TL;DR: Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia wrote the three largest checks into AI startups in 2026: $50 billion, $30 billion and $30 billion into OpenAI's record $122 billion round. By number of deals, Y Combinator topped Crunchbase's investor tables in Q1 and Q3, with 47 and 45 post-seed rounds.
Investors valued Anthropic at $380 billion in February 2026 and at $965 billion in May.
The money behind that jump came less from venture firms than from cloud companies: in one week of April, Google committed up to $40 billion and Amazon up to $25 billion more.
By Q3, AI startups were taking 64% of all venture dollars, and a record 27 companies raised rounds of $1 billion or more.
The 10 Investors Compared
| # | Investor | Type | Largest 2026 AI commitment | Second 2026 marker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amazon | Big Tech | $50B into OpenAI (Feb) | Up to $25B more for Anthropic (Apr) |
| 2 | SoftBank | Holding company | $30B into OpenAI, completed Oct 1 | $64.6B in OpenAI to date |
| 3 | Nvidia | Chipmaker | $30B into OpenAI (Feb) | 59 startup rounds by mid-August |
| 4 | Alphabet | Big Tech | Up to $40B into Anthropic (Apr) | 67 rounds led or co-led in 2025 |
| 5 | MGX | Abu Dhabi AI fund | Co-led OpenAI's $122B round | $49B debut fund (Jul) |
| 6 | Andreessen Horowitz | Venture firm | Co-led OpenAI's round; $2B Cognition co-lead | $15B raised in January |
| 7 | Microsoft | Big Tech | Joined OpenAI's $122B round | About 27% of OpenAI |
| 8 | Sequoia Capital | Venture firm | Co-led Anthropic's $65B Series H | No. 1 backer of 2026 unicorns |
| 9 | Thrive Capital | Venture firm | Co-led Anduril's $5B Series H | $10B Thrive X fund (Feb) |
| 10 | Y Combinator | Accelerator | $500K standard deal per company | 221+ seed rounds in Q3 alone |
- 1None of the top five is a traditional venture firm. Cloud and chip companies invest in labs that then buy their compute, as Anthropic did when it committed more than $100 billion to AWS over 10 years.
- 2Amazon, Nvidia and Microsoft now hold stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic, the two labs competing hardest for the same enterprise customers.
- 3The 2026 unicorn class reached 250 companies by mid-August, against 193 in all of 2025, and Sequoia and Khosla backed more of them than anyone else.
The 10 Biggest Investors in AI Startups, Ranked
1. Amazon
Amazon wrote the largest single check of the year, and it went to the rival of the lab it already owned a large piece of.
Its $50 billion was the biggest part of the $110 billion OpenAI announced on February 27, ahead of $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, at a $730 billion pre-money valuation (TechCrunch). Only $15 billion moved up front.
Amazon's first-quarter 10-Q describes the other $35 billion as an equity commitment that lapses if it is not funded by the end of 2028.
Seven weeks later Amazon went back to Anthropic: $5 billion now and up to $20 billion more as compute milestones are hit, on top of the $8 billion it had put in since 2023 (Anthropic).
In return Anthropic committed to spend more than $100 billion on AWS over 10 years and gets up to 5 gigawatts of Trainium capacity.
The same 10-Q carried the Anthropic shares at about $32.0 billion, up from $14.8 billion three months earlier, and booked a $4.1 billion tax charge that the filing ties to those gains.
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI, $50 billion, of which $35 billion is conditional.
- How it invests: as a strategic partner; the money comes back as cloud and chip spending.
- Pitch it if: you are a model lab or infrastructure company that can commit to AWS at scale. Amazon's smaller funds made no 2026 AI deals we could find.
2. SoftBank
SoftBank sold its entire Nvidia stake, 32.1 million shares for $5.83 billion, in late 2025 to help pay for OpenAI (CNBC).
Masayoshi Son's group paid $22.5 billion into OpenAI in late 2025, then co-led OpenAI's 2026 round with another $30 billion, which Vision Fund 2 paid in three $10 billion tranches.
The bet runs on borrowed money. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, SMBC and MUFG lent $40 billion unsecured in March (BNN Bloomberg), and SoftBank sold an $11.1 billion high-yield bond in September.
After the last tranche cleared, it canceled the $10 billion of the loan it had not drawn (Reuters via The Star). It also closed its purchase of DigitalBridge, a data-center investor, on September 30 (SoftBank).
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI, $30 billion, for a cumulative stake of about 13%.
- How it invests: few, large positions, financed with debt and asset sales.
- Pitch it if: you are raising late-stage capital in the billions. The Vision Fund still publishes early-stage portfolio news, but most of SoftBank's 2026 dollars went to one company.
3. Nvidia
Nvidia's September 2025 letter of intent to put up to $100 billion into OpenAI was never signed into a deal, and its own 10-Q warned there was "no assurance" it would close (TechCrunch).
It signed $30 billion of equity in the February round instead.
Two months earlier, it had agreed to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, alongside Microsoft, as Anthropic committed to $30 billion of Azure compute running on Nvidia systems (Microsoft).
Nvidia is also the busiest corporate investor in startups.
Crunchbase counted it in a record number of rounds by mid-August, more than in all of 2025, and it led or co-led at least 11, including Poolside's $1 billion financing (Crunchbase News).
In Q3 it ranked fourth among all investors by the value of rounds it led, led by Safe Superintelligence's $5 billion raise.
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI, $30 billion.
- How it invests: in companies that buy or run its GPUs, from labs to cloud providers and coding-model startups.
- Pitch it if: your product depends on Nvidia hardware at scale. Its startup program, Inception, also runs the NVIDIA VC Alliance for investors.
4. Alphabet (Google, GV and CapitalG)
Google funds the company whose Claude models compete head-on with its own Gemini.
On April 24 it committed up to $40 billion to Anthropic: $10 billion in cash now at a $350 billion valuation, and $30 billion more if Anthropic hits performance targets, plus 5 gigawatts of TPU capacity over five years (TechCrunch).
Court filings showed it had already put in more than $3 billion for about 14% as of March 2025.
Alphabet invests through three doors.
Google itself led or co-led 67 known rounds in 2025, GV writes early checks, and CapitalG does growth deals such as Physical Intelligence's $600 million Series B and Celero Communications' $275 million Series C this September (Crunchbase News).
GV and CapitalG also joined Waymo's $16 billion round at a $126 billion valuation. Alphabet's Q2 10-Q shows its non-marketable securities at $131.5 billion on June 30, up from $68.7 billion at the start of the year.
- Biggest 2026 bet: Anthropic, $10 billion now and up to $30 billion more.
- How it invests: strategic checks from Google, venture from GV, growth from CapitalG.
- Pitch it if: you build on Google Cloud or TPUs, or you are an early AI company that wants GV's seed-to-Series B checks.
5. MGX
MGX has co-led both of the year's two biggest AI rounds without ever publishing what it paid.
The Abu Dhabi investor, chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, called its place in OpenAI's $122 billion round its "fifth follow-on" in the company (Abu Dhabi Media Office).
It co-led Anthropic's $30 billion Series G in February with GIC, Coatue and four others, joined the $65 billion Series H in May, and was in xAI's $20 billion Series E in January.
Its first outside fund closed at $49 billion, $4 billion above target, according to the UAE Embassy in Washington; Bloomberg's sources put it at close to $50 billion.
MGX also invests in the physical layer: with BlackRock's GIP and the AI Infrastructure Partnership, it completed the $40 billion purchase of Aligned Data Centers in July, and it holds part of TikTok's US business.
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI, as a co-lead of the $122 billion round.
- How it invests: follow-on checks into frontier labs, plus data centers and chips.
- Pitch it if: you are a frontier lab or AI infrastructure business raising at least hundreds of millions. MGX does not run a seed program.
6. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
a16z says the $15 billion it raised in January was more than 18% of all US venture capital raised in 2025 (a16z). The biggest slice, $6.75 billion, is for growth deals, with $1.7 billion each for apps and infrastructure.
It is the only venture firm on this list that co-led OpenAI's $122 billion round, and it co-led Anduril's $5 billion Series H with Thrive in May.
It also leads more rounds than almost anyone. In Q2 it led or co-led 17 US rounds, the most of any investor, and joined 28 (Crunchbase News).
In Q3 it led 16, second to Insight Partners, including Cognition's $2 billion round at a $48 billion valuation, co-led with Accel, and a $1.7 billion financing for Travis Kalanick's Atoms.
At the seed end, it co-led a $150 million seed for Inferact, the company behind the vLLM inference engine.
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI, as a co-lead; Cognition, $2 billion co-led.
- How it invests: every stage, from $150 million seeds to multi-billion growth rounds.
- Pitch it if: you want one firm from seed to pre-IPO. It splits its funds by theme, so find the partner for your category first.
7. Microsoft
In the quarter to June 30, 2026, Microsoft booked a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic stake, while OpenAI added $480 million to its net income after tax, according to its earnings release.
It agreed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic in November 2025, the same week Anthropic committed $30 billion to Azure.
OpenAI is still the larger position.
After OpenAI's October 2025 recapitalization, Microsoft holds about 27% of OpenAI Group PBC, a stake it valued at about $135 billion, and OpenAI committed to buy another $250 billion of Azure (Microsoft).
It joined the $122 billion round without disclosing an amount. In April 2026 the two companies amended the deal again, ending Azure's exclusivity (Anadolu Agency).
For startups below that tier, Microsoft invests through M12, its venture fund, which writes seed to Series B checks.
- Biggest 2026 bet: OpenAI round participation, amount undisclosed.
- How it invests: large strategic stakes tied to Azure, and M12 for early companies.
- Pitch it if: your product runs on Azure or sells into Microsoft's enterprise customers.
8. Sequoia Capital
Sequoia was one of four leads on Anthropic's $65 billion Series H on May 28, at a $965 billion valuation, with Altimeter, Dragoneer and Greenoaks (Anthropic).
A month earlier it co-led, with Lightspeed, a $1.1 billion seed round for Ineffable Intelligence, the company founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, at a $5.1 billion valuation (Tech.eu).
Its strongest number is breadth. Crunchbase ranked Sequoia first among investors in the 250 companies that became unicorns in 2026 up to mid-August, ahead of Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator (Crunchbase News).
It also led ElevenLabs' $500 million Series D at an $11 billion valuation in February and co-led Waymo's $16 billion round.
Bloomberg reported in April that Sequoia had raised about $7 billion for an expansion fund; the firm declined to comment.
- Biggest 2026 bet: Anthropic, as a lead of the $65 billion Series H.
- How it invests: seed through growth, often leading early and following on for years.
- Pitch it if: you have a technical founding team and a plan for a category-sized company. It led 10 rounds in Q3 alone.
9. Thrive Capital
Thrive was lining up to co-lead a $2 billion-plus round for Cursor at a $50 billion pre-money valuation in April (TechCrunch).
SpaceX bought the company for $60 billion instead, closing in August, which turned one of Thrive's best-known AI bets into an exit.
The firm had closed Thrive X at $10 billion in February, its largest fund and close to double the last one, with $1 billion for early stage and the rest for growth (TechCrunch).
Joshua Kushner's firm writes few, large checks. It co-led OpenEvidence's $250 million Series D at a $12 billion valuation in January with DST, and Anduril's $5 billion Series H at $61 billion in May with a16z.
It is also one of OpenAI's oldest backers, and the ties run both ways: OpenAI took a stake in Thrive Holdings, the AI services company Thrive launched, which raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in August.
- Biggest 2026 bet: Anduril, $5 billion Series H co-led with a16z.
- How it invests: concentrated, high-conviction growth rounds, often with a board seat.
- Pitch it if: you already have strong revenue growth and want a lead for a round of $250 million or more.
10. Y Combinator
Y Combinator backed at least 221 seed rounds in Q3 2026. The next busiest seed investor, Antler, had 31 (Crunchbase News).
YC was also the most active investor in post-seed rounds in Q1 and Q3, and second in Q2, behind General Catalyst's 39. In August it took part in more $5 million-plus rounds than any other venture investor.
The standard deal is $500,000 per company: $125,000 for 7% on a post-money SAFE, and $375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with a most-favored-nation clause.
I co-founded a Y Combinator-backed company; the line I would point a founder to is the $375,000, which carries no valuation cap and so converts at the price the next round sets.
YC's Summer 2026 batch presented at Demo Day on September 10, and its alumni sit across the 2026 unicorn class, where Crunchbase ranks YC third by number of backed companies.
- Biggest 2026 bet: volume, with a participation in River AI's $1.1 billion round in August.
- How it invests: the same $500,000 deal for every company in a batch.
- Pitch it if: you are pre-seed or seed. The application is the pitch.
Five more investors close behind
Five firms missed the top 10 on dollars but beat several entries on activity in at least one 2026 quarter.
Sources for the cards: Crunchbase Q2 and Q3 investor rankings, TechCrunch on Lightspeed and Crusoe's announcement. Crusoe's figure is the anticipated round size at its initial close.
Where the Money Goes Next: Engineers
Most of these rounds turn into hiring plans, and AI engineers are the hardest line to fill. The question founders bring us after a round closes is how to add senior engineers without spending it on Bay Area salaries.
Second Talent helps US startups hire vetted AI-Native Engineers and Specialists from Asia, at $23 to $39 an hour, matched in 24 hours, with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
See how we vet AI developers, read what makes a company AI-native, or compare this list with our AI startup funding statistics and countries with the most unicorns. tell us the roles and we will send candidates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invested the most money in AI startups in 2026?
Amazon, with $50 billion committed to OpenAI in February, $35 billion of it conditional, plus up to $25 billion more for Anthropic. SoftBank and Nvidia follow with $30 billion each into OpenAI.
Is AI venture funding slowing down?
Not on a yearly view. Crunchbase counted $159 billion of global venture funding in Q3 2026, down 25% from Q2's $212 billion but up 53% on Q3 2025, and $679 billion for the first nine months, a record (Crunchbase News).
Q2 included Anthropic's $65 billion round.
Which AI companies raised the most in 2026?
OpenAI ($122 billion, March) and Anthropic ($30 billion in February and $65 billion in May). In Q3, the largest rounds were Databricks and Safe Superintelligence at $5 billion each.
Our pages on ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor track those companies' usage and revenue.
