July 23, 2026

AIming high

Hi there,

Here’s what we’re watching this week:

AI drives Q2 mega-rounds
Last quarter’s biggest exits
New AI unicorns

Let’s get into it.

AI mega-rounds are swallowing nearly nine-tenths of the market's funding dollars.

Global AI equity funding fell to $149.5B in Q2'26, down from Q1's record $237.6B, according to CB Insights' State of AI Q2'26 report.

At first glance, it looks like AI funding cooled. But the quarter was really defined by a handful of outsized raises.

Mega-rounds ($100M+) made up just 6% of AI deals, yet still pulled in $132.5B, or 89% of all AI dollars.

Anthropic alone accounted for three of the quarter's five largest rounds ($50B, $10B, $5B), with Project Prometheus's $12B Series B and DeepSeek's $7.5B Series A rounding out the top five.

Strip out the biggest rounds and the broader AI market looked far steadier than the numbers suggest.

Get the full quarterly breakdown in CB Insights' State of AI Q2'26 report.

Exits shrank in Q2, but the companies cashing out were still scaling hard beforehand.

Q2'26 was a rough quarter for liquidity: M&A fell 10% and IPOs slipped 6%, even as AI held its lead as the top exiting sector with 447 deals.

But fewer exits don’t weaker ones. The companies behind the biggest exits were hiring aggressively beforehand:

SpaceX grew headcount 48% over two years to just over 20K employees ahead of its $1.78T IPO, the largest on record.
AI chipmaker Cerebras exited at a $40.6B valuation after nearly tripling headcount in two years.
Biotech company Tubulis grew headcount 71% in the past year before Gilead's $5B acquisition.

It's a sign these exits weren't triggered by a slowdown. Companies raising headcount into a deal are usually scaling revenue or product, instead of shopping themselves around.

Check out our State of Venture report to see the full breakdown.

AI unicorn creation hit a four-year high in Q2'26, and Asia is gaining ground on the US's lead.

AI minted 37 new unicorns last quarter, up from 32 in Q1 and the strongest showing since Q2'22. The global AI unicorn count now stands at 671.

The US still leads by volume, claiming 20 of the 37 new entrants. But that's 54% of new unicorns versus the 67% share the US already holds of the existing 671.

Asia is picking up the slack: Its 9 new unicorns account for 24% of the quarter's crop, well above its 15% share of the global stock.

DeepSeek ($59.2B), the quarter's biggest birth by valuation, is a big reason for Asia's outsized quarter. Meanwhile, Bezos-backed physical AI startup Project Prometheus ($41B) led on the US side, a sign that that AI infrastructure and physical AI are commanding some of the largest valuations and rounds in the market right now.

Check out all the data in our recent State of AI report.

We love you.

The CB Insights Newsletter Team

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