame, CA
Waymo	Series D	$16B	Autonomous driving	Mountain View, CA
OpenAI	Venture round	$10B	AI research	San Francisco, CA
Atlas Renewable Energy	Debt	$3B	Renewables	Miami, FL
Aligned	Debt	$2.58B	Data centers	Plano, TX
Shield AI	Series G	$2B	Defense AI	San Diego, CA
Nscale	Series C	$2B	AI infrastructure	London, UK
Saronic	Series D	$1.75B	Defense autonomy	Austin, TX
Saks Global	Debt	$1.75B	Retail	New York, NY

Table 1. The 10 largest verified rounds of Q1 2026.

AI: 36 Percent of Deals, 57 Percent of Capital

629 of the quarter's 1,729 funded companies, or 36.4 percent, describe AI, machine learning, or generative technology as core to their product. Those companies captured 57 percent of all disclosed capital.

The 6 largest AI rounds alone (Anthropic, xAI, Waymo, OpenAI, Nscale, and Skild AI at $1.4 billion) total $79.4 billion, or 45.5 percent of the quarter's disclosed dollars. AI is not just the biggest theme in venture right now; by capital, it is most of the market.

The Graduation Effect

The clearest structural pattern in the data is how AI density increases with stage. AI companies made up 44.3 percent of pre seed deals, 46.4 percent of seed deals, 53.5 percent of Series A deals, and 59.2 percent of Series B deals.

A 15 point climb from pre seed to Series B means AI companies are converting to follow on rounds at meaningfully higher rates than their peers. Investors are not only funding AI at the top of the market, they are advancing it through the pipeline faster than everything else.

For non AI founders, the implication is uncomfortable but worth stating plainly. The Series A and B bar is structurally higher for companies without an AI story, independent of their actual metrics.

Stage Dynamics and Round Size Benchmarks

Among the 1,445 deals with a named funding stage, seed led at 360 deals, followed by Series A at 213, grants at 212, debt financing at 171, Series B at 120, and private equity at 119. Pre seed contributed 97 deals, Series C 63, and Series D 29.

The Barbell in One Statistic

Pre seed, seed, and Series A together produced 47.8 percent of all named stage deals. Those same deals captured just 7.5 percent of disclosed capital.

Founders are getting funded in volume, and the money itself pools at the late stage. This is the barbell structure of the 2026 market, and it widened rather than narrowed during the quarter.

Round Size Benchmarks

Median round sizes form a clean pricing ladder that founders can plan against. The step ups between stages are stable multiples: seed to A is 5x, A to B is 2.5x, B to C is 1.5x, and C to D is roughly 2x.

After several years of repricing, the ladder has stabilized. A founder raising a $4 million seed or a $20 million Series A in Q1 2026 was at the exact median of the market.

Geography

California produced 500 funded companies, or 28.9 percent of all deals. New York followed with 247, Texas with 117, Massachusetts with 86, and Florida with 80, and the top 3 states together accounted for half of all Q1 deals.

Capital concentration is sharper still. California companies captured $111.2 billion, or 63.7 percent of all disclosed dollars, a direct function of the AI giants clustered around the Bay Area.

Beyond the top tier, Pennsylvania produced 34 funded companies, Virginia 33, Georgia 31, North Carolina 23, and Indiana and Ohio 21 each. The dataset also includes 43 funded companies in the United Kingdom, which raised a combined $3.2 billion, and 36 in Canada.

The practical read for sellers and recruiters: secondary markets produce a steady monthly supply of newly funded buyers, and vendor competition for their attention is a fraction of what it is in San Francisco or New York. A funded company in Indianapolis or Raleigh gets far fewer cold emails the week after its round than one in SoMa.

Debt Financing: The Quarter's Quiet Story

171 companies raised debt in Q1, deploying a combined $35.1 billion. The median debt deal was $100 million, which is double the Series B median and a third larger than the Series C median.

The sector mix explains the instrument. Financial services led with 28 debt deals, followed by information technology at 23, renewables at 19, and real estate at 14, all categories with hard assets or contracted revenue that lenders can underwrite.

Atlas Renewable Energy's $3 billion raise and Aligned's $2.58 billion data center facility were 2 of the quarter's 10 largest transactions, and neither diluted a share of equity. For growth stage companies with predictable cash flows, debt has stopped being a fallback and become the preferred instrument.

Sector Deep Dives

Software and IT Services: The Volume Engine

Information technology and services was the quarter's largest category on every axis: 593 funded companies, $64.3 billion in capital, and a $10 million median round. 61.4 percent of these companies build on AI, which means the AI wave now runs through the middle of the software market rather than beside it.

The stage mix inside IT skews early: 190 seed deals, 102 Series A deals, and 49 pre seed deals against 51 at Series B and 27 at Series C. For anyone selling developer tools, security, infrastructure, or services, this category alone produced roughly 45 newly funded potential buyers per week.

Frontier AI and Research Labs

The research category produced 114 funded organizations and $45.6 billion, with Anthropic and OpenAI accounting for the overwhelming majority of the capital. The same category also includes 25 grant funded research organizations, a reminder that it spans both frontier labs and traditional scientific institutions.

World Labs at $1 billion and BridgeBio at $550 million were the largest rounds in the category outside the 2 giants.

Fintech: A Barbell of Its Own

Financial services produced 124 funded companies and $10.1 billion. The stage mix is unusual: debt was the single most common deal type at 28 transactions, ahead of seed at 20 and Series A at 11.

The category's biggest checks went to established asset managers and lenders, including BentallGreenOak at $1.59 billion in private equity and Russell Investments at $1.2 billion in debt. Below them sits a quieter cohort of seed stage fintech startups, with venture appetite concentrated at the earliest and latest points of the curve and thin in the middle.

Healthcare: Many Deals, Modest Checks

The healthcare cluster, spanning hospitals and health care, medical devices, wellness, mental health, biotech, and pharma, produced 194 funded companies but only about $5.5 billion in capital. That is more than 11 percent of all deals against roughly 3 percent of disclosed dollars.

Hospital and health care alone produced 83 funded organizations, with 21 of them grant funded. Mental health care added 15 funded companies and around $510 million, confirming the niche has settled into steady, mid sized rounds after its 2021 peak.

Healthcare in early 2026 is a volume market rather than a megadeal market. For vendors, that means a wide field of newly funded buyers with smaller but genuinely active budgets.

Defense and Aerospace: Large Checks, Short List

Defense and aerospace together produced 41 funded companies and $4.8 billion in disclosed capital, led by Saronic's $1.75 billion Series D, Sierra Space at $550 million, Axiom Space at $350 million, and Vast at $300 million. Shield AI's $2 billion Series G, tagged under IT in the dataset, belongs to the same thesis.

The pattern is consistent with a sector priced on government contract visibility: few deals, large rounds, and aggressive late stage valuations. Deal count in defense is scarce enough that each new funded company represents a meaningful event for suppliers and recruiters serving the sector.

Climate and Energy: Infrastructure Capital, Not Seed Experiments

Renewables and environment ranked third among all industries by capital at $10.8 billion across only 35 funded companies. Environmental services added $3 billion across 28 companies, and oil and energy contributed $2 billion across 16.

Climate capital in this cycle flows to infrastructure scale projects, and debt does much of the heavy lifting: 19 of the renewables deals were debt transactions. The seed stage climate experiment of the early 2020s has matured into project finance.

Cybersecurity: Mid Sized and Steady

Computer and network security produced 38 funded companies and $1.3 billion, with a healthy $25 million median round. Upwind Security's $250 million Series B, Claroty's $150 million Series F, and Oasis Security's $120 million Series B led the category.

Security shows none of the barbell distortion visible elsewhere. Capital is spread across stages in proportion to deal count, which historically signals a sector investors consider durable rather than speculative.

Frontier Compute: The Picks and Shovels Tier

Computer hardware produced only 15 funded companies but $3 billion in capital, including PsiQuantum at $1 billion and chip designers MatX and Etched at $500 million each. The market is paying up for the physical layer underneath the AI buildout: quantum systems, custom silicon, and the data centers (Aligned's $2.58 billion) that house all of it.

Who Wrote the Checks

Y Combinator appeared as an investor in 78 funded companies, the most of any single firm. Alumni Ventures followed at 71, Andreessen Horowitz at 50, General Catalyst at 47, and Sequoia Capital at 38.

The National Science Foundation appeared 42 times, making the federal government one of the 5 most active backers of newly funded organizations in the quarter. Grants overall accounted for 212 deals and $2.1 billion, with a median award near $700,000, concentrated in nonprofits, research organizations, healthcare, and higher education.

Accelerator economics remain visible throughout the early stage. Y Combinator, Techstars, and Plug and Play at 22 appearances collectively touched a meaningful share of the quarter's pre seed and seed activity.

Who Got Funded: Age and Headcount

The typical Q1 funded company is young and small. 233 funded companies were founded in 2024 or later, and 356 were founded between 2021 and 2023, meaning roughly 45 percent of the quarter's funded companies are under 5 years old.

Headcount tells the same story. 367 funded companies employed 10 or fewer people, 627 employed between 11 and 50, and 446 employed between 51 and 200, meaning 84 percent of the quarter's funded companies have 200 or fewer employees.

The median seed funded company was founded in 2023, about 3 years before its round. The median Series A company employed 30 people, Series B sat at 69, and Series C at 150, making headcount one of the most reliable stage proxies in the dataset.

For sellers, the company profile matters as much as the funding event. A 25 person company that just raised a Series A has no procurement department, a short buying cycle, and a founder or VP making the decision directly.

Outlook for Q2 2026

Three patterns from this quarter are worth carrying into the next one. First, the AI graduation effect: if AI's share of Series A and B deals keeps climbing past 60 percent, non AI founders face a structurally harder follow on market regardless of their metrics, and capital efficiency becomes their primary pitch.

Second, credit as a growth instrument. With $35 billion of debt deployed in a single quarter at a $100 million median, lenders are now direct competitors to growth equity for asset heavy and revenue predictable companies, and the renewables and data center categories will keep pulling that number up.

Third, the supply side of the market is stable and large. 550 to 650 companies enter each month with fresh capital, open hiring plans, and active vendor evaluations, and history from this dataset suggests most of that buying happens in the first 90 days after the round closes.

That last window is the reason Fundraise Insider exists. A funded company contacted in week 1 is evaluating; the same company contacted in month 6 already signed with someone else.

Methodology

This report covers 1,729 companies with a last funding date between January 1 and March 31, 2026, drawn from the Fundraise Insider verified contact database. Capital figures reflect the 1,422 companies that disclosed a round amount; the remainder are counted in deal volume only.

AI classification is based on company descriptions referencing artificial intelligence, machine learning, or generative technology as core to the product. Investor appearance counts reflect listed top investors per company and understate total portfolio activity for any given firm.