The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 39

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 39

Seventy Cents Went To Robots And Chips

AI took 56.6% of every venture dollar this week. The number that matters is the one underneath it.

Covered on Episode 54 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$4.57B
Share of all venture $
56.6%
AI companies funded
80
Biggest AI round
$1BPoolside
Tracked so far
$442.7Bacross 39 weeks

The week in brief

The whole venture market raised $8.07B, the smallest week since April, and 191 companies still got funded. AI’s share of that was $4.57B across 80 companies. Strip the one billion-dollar round out of this week and out of last week and the market went $3.59B to $3.57B. Flat. The size did not change. The destination did: 70 cents of every AI dollar went into robots and the chips that run them. There is not one chatbot in the top five.

Of 191 funded companies this week, 80 (41.9%) were AI, taking $4.57B of the $8.07B total (56.6%). The median AI round rose to $13.00M from $10.80M, and the top five took 56.9% of AI dollars, down sharply from 78.5%. Last week was one giant cheque. This week is a broad field: more companies, less money, a bigger typical round.

Where the money went

  • United States$3.07B

    Poolside alone is 33% of the US total. Reverted from last week’s record 85.9%.

  • China$1.09B

    XPENG Robotics is 82% of China’s entire AI total. Strip it and China is $195M, an ordinary week, and six rounds is the thinnest Chinese count in months.

  • Europe$209.4M

    Callosum ($100M seed, London) is 48% of the region.

  • Asia-Pacific (ex$China) — $164.0M

    Wrtn Technologies ($72.2M, Seoul) is 44% of it.

  • Latin America$12.0M

    : Primero AI, Mexico. Back on the board after $0 last week.

  • Middle East & Africa$9.8M

    , both UAE. No round above $7M.

  • Rest of world$6.0M

    : Breeze Blue, location unresolved and left here rather than guessed. No Canadian AI rounds this week.

The top five AI rounds

  1. Poolside $1B

    Corporate round · San Francisco · $12B pre-money · reported

    Builds AI models that write software, plus the internal platform used to train them. The $1B is the equity half of a roughly $7B Nvidia deal; the other half is a $6B non-exclusive license on that platform. Reported from a Poolside investor letter, not announced by either company.

  2. XPENG Robotics $900M

    Series A · Shenzhen · >$6.3B post-money

    The humanoid-robot unit of the Chinese EV maker XPeng, funded to mass-produce its IRON robot. Confirmed by XPeng, led by IDG Capital with Tencent and Alibaba in as strategic investors. A $900M Series A is a car company standing up a robot company.

  3. Starcloud $250M

    Series A extension · Redmond, WA · $2.3B post-money

    Puts data centers in orbit. The pitch is that space gives you free cooling and unlimited solar, which is exactly what AI compute runs short of on the ground. Company press release, led by Manhattan West with Nvidia and Cisco participating.

  4. Instinct $250M

    Series B · San Francisco · $2.5B valuation · reported

    A consumer AI assistant that connects to your apps and devices and does things for you by text or voice. Still in private beta and already valued at $2.5B.

  5. Gatik $200M

    Series D · Santa Clara · led by Qatar Investment Authority

    Driverless box trucks for the middle mile, the short repeated runs between a warehouse and a store. Confirmed by the company. Tied at exactly $200M with Generalist AI, which builds foundation models for robots and was reported at a $3B valuation.

Also notable: Q-Edge $188M (Foxconn buying out an AI-server operation, not new investment) · Emerald AI $150M (software that throttles data-center power to match the grid; now a $1.05B company) · Habitat $104.1M (Beijing, AI-native smart homes) · Callosum $100M seed (London, routes AI workloads across models and chips) · Stability AI $76M, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music and EA all invested in the maker of Stable Diffusion.

  • Robots and the metal took 70% of the week. Physical AI, robotics, autonomy, drones, was $1.56B, 34.1% of AI dollars. Chips, compute and data-center infrastructure was $1.63B, 35.7%. Between them, 70 cents of every AI dollar. Nothing in the top five is software you type into.
  • China’s whole week is one robot company. XPENG Robotics is 82% of Chinese AI dollars across just six rounds. In that region the number to watch is the company count, and the count is down.
  • The market shrank, the count did not. $8.07B total is the smallest week since April, yet 191 companies were funded and 80 of them were AI, the most AI companies since July 29. Small cheques, lots of them: 36 seed rounds plus 17 Series A is 66% of every AI round this week.
  • Concentration reversed. The top five fell from 78.5% of AI dollars to 56.9% while the median round rose from $10.8M to $13.0M. The money spread out.
  • The record labels bought into the thing they sued. Universal, Sony and Warner all invested in Stability AI’s $76M round. Two years of copyright fights, and the settlement shape is turning out to be equity.