The Largest AI Startup Funding Deals Of 2024

Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2024 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. You can also check out the top AI rounds of 2023 here.

Artificial intelligence dominated the venture landscape last year. That’s especially clear when you consider how many startups in the industry raised nine- or even 10-figure funding rounds in 2024. In fact, to even have a chance at cracking this list of the largest AI startup funding rounds of the year, a company had to raise more than a billion dollars in a single shot. Let’s take a look.

1. Databricks, $10B: Databricks raised $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation, marking the largest venture capital raise of 2024 and one of the largest on record. Its new valuation marks a 44% increase from its 2023 valuation of $43 billion. The San Francisco-based company — which helps businesses process, analyze, and manage large amounts of data quickly and efficiently using tools like AI and machine learning — is now the fourth most highly valued U.S.-based startup, after OpenAI, SpaceX and Stripe. Thrive Capital led Databricks’ new funding. Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, GIC, Insight Partners and WCM Investment Management co-led the round. Databricks said other significant investors included existing investor Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and new investors Iconiq Growth, MGX, Sands Capital and Wellington Management. The company says it plans to use the new funds on developing new AI products, acquisitions, international expansion, and providing liquidity for current and former employees.

2. OpenAI, $6.6B: OpenAI locked up the second-biggest round of the year — a $6.6 billion raise at a post-money valuation of $157 billion led by Thrive Capital. The round made the ChatGPT creator one of the most valuable private companies in the world and also included investment from the likes of Altimeter Capital, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. It also was reported SoftBank’s Vision Fund would invest $500 million in the round. The funding in October came just as the company was facing myriad issues, including an exodus of higher-up employees and a restructuring change to switch it from a nonprofit to a for-profit benefit corporation, and to give co-founder Sam Altman equity in the company. The funding structure seems to take those factors into account, as it came in the form of convertible notes and reportedly allows for investors to ask for their money back if the change is not completed within two years and removes the cap on returns for investors.

3. (tied) xAI, $6B: In May, xAI raised a $6 billion round that included investment from the likes of Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management & Research Co., among others. The funding valued the company at $24 billion post money. This deal also isn’t the only time we’ll see Elon Musk’s generative AI startup on this list. The company was created in the summer of 2023 and released its ChatGPT competitor, Grok, in November 2023. Grok is trained off data from another Musk-owned company, X, (formerly Twitter).

3. (tied) xAI, $6B: It didn’t take long for xAI to pop back up on this list. In November, xAI raised another $6 billion in a funding round valuing it at $50 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. The new round includes investment from the Qatar Investment Authority, Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

5. Waymo, $5.6B: Autonomous vehicle company Waymo, which was spun out of Google’s labs, took in a big round from its former parent, as  Alphabet invested $5.6 billion into the firm in a deal announced in October. The new round valued the company at more than $45 billion and was the startup’s first raise since a $2.5 billion round in 2021.

6. Anthropic, $4B: Also in November, Amazon agreed to invest another $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival with an AI assistant called Claude. In the fall of 2023, Amazon agreed to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic — giving the Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud titan a minority stake in the company. The immediate investment was $1.25 billion, with the remaining $2.75 billion in funding coming earlier this year. That deal included Anthropic naming Amazon Web Services its primary cloud provider, as well as using AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train and deploy its models. This new investment means Amazon will have invested $8 billion into Antropic, retaining its minority stake in the startup, per an Anthropic blog.

7. (tied) Anduril Industries, $1.5B: Anduril Industries matched its own record for the largest defense tech round ever. In August, The Costa Mesa, California-based startup locked up a $1.5 billion Series F that valued the company at $14 billion — a 69% jump from the $8.5 billion valuation it received after its massive $1.5 billion Series E in late 2022. The round was co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital. The company will use some of the new proceeds for the development of Arsenal-1 — a more than 5 million-square-foot production space designed to produce tens of thousands of autonomous military systems annually.

7. (tied) G42, $1.5B: In April, Microsoft made a $1.5 billion strategic investment in United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence firm G42. While Microsoft investing big in AI is nothing new — see OpenAI — the deal with G42, an AI holding company, comes with other entanglements that likely needed to be cleared before the announcement of the deal. It was also reported the deal followed negotiations between the U.S. and G42 to divest from China technology and lessen its presence there. Earlier this year, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter urging the Department of Commerce to investigate G42.

9. (tied) CoreWeave, $1.1B: In May, AI cloud infrastructure startup CoreWeave locked up a $1.1 billion round led by Coatue that valued the company at $19 billion, per The Wall Street Journal. The valuation represented an almost threefold increase from the company’s valuation in December 2023, when it was valued at $7 billion following a secondary sale. It’s also a huge jump from its $2 billion valuation in a Series B extension in May 2023.

9. (tied) Wayve, $1.1B: Also in May, London-based self-driving car startup Wayve raised funds worth approximately $1.1 billion in a SoftBank-led round, marking one of the largest funding deals on record for a British startup and signaling continued investor fervor for all things artificial intelligence. Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft also joined in the Series C funding. Wayve has now raised $1.3 billion, per Crunchbase. It did not disclose a valuation for the latest funding. Its self-driving car technology works through embodied AI, or a system in which a real-world object such as a robot — or, in this case, a vehicle — powered by artificial intelligence software interacts with and continuously learns about the world as it travels through that environment.

Finally, four AI startups raised $1 billion rounds this year: Moonshot AI, Safe Superintelligence, Scale AI and Xaira Therapeutics.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman