The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 40

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 40

The Four Biggest Rounds Were All Overseas

AI raised $4.87B this week and the four biggest cheques all went outside the United States.

Covered on Episode 55 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$4.87B
Share of all venture $
39.4%
AI companies funded
75
Biggest AI round
$700MCornerstone Robotics
Tracked so far
$447.5Bacross 40 weeks

The week in brief

Hong Kong, Singapore, Amsterdam, Hangzhou. The first American company on the list is number five. America still funded 40 AI companies, more than every other region combined, and took barely a third of the dollars. It funded the most companies and the fewest big ones. Where the big money went is the other half of the story: 43% of every AI dollar went into robotics, and the two largest rounds of the week are both robot companies.

Of 217 funded companies this week, 75 (34.6%) were AI, taking $4.87B of the $12.35B total (39.4%). The median AI round rose again, to $15.0M from $13.0M, and the top five took 54.8% of AI dollars. Last week had one billion-dollar round; this week has nothing above $700M and still raised more. Strip last week’s mega-round and the real market went $3.57B to $4.87B, up about a third, without a single giant cheque.

Where the money went

  • United States$1.67B

    Funded more AI companies than every other region combined and took a third of the money. Its biggest round, Upwind at $300M, is only fifth for the week. Lowest US share since June 18, against a 40-week median of 66%.

  • China$1.28B

    Two rounds are 90% of it: Cornerstone Robotics ($700M, Hong Kong) and VAST ($446.4M, Hangzhou). Seven rounds is still a thin count.

  • Asia-Pacific (ex$China) — $1.01B

    Sharpa ($668.8M, Singapore) and Wonik Robotics ($253.5M, South Korea) are 91% of it, and both are robotics.

  • Europe$770.5M

    Wonderful’s $550M is 71% of the whole region. Next is iPronics at $125M in Valencia.

  • Middle East & Africa$116.2M

    Israel is three of them and $111M of the total, and all three are security companies.

  • Latin America$21.2M

    Led by Bia Energy, $18.5M, Colombia.

  • Rest of world$0

    No Canadian AI rounds and nothing outside the six named regions. Printed at zero because every region prints every week.

The top five AI rounds

  1. Cornerstone Robotics $700M

    Corporate round · Hong Kong · strategic investment from Medtronic

    Builds surgical robots. Its Sentire system lets a surgeon operate through a robot arm instead of by hand, and the company’s stated goal is making that affordable in ordinary Chinese hospitals rather than only elite ones. Medtronic put in the money and took distribution rights. Confirmed by both companies on September 1.

  2. Sharpa $668.8M

    Venture round · Singapore · ~$3.3B valuation · reported

    Builds robots and the parts other robot makers need, hands, joints, actuators. Founded by people out of the Chinese lidar company Hesai. The investor list is the story: Alibaba, JD.com, Meituan, Tencent and Transsion all bought in.

  3. Wonderful $550M

    Series C · Amsterdam · $5B valuation · led by Insight Partners

    Sells the enterprise software a company uses to build, deploy and manage AI agents that do real work in support and operations. Its valuation more than doubled in under six months, and Salesforce came in as a new investor.

  4. VAST $446.4M

    Series B · Hangzhou, China · led by Matrix Partners China · reported

    Generative AI for 3D. You describe an object and it produces a usable 3D model, the part game studios and virtual-world builders currently do by hand, slowly. About RMB 3B, with Alibaba and a long list of Chinese gaming and media companies participating.

  5. Upwind Security $300M

    San Francisco · $3.8B valuation · led by Bessemer · reported, not announced

    Cloud security that watches what is actually running in your systems rather than scanning the configuration afterward. The first American company on this week’s list, and the only round in the top five neither the company nor its lead investor has announced.

Also notable: Wonik Robotics $253.5M (South Korea, hardware and software for robotics research) · Owner $240M Series D (Palo Alto, runs online ordering and marketing for independent restaurants) · Lyte AI $165M (Sunnyvale, perception systems for robots and autonomous machines) · Socure $156M (identity verification and fraud) · iPronics $125M (Valencia, optical networking built for AI data centers) · Lingchu Intelligence $100M (Beijing, teaching robots physical skills by reinforcement learning) · HiddenLayer $100M (Austin, security for the AI models themselves).

  • The big cheques left America. The four largest AI rounds of the week were in Hong Kong, Singapore, Amsterdam and Hangzhou. The United States still funded 40 AI companies to everyone else’s 35 combined, it funded the most companies and the fewest big ones.
  • Robots, two weeks running. Robotics and physical AI took $2.11B, 43.3% of all AI dollars, up from 34.1% last week. Add chips, compute and data-center infrastructure at 21.5% and it is 65 cents of every AI dollar going into machines and the hardware that runs them.
  • Seed is where the count is. 35 of 75 AI rounds were seed, 47%, the highest share in months, plus 18 more at early-stage venture. And the typical round still went up, $13.0M to $15.0M. Lots of first cheques, and bigger ones.
  • Israel’s entire AI week is security. Three rounds, $111M of the country’s $116M: Aitan, AIR Security and Lasso Security. No consumer, no infrastructure, no models.
  • Health AI is tiny in dollars and huge at the top. Five health or bio AI rounds totalled $19.4M, 0.4% of the week. But the single biggest round of the week is a surgical robot. The money in health AI is not spread out, it is concentrated in the machines.