The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 44

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 44

A Billion For A Texting Agent. Eighty-Six Cents To America.

AI raised $4.79B this week, and 86 cents of every dollar went to US companies. One agent you text to get things done took $1B of it.

Covered on Episode 59 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$4.79B
Share of all venture $
50.6%
AI companies funded
80
Biggest AI round
$1.0BInstinct
Tracked so far
$476.2Bacross 44 weeks

The week in brief

Last week had no billion-dollar AI round. This week had one, Instinct’s $1B. Strip it out and the everyday AI market went $5.33B to $3.79B. Fewer companies got funded, 85 to 80, and the typical round fell from $18.0M to $10.0M. AI’s share of all venture money still rose, to 50.6%, because the rest of venture fell harder: total funding went from $14.82B to $9.46B.

Of 199 funded companies this week, 80 (40.2%) were AI, taking $4.79B of the $9.46B total (50.6%). Thirteen AI rounds of $100M or more took 80.8% of AI dollars. The top five took 52.2%, up from 38.8%. The eight biggest AI rounds all went to US companies.

Where the money went

  • United States$4.13B

    The highest US share in twelve weeks, up from 45.0%. Every one of the week’s eight biggest AI rounds is American, led by Instinct, Ortet and Island.

  • Europe$243.9M

    Down from $1.49B. No European AI round cleared $100M. Metaview ($60M, London, recruiting) and Flow Engineering ($50M, London) lead.

  • China$182.7M

    Sudu Technology, which builds general-purpose robot brains, is 82% of it.

  • Rest of world$165.0M

    Both Canadian: Biossil ($153M, Toronto, AI drug discovery) and Axya ($12M, Montréal). One real round, not a data gap.

  • Asia-Pacific (ex-China)$50.3M

    Nine small rounds. HITS ($13.5M, Seoul, drug discovery) is the biggest.

  • Middle East & Africa$12.0M

    Rig Security, Tel Aviv, identity security for people and machines.

  • Latin America$4.0M

    Kontext, Colombia, which controls what AI agents are allowed to do.

The top five AI rounds

  1. Instinct $1.0B

    Series C · San Francisco · $10B valuation · Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue

    Instinct is an AI agent you text. It books travel and restaurants, buys things, pays bills, cancels subscriptions and makes phone calls for you. The week’s biggest AI round went to a consumer assistant, not a model lab.

  2. Ortet $500M

    Seed · New York · Thoreau

    Ortet is a new AI lab for health, building models that predict outcomes for one patient instead of an average. It is led by NYU professor Kyunghyun Cho and launched with the money already committed.

    A commitment from Thoreau announced at launch. The company does not state a city; its team is hiring in New York.

  3. Island $400M

    Series F · Dallas · $6.4B valuation · led by Evolution Equity Partners

    Island makes a work web browser that controls what employees can see and do. Its new pitch is the same control over AI agents at work.

  4. EliseAI $350M

    Series F · New York · $4B valuation · led by Andreessen Horowitz & Bessemer

    EliseAI answers and handles the admin work for property managers and health practices: leasing questions, maintenance requests, patient paperwork and insurance checks. It says it passed $200M in annual recurring revenue this summer.

  5. Kahua $250M

    Growth investment · Alpharetta, Georgia · valued above $1B · Bain Capital Tech Opportunities

    Kahua is construction software for large building programs. It connects the people, paperwork and data behind them, and says it reached $100M in annualized revenue.

    Bain’s announcement does not state the amount. $250M is Crunchbase’s figure.

Also notable: Autonomous Solutions $225M (self-driving industrial and construction vehicles, from SoftBank) · GMI Cloud $223M (GPU cloud for running AI) · General Intuition $220M (AI models trained on video game footage) · Biossil $153M (AI drug discovery) · SiMa.ai $150M (chips that run AI inside machines and devices) · Sudu Technology $149.1M (robot brains) · CScale $145M (optical links for AI data centers) · Solea $10M (an AI receptionist for home service businesses).

  • The biggest check went to an agent people text. Instinct’s $1B is 20.9% of the week’s AI dollars. EliseAI, Solea and Bytes AI also sell agents that answer customers.
  • Controlling AI agents became its own market. Island $400M, Reco $55M, Rig Security $12M and Kontext $4M: $471.0M to decide what agents can see and do.
  • Health took almost a quarter. $1.13B across 11 companies, led by Ortet, EliseAI and Biossil.
  • Construction got real money. Kahua $250M, Autonomous Solutions $225M, plus Kuro, Spotable and Quotr.ai: $494.8M.
  • Seed got bigger, not smaller. 34 seed rounds took $702.4M, up from 26 rounds last week. Ortet’s $500M is most of it.
  • Non-AI venture fell harder than AI. Total funding dropped 36.1%, AI dropped 10.3%, so AI’s share went from 36.0% to 50.6%.