AI Startups Raised $221 Billion in Q1 as Venture Funding Shows No Slowdown

North American artificial intelligence startups didn’t just grow in Q1 2026. They exploded, pulling in $221 billion, roughly six times the previous quarter, according to Crunchbase.

A handful of blockbuster rounds did most of the heavy lifting.

OpenAI raised a record $110 billion in February in a round led by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, followed by an additional $12 billion round in March. Anthropic secured the next-largest round, raising $30 billion in a February Series G, while xAI secured $20 billion in Series E funding. Waymo raised $16 billion in a February Series D.

The story didn’t stop at the top. Investors poured $25.1 billion into Series A and B rounds, up 17% from the prior quarter and 56% year over year, demonstrating the strongest early-stage showing in over three years, even if it still trails the 2021 peak.

Funding Extends Beyond Mega Rounds

Mid-sized deals continued to flow into startups building enterprise software tied to specific, high-friction workflows, signaling sustained investor appetite across the space.

Variance, which develops automation tools for compliance and risk workflows, raised $21.5 million in a Series A round. The company is building AI agents that can ingest regulatory documents, map requirements to internal policies, and monitor compliance gaps in real time.

Sona raised $45 million to expand its payroll and workforce management platform, as reported by PYMNTS, targeting frontline industries like retail, hospitality and healthcare with AI-driven scheduling, forecasting and wage accuracy tools.

In healthcare, Stedi raised $50 million to expand its transaction processing platform connecting providers, payers and clearinghouses. The company is focused on standardizing fragmented data flows, converting inconsistent inputs into usable formats and reducing the manual reconciliation that slows payments and drives up administrative costs.

Enterprise Workflows Drive New Deals

Enterprise workflows are driving the next wave of deals, especially in IT and insurance, where processes are clearly defined but notoriously slow. Investors are backing startups that can bring speed, automation and reliability to these operational bottlenecks.

NeuBird AI raised $19.3 million to expand its predictive monitoring platform for enterprise IT environments. The system analyzes logs, metrics and signals across production environments to catch issues before they escalate, pinpoint root causes, and trigger automated fixes like restarting services or reallocating resources to minimize downtime.

Yuzu Health raised $35 million in a Series A round to build software for health insurance operations, including claims adjudication, plan configuration and onboarding. Its platform uses AI to streamline processes that typically rely on multiple intermediaries and manual checks, and reducing errors and accelerating workflows across insurers, third-party administrators and providers.

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