The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 43

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 43

No Giants. A Heavier Middle.

AI raised $5.33B this week, and not one round cleared a billion dollars.

Covered on Episode 58 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$5.33B
Share of all venture $
36.0%
AI companies funded
85
Biggest AI round
$580MTEKEVER
Tracked so far
$471.4Bacross 43 weeks

The week in brief

Last week had one, Motive’s $1.3B. Strip it out and the everyday AI market went $4.81B to $5.33B. Fewer companies got funded, 103 to 85, but the typical round rose from $13.2M to $18.0M. AI’s share of all venture money fell to 36.0%, because a Caribbean resort chain raised $3B, more than the five biggest AI rounds combined.

Of 249 funded companies this week, 85 (34.1%) were AI, taking $5.33B of the $14.82B total (36.0%). Seventeen AI rounds of $100M or more took 75.2% of AI dollars. The top five took 38.8%, down from 42.7%. Three non-AI deals over a billion (Sandals $3.0B, SB Energy $1.5B, BMG $1.25B) are why the share looks low. Against 43 weeks, $5.33B is an ordinary week.

Where the money went

  • United States$2.40B

    Well under its usual two-thirds, and lighter than last week even without Motive. Cyera, Snorkel AI and Enveda lead.

  • Europe$1.49B

    Up from $854M and 19 companies. TEKEVER is 39% of it. Six European AI rounds cleared $100M.

  • China$982.7M

    Four rounds make almost all of it: D-Robotics (robots), EVAS and Xingyun (chips), and Naive.ai, which trains AI agents.

  • Asia-Pacific (ex$China) — $381.4M

    Heidi Health in Melbourne is 89% of it.

  • Rest of world$42.4M

    All Toronto: Altis Labs $25M, Astrus $12M, thri5 $5.4M.

  • Middle East & Africa$29.8M

    Down from $421M last week, which was mostly one Tabby round. UltraSight ($24M, Israel) leads.

  • Latin America$1.8M

    Nuvia, São Paulo, AI for sales teams.

The top five AI rounds

  1. TEKEVER $580M

    Series D · Lisbon, Portugal · $6.4B valuation · led by UC Investments & Baillie Gifford

    TEKEVER builds AI-powered surveillance drones and the software that flies them. The UK Ministry of Defence just picked it to deliver the British Army’s new surveillance system. The week’s biggest AI round went to a European drone maker, and it is only the first close.

  2. D-Robotics $400M

    Series C · Shenzhen, China

    D-Robotics makes the computing boards, chips and software that go inside robots: humanoids, robot dogs, home robots, warehouse carts. More than 100,000 developers build on its platform.

  3. Cyera $400M

    Series G extension · New York · over $12B valuation · Goldman Sachs Alternatives

    Cyera finds a company’s sensitive data and controls who can see it, including AI agents. Its pitch: the trust layer companies need before they let agents loose.

  4. Snorkel AI $350M

    Series E · San Francisco · $3.5B valuation · led by Insight Partners & S32

    Snorkel sells the training data, tests and practice environments that make AI models good at specific jobs. Founded by Stanford AI Lab researchers.

  5. Heidi Health $338.3M

    Series C + growth · Melbourne, Australia · $900M valuation · led by Blackbird

    Heidi listens to a doctor’s visit and writes the notes, so the doctor can look at the patient instead of the keyboard. Now expanding into the rest of the clinical paperwork.

    $100M is the Series C. The other $240M is a growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, the same fund behind Motive’s $1.3B last week.

Also notable: Enveda $311M (drugs from natural compounds) · EVAS Intelligence $298.5M (self-driving chips, reported) · Angle Health $200M (health insurance) · Verda $189M (European AI cloud) · Xingyun $119.5M (inference chips) · Firecrawl $75M (turns web pages into data AI agents can read) · Spott $21M (recruiting software for staffing firms).

  • Healthcare took a quarter. $1.31B across 20 companies: Heidi, Enveda, Angle Health, Basecamp Research $140M, Penelope Health $100M.
  • The money moved to the middle. Series C and later took 61.3% of AI dollars. Seed fell from 46 rounds to 26, and the median round rose to $18.0M.
  • The data layer got paid. Snorkel $350M, micro1 $100M, Firecrawl $75M and two smaller rounds: $544.9M for the data AI learns from and reads.
  • Robots and the chips inside them. $544.6M into robots, led by D-Robotics, and $451.6M into AI chips. Three of China’s four biggest AI rounds were one or the other.
  • Europe’s top AI deal is a drone maker. TEKEVER led the week, and Europe took 28.0% of AI dollars across 25 companies.
  • A resort chain beat the AI top five. Royal Caribbean’s $3.0B for half of Sandals was bigger than the five largest AI rounds combined.