Startups & VC: state of play

Updated 2026-06-25

Global venture funding hit a record $300bn in Q1 2026, with AI capturing 81% of dollars committed. The defining story is concentration: the top 10 rounds in any given week account for more than half of total capital, sovereign wealth funds and hyperscalers are anchoring the largest cheques, and the gap between mega-fund platform firms and everyone else is widening.

Defense tech set a full-year funding record by June: $14.6bn raised in the first five months, led by Anduril's $5bn Series H at $61bn and backed by a16z's $15bn Fund VII, the largest VC raise in history. Ramp's $750m at $44bn confirms that fintech with an AI story commands frontier multiples. Supabase doubled to $10.5bn in eight months on 600% database growth driven by AI agents, with SpaceX's $60bn acquisition of Cursor marking the largest startup M&A deal on record days after SpaceX's Nasdaq IPO. Skild AI raised $1.4bn at $14bn for a general-purpose robot brain, led by SoftBank. Kalshi doubled to $22bn in five months and is reportedly targeting $40bn as prediction markets cross into institutional trading. YC's Spring 2026 Demo Day fielded 196 startups and debuted on-chain USDC seed funding. On the distress side, Oracle's SEC filing disclosed 21,000 jobs cut by AI agents, the first time a major public company has named AI explicitly as the driver in a mandatory regulatory disclosure. African startup funding rose 26.5% in Q1 to $705m, led by Egypt, South Africa and Kenya, with Gulf capital increasingly replacing US and European LPs as the primary non-local source.