Startup funding used to be associated with smallish bets on promising founders. But times change.
While financings of a few million haven’t gone away, today most venture capital actually goes to rounds of a billion dollars or more. Moreover, it looks like a rising trend.
So far this year, 60% of global startup funding across stages 1 — around $320 billion — went to rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. Such rounds were instrumental in pushing global funding for the first half of the year to record levels.
The U.S. funding tallies are even more tilted to megadeals this year, with 73% of funding going to billion-dollar-plus rounds. Of the $290 billion invested in these deals, just two rounds for AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic account for more than half the total.
As you can see, the notion of billion-dollar-plus rounds accounted for a minority of funding before this year. The lone exception was the first quarter of 2025, when OpenAI closed a $40 billion financing.
Not just bigger deals, more of them too
Giant rounds aren’t just getting more ginormous. They’re happening with greater frequency too.
So far this year, U.S. startups have closed 23 known rounds of $1 billion or more, per Crunchbase data. That puts 2026 already on par with 2025, a record-setting year, and we’ve still got about five months left.
Not surprisingly, these megarounds are generally later-stage rounds or corporate financings. Only two of this year’s billion-dollar-plus rounds — Prometheus and World Labs — were seed or early-stage rounds, per Crunchbase data.
Lessons from the first crop of billion-plus financings
In the history of startups, meanwhile, the billion-dollar-plus venture funding round is a fairly contemporary phenomenon.
The first American example, per Crunchbase data, was Uber’s $1.2 billion Series D, in 2014. Over the next three years, a handful of others pulled in 10-figure rounds as well, including SpaceX, Airbnb, Lyft, SoFi, Snap, Grail, WeWork, Fanatics and Argo AI.
Most of those companies went on to go public and reach valuations that well-exceeded levels set for prior megarounds. SpaceX ($1.6 trillion recent market cap), Uber ($148 billion) and Airbnb ($87 billion) were the standout success stories.
Two of the megafund recipients — Argo AI and WeWork — did not fare so well, while a third, cancer diagnostics provider Grail, has been up and down. Fanatics, meanwhile, remained private and is still thriving.
If these early billion-plus fundings taught investors anything, it was that pouring unusually large sums into well-regarded unicorns can be quite lucrative but is far from a sure bet.
Uncharted territory
In the current funding cycle, it’s not enough to ask whether billion-dollar rounds have potential for high returns. With Anthropic and OpenAI, the question now applies to rounds in the tens of billions or even over $100 billion. As both have already filed confidentially to go public, it may not take us long to find out.
Related Crunchbase query:
Related reading:
- Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits
- Crunchbase Data: Q2 Brought The Most Billion-Dollar Startup Exits Since 2021
- The $100M+ Round Is Now Just Your Typical Late-Stage Financing
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Seed through growth-stage rounds for private companies founded in the past 20 years.↩
