According to the sources, global venture capital funding hit $21.5 billion in February 2024, a little increase from February 2023 but a flat month over month total.
Over $2 billion was invested in seed-stage enterprises globally in the previous month. Early-stage startups received investments totalling around $10 billion. Additionally, venture capitalists have invested $9.3 billion in late-stage businesses, including growing tech firms.
February was the largest investment round for Epic Games, a 32-year-old company based in North Carolina. Disney made a strategic investment of $1.5 billion in the Fortnite creator at a valuation of $22.5 billion, which was 30% less than the $32 billion valuation set in Epic’s 2022 funding round.
The next-biggest investment went to Moonshot AI, a year-old AI business with headquarters in Beijing. Leading strategic investors Alibaba and Sequoia Capital China led the $1 billion Series B investment round for the major language foundation model company, which was valued at $2.5 billion.
AI businesses received a higher proportion of startup investments in February overall. With $4.7 billion spent, more than a fifth of all venture capital funding in February went to AI businesses. Compared to the $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion invested in AI businesses in February 2023 and January 2024, respectively, that was a huge increase.
Some sizable AI funding rounds went to several Bay Area-based businesses. The two-year-old humanoid robot startup Figure teamed up with OpenAI and raised $675 million at a valuation of $2.7 billion. Among the many investors were Microsoft, OpenAI’s Startup Fund, Nvidia, and Bezos Expeditions.
Lambda, a cloud-based GPU startup, and Glenan, an AI search startup, both secured significant fundings totalling more than $200 million. The zero interest rate policy funding environment caused by the epidemic is firmly in the past. The average monthly funding globally has decreased by 62% since the market top in 2021, when it surged.
