April 16, 2026

AIming high

Hi there,

Money20/20 Asia is just around the corner. 

Join CB Insights' MD of Client Innovation John P. Kelly on April 21st as he moderates the panel on Where the Money Flows in APAC's New Private Market Reality.

And now, here is this week’s Hot or Not.

Hot: 2026 AI funding

Globally, private AI companies raised over $226B in Q1’26, surpassing the $217B that full-year 2025 produced. 

Mega-rounds ($100M+ deals) accounted for a record 94% of Q1'26 AI funding, and LLM developers drove the surge. 

The top 3 deals by model developers alone totaled $160B, or roughly 71% of Q1’26 funding: 

• OpenAI’s $122B corporate minority round at an $840B valuation
• Anthropic’s $30B Series G at $380B
• xAI’s $7.5B Series E at $230B

See the full breakdown in CB Insights' State of AI Q1’26 report.

Not: Mature big tech acquisitions

In Q1’26, big tech acquired younger AI startups — their AI M&A targets were founded an average of just 4.5 years ago, compared to 7.6 years for all AI M&A this quarter. 

At that stage, many targets are still built around a single core capability, making it easier for incumbents to integrate into existing product stacks.

Google emerges as the most active dealmaker, targeting companies founded between 2020 and 2022:

• Intrinsic and Common Sense Machines bolster Google’s physical AI and spatial reasoning stack
• Hume AI brings emotional voice intelligence into DeepMind
• ProducerAI brings a ready-made user base onto Google’s Lyria 3 music model
• Wiz, which officially closed this quarter, gives Google enterprise security credibility across multicloud environments

Explore the full trend in our recent report.

Hot: Physical AI equity deals

Physical AI & robotics captured the largest share of AI deals in Q1 at 11%, with top investments spanning defense, industrials, and mobility.

Within the space, industrial humanoid robot developers led with 17 deals, as investment shifts from R&D toward commercial deployment. 

Meanwhile, autonomous driving systems logged 10 deals, anchored by Waymo, Wayve, and Waabi, which together raised $18B last quarter.

Learn more about which markets are gaining ground in CB Insights' State of AI Q1'26 report.

Not: Mass-market humanoid deployment

While humanoid robot companies are on pace for a record $10B in 2026 funding, mass commercialization remains years away. 

However, structured environments are proving to be crucial for the initial deployment phase. Pilot programs are already running: 

• Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot will be deployed at Hyundai facilities this year
• Airbus is using UBTECH’s Walker S2 humanoid for aviation manufacturing
• BMW became the first automaker to utilize humanoid robots in production in Germany

Get the full picture in our recent report.

The +1

Source: u/TheTinMenBlog via Reddit.

Safety first. What’s the difference between “unsafe” and “not safe”?

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Did you miss our briefing on the State of Venture Q1’26? Get the recording here.

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