Crunchbase AI News·
Large U.S. venture deals this week were led by a massive defense tech raise for space security startup True Anomaly. We also saw sizable deals for startups applying AI to fintech, marketing, customer service, health care and developer tools.
Read full articleCrunchbase News interviews Kevin Tsang, managing director of Amex Ventures, about the firm’s investment thesis, the kinds of startups it aims to back, and how it works with founders to build and scale projects with a vision toward becoming a "global agentic concierge."
Anthropic is expanding Claude into financial services with AI agents for banks, insurers, asset managers, and fintech teams.
PayPal CEO Enrique Lores used the company’s first-quarter earnings call to outline an AI-driven turnaround, telling investors the fintech giant must recommit to its technology roots by aggressively adopting AI across development, customer service, and risk management. Lores announced a dedicated AI transformation team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning core processes function by […]
Insider Brief PRESS RELEASE — Illuminate Financial, the specialist venture capital firm focused on technology for financial services, announced it has raised $135 million for its Early Growth Fund from investors including BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Börse, HSBC, Jefferies, RBC, S&P Global, and TD Securities. The fund targets Series B+ Enterprise AI and Fintech companies at the critical […]
In 2025, the Bay Area expanded its dominance of U.S. seed funding — capturing a growing share of both deals and dollars — even as most startups remained geographically dispersed, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows, resulting in a more bifurcated landscape.
Venture funding of AI companies in 2026 will easily smash funding records set in 2025, with some heavy deals already consummated in the first quarter, according to market researchers. Data from Crunchbase shows that $300 billion poured into 6,000 startups worldwide during the first quarter of 2026. That’s a quarterly record for venture funding in AI companies, a Crunchbase news report said. A study from S&P Global measured generative AI funding reaching over $140 billion in the first quarter of 2026, outpacing all of 2025, according to a story published on the company’s website. Amid economic concerns, inflation, and the war in Iran, there were fewer deals overall, but the funding rounds were large in scope compared to any made in 2025. X.AI, for example, kicked off 2026 with a series-E round of $20 billion. OpenAI received $122 billion in a massive funding round in March, with a valuation of $852 billion. Anthropic received $30 billion in one round of funding that valued the company a
We recently spoke with Tiffany Luck, a partner at New Enterprise Associates about the increasing relevance of vertical AI, how startups can carve out durable advantages in a world dominated by platform giants, and more.
S-1 filings have been plentiful the past few weeks for venture-backed startups providing semiconductors, nuclear and geothermal power, biotech, and space and defense tech queuing up for a possible trip to the public markets.
