The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 31

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 31

The Boom Was One Company

AI funding looks up 43% this week. It isn't.

Covered on Episode 48 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$6.67B
Share of all venture $
29%
AI companies funded
83
Biggest round
$2.8BKling AI
Tracked so far
$390.4Bacross 31 weeks

The week in brief

AI raised $6.67B across 83 companies, about 29% of all venture dollars. But $2.8B of that is one company, China's Kling AI, the AI-video studio. Strip that single round and the real market was $3.87B, actually down ~17% from last week's $4.68B. On paper China led with 56% of AI dollars; strip Kling and the United States is the real engine at $2.47B across 44 rounds. One giant check can make a soft week look loud. The tell is always what everyone else raised.

Of 197 funded companies this week, 83 (42%) were AI, taking $6.67B of the $22.7B total raised (29%). The headline reads +43% over last week's $4.68B, but that jump is one round. Kling AI's $2.8B is 42% of the entire AI week. Strip it and AI funding was $3.87B: a soft week dressed up by a single mega-check.

Where the money went

  • China$3.76B

    Led the dollars, but $2.8B of it is Kling AI alone. Strip that and China is ~$1B.

  • United States$2.47B

    The real engine: five times China's deal count, and the market leader once you remove the one Kling round.

  • Latin America$120M

  • Europe$110M

    The most companies after the US, but small checks.

  • Rest of world$110M

    (incl. Canada).

  • Asia-Pacific (ex$China) — $100M

    · Middle East & Africa: $10M.

The top five AI rounds

  1. Kling AI $2.8B

    Private equity · Beijing, China · AI video

    Kuaishou's AI video-generation studio, China's answer to Sora and Veo. This single round is 42% of the entire AI week and the number that defines it.

  2. Together AI $800M

    Series C · San Francisco · $8.3B valuation · AI cloud

    An open-source AI cloud where developers train, fine-tune, and run models. The pick-and-shovel bet: not a model, the place other people's models run.

  3. AI² Robotics $736M

    Series C · Beijing · embodied AI

    Builds humanoid, embodied-AI robots (its AlphaBot). Part of China's humanoid-robot surge that keeps pulling big checks.

  4. General Intuition $320M

    Series A · New York · $2.3B valuation · AI agents

    A young research lab teaching AI agents by training them on video-game and video data. A huge Series A for a lab this new.

  5. Quantifind $200M

    Growth · United States · risk AI

    AI for financial-crime and risk screening, fraud and sanctions. The unglamorous, very fundable "AI that keeps banks out of trouble."

Also notable: DexForce $147M (AI robots with 3D vision), 8090 Solutions $135M (AI-native software development), Twelve Labs $100M (AI video understanding).

  • One mega-round distorts the whole week. Kling's $2.8B is 42% of AI dollars. Always strip it to see the real market ($3.87B).
  • Physical AI is loud. AI² Robotics ($736M) and DexForce ($147M), embodied and robotics money keeps flowing.
  • AI video is its own category now. Kling and Twelve Labs ($100M) both raised.
  • Seed-heavy week. 38 of 83 AI rounds were seed, lots of new bets, few late-stage.
  • US vs China. The US wins on volume, China wins the headline dollar, but only because of one round.