"I've grown completely numb to AI funding numbers. Ten years ago, even five, an epically large seed round of hundreds of millions was unthinkable. Now, it's started to feel oddly pedestrian to me and-the data actually bears out my ennui: Crunchbase recently calculated that, so far in 2026, over 40% of seed and Series A investment has been funneled into rounds of $100 million or more."
"Examples of the last few weeks include Humans& (a frontier AI lab that raised a $480 million seed round), Ricursive Intelligence (which raised a $300 million Series A), and Merge Labs, Sam Altman's brain-computer interface company that raised a casual $252 million seed round. This feeling, of course, doesn't just fixate on earlier-stage companies. I actually don't know if there's any funding round number at this point that would genuinely shock me."
"This week alone, reports dropped that SoftBank is in talks to invest another $30 billion in OpenAI (after previously investing $40 billion), and then there was the xAI news-that Elon Musk's Tesla also invested in Musk's $20 billion Series E, to the tune of $2 billion. Musk's companies have always been financially linked to one another in a clannish sort of way, but the reality is: All these AI startups and companies are investing in and selling to one another."
AI funding has accelerated into routinely enormous seed and Series A rounds, with over 40% of early-stage investment in 2026 going to rounds of $100 million or more. Frontier labs and startups are closing unprecedented seed and A rounds, including $480M, $300M, and $252M raises. Large strategic investors and corporate entities continue to pour massive sums into AI, with SoftBank and Elon Musk-linked investments cited. The financing ecosystem shows intense intercompany investing and commercial activity. The ubiquity of huge rounds has dulled surprise at new amounts and raises concern that only a major downturn would feel truly shocking.
Read at Fortune
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