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In 2024, AI-focused startups continued to dominate the funding landscape with industry leaders like OpenAI ($6.6B), xAI ($6B), and Anthropic ($4B) leading the pack. Adding to this trend, MLflow and data lakehouse pioneer Databricks is raising what could be one of the largest venture rounds in history — a $9.5 billion raise plus $4.5 billion in debt financing, at a valuation exceeding $60 billion.
Outside of those heavyweights, prominent AI startups featured significantly in a funding dataset of more than 115 of the largest funding rounds of 2024, including venture capital, corporate rounds, post-IPO equity, and debt financing, sourced from Crunchbase and other platforms. AI-focused firms alone attracted over $24 billion in recent rounds (combining core AI research, infrastructure, and applications). For comparison, the next largest sectors were advanced hardware and semiconductors at nearly $4 billion, followed by biotech/healthcare at $3.4 billion, advanced transportation at $2.3 billion, and clean energy/nuclear at $2.2 billion. AI was not just a prominent theme unto itself — many of the largest fundraising rounds in other sectors were fundamentally AI-driven companies, including Xaira Therapeutics in biotech ($1B), G42 and Tenstorrent in semiconductors ($1.5B and $693M respectively), Physical Intelligence in robotics ($470M), Lightmatter in photonic computing ($400M), and numerous transportation companies developing autonomous systems.
‘Almost sucking the oxygen out of the room’
In 2024, the majority of largest VC deals involved data- and AI-focused firms. Veeam is a data protection software firm. Databricks, OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and G42 have either a core focus on AI or data.
This concentration of capital in AI is a significant shift from just two years ago. As the Wall Street Journal reported in October, AI startups commanded 31% of global venture funding in Q3 2024, up from just 13% in Q3 2022. “AI companies are almost sucking the oxygen out of the room for everyone else,” CB Insights analyst Benjamin Lawrence told WSJ. This surge dwarfs previous tech sector funding waves — for context, fintech at its peak captured about 20% of venture funding, while cryptocurrency never exceeded 6%. With venture firms sitting on what PitchBook estimated as $328.4 billion in uncommitted capital as of early 2024, industry observers expect this AI-centric funding pattern to persist. As Wing VC Founding Partner Peter Wagner told the Journal, while much of the market follows traditional patterns, AI investment is experiencing “a late ’90s-type of acceleration.”
In terms of geography, the U.S. remains the epicenter of colossal AI deals. Major AI players like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Databricks are all headquartered in San Francisco and many of the largest biotech and energy investments also target U.S.-based ventures. Meanwhile, new hubs are emerging. European AI companies, such as Mistral AI in France, and Middle Eastern tech conglomerates like UAE-based G42, are capturing meaningful rounds, while Canada’s Cohere and Finland’s Oura highlight a global dimension to this capital wave.
The following table highlights a selection of the most significant 2024 funding rounds across AI, advanced hardware, clean energy, and other high-growth sectors:
| # | Company | Sector/Category | Last Funding Type | Round (USD) | Date (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Databricks (Planned) | AI/ML Infrastructure | Late Stage Venture + Debt | ~$9.5B + $4.5B debt | TBD |
| 2 | OpenAI | AI | Late Stage Venture | $6.6B | Oct |
| 3 | xAI | AI | Venture – Series Unknown | $6B | Nov |
| 4 | Anthropic | AI | Corporate Round | $4B | Nov |
| 5 | Veeam Software | Enterprise IT/Software Infrastructure | Secondary Market | $2B | Dec |
| 6 | G42 | AI/Cloud Computing | Corporate Round | $1.5B | Apr |
| 7 | Anduril Industries | Defense/Advanced Security | Series F | $1.5B | Aug |
| 8 | CoreWeave | AI (Infrastructure) | Series C | $1.1B | May |
| 9 | Safe Superintelligence | AI | Series A | $1B | Sep |
| 10 | Scale AI | AI | Series F | $1B | May |
| 11 | Xaira Therapeutics | Biotech/Healthcare | Series A | $1B | Apr |
| 12 | Astranis | Aerospace/Space | Series D | $753.5M | Jul |
| 13 | Tenstorrent | Advanced Hardware/Semiconductor | Series D | $693M | Dec |
| 14 | Figure | AI/Robotics | Series B | $675M | Feb |
| 15 | AlphaSense | AI (Market Intelligence) | Series F | $650M | Jun |
| 16 | Groq | Advanced Hardware/Semiconductor | Series D | $640M | Aug |
| 17 | Poolside | AI (Software) | Series B | $500M | Oct |
| 18 | Mistral AI | AI | Series B | ~$494.3M | Jun |
| 19 | KoBold Metals | Industrial AI | Venture Round | $491.5M | Oct |
| 20 | Physical Intelligence | Robotics/Autonomous | Series A | $470M | Nov |
| 21 | Form Energy | Clean Energy/Nuclear | Series F | $405M | Oct |
| 22 | Lightmatter | Advanced Hardware/Semiconductor | Series D | $400M | Oct |
| 23 | Cyera | AI (Security) | Series D | $300M | Nov |
| 24 | Glean | AI (Search) | Series E | $260M | Sep |
| 25 | Freenome | Biotech/Healthcare | Series E | $254M | Feb |
Analysis of 117 major funding rounds demonstrates distinct patterns in how capital deployment varies across technology sectors.
Sector-by-sector and funding type overview
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- Core AI research: Approaching $20B+ in major recent rounds, even before counting Databricks’ pending $9.5B raise, which could push totals to $29B+. High-profile moves include Amazon’s additional $4B into Anthropic (totaling $8B) and Google’s $2B in commitments. OpenAI’s latest $6.6B round led by Thrive, Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoftBank elevated its valuation to $157B, reflecting platform-level land grabs.
- Advanced hardware/semiconductor: About $2.8B in fresh capital, often late-stage venture and IPO-linked deals. Tenstorrent’s December 2024 Series D ($693M) saw notable backers like Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, pushing its valuation to $2B. Ayar Labs raised $155M in Series D funding, reaching a $1B+ valuation and drawing investors like AMD Ventures and Intel Capital. Alphawave Semi’s public listing and connectivity IP underscore the ongoing push for scalable AI infrastructure.
- Biotech/healthcare: Nearing $2.2B across a variety of funding structures (Series B/C, convertible debt, post-IPO equity). Companies like Freenome (liquid biopsy) and Olema Oncology represent an array of late-stage biotech ventures. While the biotech investment climate has cooled considerably since the pandemic, WSJ noted that the number of deals worth more than $100 million have come close to full-year totals in 2021.
- Clean energy/nuclear: Also around $2.2B, with a mix of early- to late-stage venture financing and debt. These include investments in nuclear startups and renewable energy technologies.
- Enterprise IT/software infrastructure: Just over $2B, often through post-IPO or secondary markets. Databricks, for instance, is finalizing a major $9.5B round. Despite the AI spotlight, enterprise software remains resilient, with stable funding patterns supporting data management, analytics, and backend tooling.
- Aerospace/space: The space industry continues to attract healthy investment, with SpaceX leading the way. SpaceX’s valuation hit roughly $350 billion in December 2024 through an insider share purchase at $185 per share — a substantial increase from $112 per share in September. This milestone has established SpaceX as the world’s most valuable startup, surpassing ByteDance. Other companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace also maintain active interest from VC and growth equity investors.
- Robotics/autonomous systems:
In the robotics space, early-stage venture funding thrived with like Figure ($675M Series B) and Physical Intelligence ($470M Series A) securing substantial investment hauls. overall, a diverse set of companies won funding ranging from industrial automation (ANYbotics, Vecna Robotics), humanoid robots (Figure), agricultural robotics (Carbon Robotics), Logistics and warehouse automation (Nimble Robotics, Outrider), and delivery robots (Serve Robotics).
| Category | 2024 Funding (Approx.) | Key Funding Types | Geographic Concentration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core AI Research | $24.42B-33.92B* | Late-stage venture, corporate rounds, Series A-E | U.S., Canada, France, Germany |
| Advanced Hardware/Semiconductor | $3.96B | Corporate rounds, Series A-D, post-IPO equity/debt | U.S., UAE, Remote |
| Biotech/Healthcare | $3.41B | Series A-E, post-IPO equity, venture rounds | U.S., Finland |
| Clean Energy/Nuclear | $2.21B | Series A-F, debt financing, grants | U.S. |
| Enterprise IT/Software | $2.17B | Secondary market, Series C | U.S., Remote |
*If Databricks completes its planned raise
Established hardware and infrastructure giants recalibrating
H100 image [NVIDIA]
In parallel, established hardware and infrastructure giants — Intel, IBM, Dell, AMD, Xerox — are retrenching. Intel announced the largest cuts with 15,000 jobs eliminated in August 2024. Dell announced a 6,000-person reduction in March. IBM cut 1,000 jobs in Beijing in August while conducting additional layoffs of undisclosed size in New York throughout the year. AMD eliminated 1,000 positions in the Bay Area in November. Collectively, these companies have cut over 23,000 jobs in 2024 amid efforts to reduce costs while simultaneously investing in next-gen computing approaches.
While other established hardware companies adjust to the shifting market, NVIDIA has a banner 2024 (FY 2025). Its lack of layoff recent announcements stands out in the Big Tech landscape that has seen the most churn since the DotCom Bubble burst in recent years. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 announced in November 2024, NVIDIA reported a record revenue of $35.1 billion, marking a 94% increase from the same period the previous year. In the same quarter, its data center segment achieved a record revenue of $30.8 billion, up 112% year-over-year. Additionally, the company’s CEO Jensen Huang has noted that demand for its Blackwell AI processors, which offer 2.5 times the performance of the preceding Hopper chips, has been “insane.”
NVIDIA’s evolution is emblematic: once a chipmaker focused to a large extent on gaming graphics, it has since emerged as a full-stack AI powerhouse. By 2024, more than half of its engineers were dedicated to software. This shift is paying off. NVIDIA’s market capitalization soared above $2 trillion in February and briefly surpassed $3 trillion by June, making it, for a time, the most valuable company in the world. Its debut of the Blackwell AI chip architecture and cutting-edge datacenter accelerators (B100 and B200) expanded its AI hardware portfolio, while the release of NVLM 1.0, a family of multimodal large language models topping 72 billion parameters, positioned it to rival established heavyweights like GPT-4, which its tech helped train.
U.S. R&D funding dominance in tech continued in 2024
While the market recalibrates, the continued R&D funding dominance of the U.S. in tech was another core theme in 2024, although China is now the world’s largest producer of scientific knowledge, as Nature has pointed out. When including anticipated rounds like Databricks’ $9.5 billion venture raise, U.S.-based entities account for roughly $33.9 billion in major AI funding this year. Middle Eastern strategic investments further amplify this concentration of capital. In contrast, European participation in top-tier funding remains notably constrained. Mistral AI’s €450 million ($494 million) round, while significant for the European ecosystem, represents just 1.5% of documented major AI investments. Even when combined with other substantial European deals like Alphawave Semi’s $150 million raise, the continent’s cumulative large-scale AI financing remains under $650 million—less than 2% of global top-tier AI funding. While European AI ventures are increasingly securing meaningful capital, they operate at a fundamentally different scale than their U.S. counterparts, where billion-dollar rounds have become a recurring feature of the funding landscape.
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