3 Firms Captured $189B in VC Funding Last Month
▼ Summary
– Global venture capital reached a record $189 billion in February, with AI startups capturing $171 billion or 90% of that total.
– This record spending was over three times January’s global VC total and was dominated by massive funding rounds for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo.
– OpenAI led with a $110 billion raise, one of the largest private rounds ever, valuing the company at $730 billion.
– Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation, while Waymo raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.
– These three companies alone accounted for 83% of all venture capital raised in February, a sum equal to one-third of the total 2025 VC spend.
The venture capital landscape witnessed an unprecedented surge last month, with a staggering $189 billion flowing into startups globally. This remarkable figure, more than triple the amount spent in January, underscores a market intensely focused on transformative technology. A new industry report reveals that artificial intelligence companies were the overwhelming beneficiaries, securing a dominant $171 billion, or 90% of all capital raised in February. This concentration of investment highlights the sector’s perceived potential and suggests this record-breaking activity may just be the beginning of a larger trend.
A closer examination shows this historic capital influx was not broadly distributed. Instead, it was overwhelmingly captured by just three industry giants: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo. Together, these firms were responsible for a remarkable 83% of all venture dollars raised last month. Their colossal funding rounds effectively drove the global monthly total to its record high, demonstrating how megadeals can skew the entire investment landscape.
Leading the pack was OpenAI, which secured a monumental $110 billion in its latest funding round. This private investment stands as one of the largest ever and places the company’s valuation at an astonishing $730 billion. Its primary rival, Anthropic, followed with a massive raise of its own, closing a $30 billion Series G round that valued the company at $380 billion. Completing the trio was autonomous driving leader Waymo, which raised $16 billion at a valuation of $126 billion.
The scale of these individual transactions is difficult to overstate. The combined total raised by just these three entities in a single month represents approximately one-third of the entire $425 billion in venture capital deployed throughout all of the previous year. This data points to a market where investor confidence and capital are consolidating around a few perceived winners in the AI and automation spaces, setting the stage for the next phase of technological competition and development.
(Source: TechCrunch)
