AI models startup funding 2026: 89 rounds
Frontier labs and model makers: foundation models, open-weight models, specialised models.
- OpenAI raises $11B, . AI models. OpenAI develops advanced artificial intelligence models.
- Warp Sciences raises $215M Seed, . AI models. Warp Sciences is a drug discovery chemistry contract research organization.
- Flapping Airplanes raises $1B, . AI models. Led by Index. Artificial intelligence research lab Flapping Airplanes Inc.
- doubleAI raises $200M Series A, . AI models. Led by Lightspeed, Bessemer. doubleAI develops artificial intelligence models.
- Labelbox raises $100M Series E, . AI models. Funding will accelerate development of Horizon, which helps frontier AI labs train and evaluate models, and Recursion Managed Agents, which enables enterprises to deploy agents that improve through experience.
- Nous Research raises $90M Series B, . AI models. Led by Robot Ventures. Nous Research develops open-source AI models and autonomous agents.
- Luminal AI raises $29M, . AI models. Known from its SEC Form D filing, not from an announcement.
- Rivercell raises $25M Seed, . AI models. Rivercell builds AI world models of human cells for drug discovery.
- ElevenLabs raises $300M, . AI models. Develops AI-powered audio and voice generation models.
- Basecamp Research raises $140M Series C, . AI models. Led by S32. Basecamp Research uses AI to design and develop new therapeutics.
- F13 raises $5M Pre-seed, . AI models. Led by Credo Ventures, Point Nine Capital. Develops AI foundation models for generating vector graphics.
- Arcee AI raises $150M Series B, . AI models. Led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, Emergence Capital. Develops open-weight AI models trained in the United States.
- Mistral AI raises $3.6B Series D, . AI models. Led by Samsung Electronics, Scaleup Europe Fund, PSG Equity. French AI lab that builds open and commercial large language models.
- Stability AI raises $76M Series B, . AI models. Develops generative image, audio and video models for media and entertainment.
- Moonshot AI raises $3.5B Growth, . AI models. Led by National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. Chinese AI lab that develops the Kimi family of large language models.
- Safe Superintelligence raises $5B Strategic, . AI models. Led by Nvidia. AI lab founded by Ilya Sutskever that is researching safe superintelligence.
- kausable raises $14M Seed, . AI models. Led by UVC Partners, Entourage. kausable builds causal, reasoning-first foundation models that forecast rare events without constant retraining.
- Chai Discovery raises $400M Series C, . AI models. Led by Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Dimension. Chai Discovery builds AI foundation models for predicting and designing molecules such as antibodies for drug discovery.
- TwelveLabs raises $100M Series B, . AI models. Led by NEA, NAVER Ventures. Builds foundation models that understand and search video.
- General Intuition raises $320M Series A, . AI models. Led by Khosla Ventures. Frontier lab building action foundation models trained on gameplay clips from the Medal platform.
- Scaled Cognition raises $100M Series A, . AI models. Led by Khosla Ventures. Develops models and agents for enterprise customer experience designed to reduce hallucinations.
- Mirendil raises $200M Seed, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins. Frontier AI lab training models specialised in AI research and development, with a product that runs research loops on its own GPUs.
- DeepSeek raises $7.4B, . AI models. Builds open-weight large language models including the DeepSeek V and R series.
- Suno raises $400M Series D, . AI models. Led by Bond Capital. Suno builds an AI music creation app that generates full songs from text prompts.
- Anthropic raises $65B Series H, . AI models. Led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, ICONIQ, XN. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- StepFun raises $2.5B, . AI models. Develops multimodal foundation models and AI assistants integrated into phones and other devices.
- Moonshot AI raises $2B Series D, . AI models. Led by Long-Z Investments. Builds the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot.
- OpenAI raises $122B Growth, . AI models. Led by SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz. Builds the GPT family of AI models and the ChatGPT assistant.
- Mistral AI raises $830M Debt, . AI models. Mistral AI develops open-weight and commercial large language models and the Le Chat assistant.
- World Labs raises $1B, . AI models. Builds world models that generate and reason about 3D spaces.
- Anthropic raises $30B Series G, . AI models. Led by GIC, Coatue, D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, MGX. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- ElevenLabs raises $500M Series D, . AI models. Led by Sequoia Capital. ElevenLabs develops AI voice models for text to speech, dubbing and conversational voice agents.
- Moonshot AI raises $700M, . AI models. Builds the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot.
- StepFun raises $718M Series B, . AI models. Develops multimodal foundation models and AI assistants integrated into phones and other devices.
- Deepgram raises $130M Series C, . AI models. Led by AVP. Deepgram provides speech recognition, text to speech and voice agent APIs for developers.
- xAI raises $20B Series E, . AI models. Develops the Grok AI models and assistant and runs large GPU training clusters.
- Moonshot AI raises $500M Series C, . AI models. Led by IDG Capital. Builds the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot.
- Chai Discovery raises $130M Series B, . AI models. Led by General Catalyst, Oak HC/FT. Chai Discovery builds AI foundation models for predicting and designing molecules such as antibodies for drug discovery.
- OpenAI raises $1B Strategic, . AI models. Led by The Walt Disney Company. Builds the GPT family of AI models and the ChatGPT assistant.
- Gradium raises $70M Seed, . AI models. Led by FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo. Gradium builds real-time voice AI models for text-to-speech, speech-to-text and live translation.
- Black Forest Labs raises $300M Series B, . AI models. Led by Salesforce Ventures, AMP. Builds the FLUX family of image and video generation models.
- Suno raises $250M Series C, . AI models. Led by Menlo Ventures. Suno builds an AI music creation app that generates full songs from text prompts.
- Anthropic raises $15B Strategic, . AI models. Led by NVIDIA, Microsoft. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- General Intuition raises $134M Seed, . AI models. Led by Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst. Trains AI agents with spatial and temporal reasoning using video game footage.
- Reflection raises $2B, . AI models. Builds open-weight frontier AI models as an American open alternative.
- Smallest.ai raises $8M Seed, . AI models. Smallest.ai builds real-time speech models and voice AI agents for enterprises.
- Periodic Labs raises $300M Seed, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global. Builds AI scientists and autonomous labs to discover new materials such as superconductors.
- Cohere raises $100M Growth, . AI models. Cohere builds large language models and AI tools for enterprises.
- Mistral AI raises a Series C round, . AI models. Led by ASML. Builds open-weight and commercial large language models for enterprises and governments.
- Anthropic raises $13B Series F, . AI models. Led by ICONIQ, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- Cohere raises $500M, . AI models. Led by Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital. Builds large language models and AI tools for enterprise and sovereign deployments.
- Chai Discovery raises $70M Series A, . AI models. Led by Menlo Ventures. Chai Discovery builds AI foundation models for predicting and designing molecules such as antibodies for drug discovery.
- Arcee AI raises a Strategic round, . AI models. Led by Prosperity7 Ventures, M12. Arcee AI builds open weight and compact foundation language models and a platform for enterprises to deploy them.
- Thinking Machines Lab raises $2B Seed, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz. AI research lab building customizable frontier models and tools for researchers.
- xAI raises $5B Growth, . AI models. xAI builds the Grok family of large language models and chatbot.
- xAI raises $5B Debt, . AI models. xAI builds the Grok family of large language models and chatbot.
- Safe Superintelligence raises $2B, . AI models. Led by Greenoaks. Research lab focused solely on building safe superintelligence.
- OpenAI raises $40B Growth, . AI models. Led by SoftBank. Builds the GPT family of AI models and the ChatGPT assistant.
- Cartesia raises $64M Series A, . AI models. Led by Kleiner Perkins. Cartesia builds real-time voice AI models, including low-latency text to speech, based on state space model research.
- Reflection raises $105M Series A, . AI models. Led by CRV, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Reflection builds open frontier AI models and autonomous coding agents.
- Reflection raises $25M Seed, . AI models. Led by Sequoia Capital, CRV. Reflection builds open frontier AI models and autonomous coding agents.
- Anthropic raises $3.5B Series E, . AI models. Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- ElevenLabs raises $180M Series C, . AI models. Led by a16z, ICONIQ Growth. ElevenLabs develops AI voice models for text to speech, dubbing and conversational voice agents.
- Anthropic raises $1B Strategic, . AI models. Led by Google. Anthropic develops the Claude family of AI models.
- xAI raises $6B Series C, . AI models. Develops the Grok AI models and assistant and runs large GPU training clusters.
- TwelveLabs raises $30M Strategic, . AI models. TwelveLabs builds multimodal foundation models that understand, search and describe video content.
- Cartesia raises $27M Seed, . AI models. Led by Index Ventures. Cartesia builds real-time voice AI models, including low-latency text to speech, based on state space model research.
- Anthropic raises $4B Strategic, . AI models. Led by Amazon. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- Basecamp Research raises $60M Series B, . AI models. Led by Singular. Basecamp Research builds AI models for biology trained on a proprietary dataset of natural genetic diversity, applied to therapeutics.
- OpenAI raises $4B Debt, . AI models. OpenAI develops the GPT models and the ChatGPT assistant.
- OpenAI raises $6.6B Growth, . AI models. Led by Thrive Capital. Builds the GPT family of AI models and the ChatGPT assistant.
- World Labs raises $230M, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA. Builds world models that generate and reason about 3D spaces.
- Chai Discovery raises $30M Seed, . AI models. Led by Thrive Capital, OpenAI, Dimension. Chai Discovery builds AI foundation models for predicting and designing molecules such as antibodies for drug discovery.
- Safe Superintelligence raises $1B, . AI models. Led by NFDG. Research lab focused solely on building safe superintelligence.
- Moonshot AI raises $300M, . AI models. Builds the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot.
- Black Forest Labs raises $31M Seed, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz. Builds the FLUX family of image and video generation models.
- Cohere raises $500M, . AI models. Builds large language models and AI tools for enterprise and sovereign deployments.
- Arcee AI raises $24M Series A, . AI models. Led by Emergence Capital. Arcee AI builds open weight and compact foundation language models and a platform for enterprises to deploy them.
- Stability AI raises an undisclosed round, . AI models. Builds open generative models for images, video, audio and music, including Stable Diffusion.
- Mistral AI raises $640M Series B, . AI models. Led by General Catalyst. Builds open-weight and commercial large language models for enterprises and governments.
- TwelveLabs raises $50M Series A, . AI models. Led by NEA, NVentures. TwelveLabs builds multimodal foundation models that understand, search and describe video content.
- xAI raises $6B Series B, . AI models. Develops the Grok AI models and assistant and runs large GPU training clusters.
- Suno raises $125M, . AI models. Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Suno builds an AI music creation app that generates full songs from text prompts.
- Anthropic raises $2.8B Strategic, . AI models. Led by Amazon. Builds the Claude family of AI models with a focus on AI safety research.
- Hume AI raises $50M Series B, . AI models. Led by EQT Ventures. Hume AI builds voice AI models that measure and respond to emotional expression in speech.
- Mistral AI raises a Strategic round, . AI models. Led by Microsoft. Mistral AI develops open-weight and commercial large language models and the Le Chat assistant.
- Moonshot AI raises $1B, . AI models. Led by Alibaba, HongShan. Builds the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot.
- Arcee AI raises $5.5M Seed, . AI models. Arcee AI builds open weight and compact foundation language models and a platform for enterprises to deploy them.
- ElevenLabs raises $80M Series B, . AI models. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross. ElevenLabs develops AI voice models for text to speech, dubbing and conversational voice agents.