The 10 Biggest AI Startups in the World Right Now, Ranked by Total Money Raised
Editorial Team
Artificial intelligence startups pulled in more than 400 billion dollars globally in the first six months of 2026 alone, according to Dealroom data, putting the sector on pace to roughly quadruple last year's already record breaking total. A handful of companies account for an outsized share of that capital. Here are the ten most funded AI startups in the world right now, ranked by total capital raised to date.
1. OpenAI, Roughly 180 Billion Dollars
OpenAI remains the single most funded AI startup on the planet by a wide margin. The company closed a 122 billion dollar round in March 2026 at an 852 billion dollar post‑money valuation, one of the largest private funding rounds in history, with contributions from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, among others. Combined with earlier rounds, OpenAI's cumulative private funding now sits at approximately 180 billion dollars. The company has reportedly committed to five gigawatts of compute capacity and is said to be targeting a public listing near a trillion dollar valuation later in 2026.
2. Anthropic, Roughly 125 Billion Dollars
Anthropic has raised approximately 125 billion dollars in cumulative equity funding, most recently through a 65 billion dollar Series H round in May 2026 that valued the company at 965 billion dollars, briefly making it more valuable than OpenAI on paper. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. Anthropic has said its run rate revenue crossed 47 billion dollars around the same time, and the company has filed confidential paperwork for a planned initial public offering.
3. Databricks, Roughly 20.6 Billion Dollars
Databricks has raised about 20.6 billion dollars across 22 funding rounds, most recently a strategic round in July 2026 that valued the data and AI company at 188 billion dollars, up sharply from 134 billion dollars just months earlier. The company reported a revenue run rate above 5.4 billion dollars, growing more than 65 percent year over year, and has said it is prepared to go public when market conditions allow, with chief executive Ali Ghodsi pointing to a possible listing as early as 2027.
4. Anduril Industries, Roughly 11.3 Billion Dollars
Defense technology company Anduril has raised approximately 11.3 billion dollars across eight funding rounds, including a 5 billion dollar Series H in May 2026. The company was valued at 30.5 billion dollars following a 2.5 billion dollar round in mid‑2025, and reports suggest it may be raising further capital at a valuation approaching 60 billion dollars. Anduril builds autonomous defense systems, including drones and surveillance technology, and has continued winning large government contracts as defense focused AI investment has surged.
5. Waymo, Roughly 21.6 Billion Dollars
Alphabet's self‑driving unit Waymo raised 16 billion dollars in February 2026 at a 126 billion dollar valuation, nearly tripling its worth from 45 billion dollars in late 2024, when it raised 5.6 billion dollars in a Series C round. Combined, Waymo's two most recent external funding rounds total roughly 21.6 billion dollars, led by investors including Alphabet, Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and T. Rowe Price. Waymo says it delivers more than 400,000 paid rides per week across six US metropolitan areas and plans to expand into roughly 20 additional cities during 2026, including London and Tokyo.
6. Mistral AI, Roughly 2.9 Billion Dollars
Paris based Mistral AI is Europe's best funded large language model company, having raised approximately 2.9 billion dollars across nine rounds, including an 830 million dollar debt financing closed in March 2026 with a consortium of seven banks. The company was valued at roughly 11.7 billion euros, or about 13.5 billion dollars, following a funding round backed by chipmaker ASML. Mistral has positioned itself around European data sovereignty, building on premise deployable models for organizations unwilling to route sensitive information through American hyperscaler infrastructure.
7. Anysphere, Roughly 2.7 Billion Dollars
Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, has raised approximately 2.7 billion dollars across five funding rounds, including a 2.3 billion dollar Series D in November 2025 that valued the company at 29.3 billion dollars, backed by Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue and Nvidia. Cursor is widely cited as one of the fastest growing software products in history, reportedly crossing a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue within roughly three years of launch, with more recent estimates suggesting that figure has climbed considerably higher through 2026.
8. Scale AI, Roughly 1.9 Billion Dollars in Venture Funding
Scale AI, which provides data labeling and evaluation infrastructure used to train large language models, raised close to 1.9 billion dollars in traditional venture funding before Meta acquired a 49 percent non‑voting stake in the company for 14.3 billion dollars in 2025. That deal is structurally different from a conventional funding round, since Scale remains independent and the transaction functioned more like a large strategic stake purchase than dilutive venture capital, though it significantly increased the total capital that has flowed into the company.
9. Perplexity AI, Roughly 1.5 Billion Dollars
AI powered search company Perplexity has raised approximately 1.5 billion dollars across multiple funding rounds, with recent reporting placing its valuation above 20 billion dollars. The company has positioned itself as a direct challenger to traditional search engines, combining real time web retrieval with conversational AI responses, and has continued expanding its enterprise and consumer product lines throughout 2026 as competition in the AI search category has intensified.
10. Thinking Machines Lab, Roughly 2 Billion Dollars
Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, raised approximately 2 billion dollars in its first funding round at a 12 billion dollar valuation, one of the largest seed stage rounds in AI history. The company has stayed relatively quiet about its specific technical direction since launching, though its scale of early funding reflects continued investor willingness to back research focused AI labs led by executives with direct frontier model experience, even well ahead of any public product launch.
A Market Increasingly Dominated by a Few Giants
Taken together, these ten companies illustrate just how concentrated AI funding has become. OpenAI and Anthropic alone account for more capital than the remaining eight companies on this list combined, and Crunchbase data shows the two companies together attracted more than 40 percent of all global venture funding during the first half of 2026. That concentration extends well beyond pure foundation model labs, with defense technology, autonomous vehicles, data infrastructure and coding tools all producing their own multi billion dollar funded leaders, even as the very largest rounds continue to be dominated by a small handful of frontier AI companies racing toward planned public listings later this year.
