While it wasn’t shocking that AI emerged as the leading sector in October’s enterprise funding numbers, it was intriguing that the sector also had its second-biggest fundraising month on record.
Last month, AI startups raised $12.2 billion in funding – per Crunchbase data — or 38% of total monthly enterprise funding worldwide. This is the same as in May this yr, when similar start-ups raised as much as $12.8 billion, led by Elon Muskgenerative artificial intelligence start-up, xAIraising a $6 billion Series B round at a $24 billion valuation.
Similarly, last month also had a really big round – OpenAIa long-awaited raise of $6.6 billion at a post-cash valuation of $157 billion – but there appears to be really big AI growth almost every month.
What’s more, even after eliminating OpenAI’s massive round, October’s numbers still mean AI startups raised greater than $6.6 billion last month. This number is much more impressive when you concentrate on that AI startups raised a total of just $8.7 billion in August and September.
October’s enterprise dollar amount easily surpassed the nearly $4.3 billion raised in September, despite the fact that there have been over 100 more AI-related rounds in September – 522 in September in comparison with 413 in October.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the reasons for the higher dollar despite fewer rounds was likely on account of the plethora of huge nine-figure rounds in October. There were 11 deals value $100 million or more last month, in comparison with just 13 in August and September combined.
The most significant rounds (apart from OpenAI) included:
The dollar figure combined with the variety of AI startups raising money – from coding to chips to conversational AI – seems to point out that the slight lull in AI funding in August and September was just a transient pause before the next eruption VC.
It’s been almost two years since the world plunged into its current AI craze, and October shows there is no end in sight. In artificial intelligence, at the same time as the numbers appear to be returning to reality, the next explosion of enterprise dollars is just around the corner.