Cline

Venture funding to physical AI startups hit $47.4 billion across 521 deals in the first half of 2026, nearly 4x the $12 billion raised in the second half of 2025 and well above the $26.4 billion raised in H1 2025. The surge is being driven by megadeals like Waymo’s $16 billion Series D at a $126 billion valuation, alongside big rounds for Anduril ($5 billion), Shield AI ($2 billion) and Saronic ($1.75 billion), showing investors now see robotics, autonomous systems, defense tech and sensors as a major next leg of the AI boom.

ClearJet raised a $25 million Series B led by Edison Partners, bringing total funding to $40 million since its 2022 launch, and says its AI-enabled “Uber for cargo” network now spans 95 U.S. airports while connecting shippers to unused space on commercial passenger flights. The company says the asset-light model is profitable, revenue has more than tripled year over year and is nearing nine figures, with claimed savings of up to 35% and delivery times cut by one to three days.

Freehand raised a $75 million Series B co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to $100 million as it scales autonomous AI agents for enterprise supply chain spend and back-office operations. The startup, founded in 2024 by Pando veterans Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar, is targeting non-standard procurement and invoice governance across logistics, raw materials, parts, and labor, a tougher problem than card-based spend management.

Throne Science, founded in 2023 by former Whoop CTO John Capodilupo and CEO Scott Hickle, raised a $10 million Series A led by Will Ventures, bringing total funding to nearly $18 million, and also launched a beta Gut Health AI coach that uses LLMs to question users after bad gut-health episodes. The startup’s AI toilet camera uses a pipeline of about a dozen computer vision models to analyze stool and urine, aiming to build a dense longitudinal GI dataset for consumers, clinicians, and researchers in a market that now also includes Kohler’s Dekoda tracker.

AI has lowered the cost of building startups but not the cost of scaling them, making fully funded seed rounds more important for Black founders trying to reach Series A. Crunchbase data cited in the piece says U.S. startups with a Black founder or co-founder took in $942 million in 2025, or 0.32% of all venture funding, versus $5.2 billion in 2021, and even 2026’s stronger pace of about $643 million by late May was driven by a few outsized deals including a $350 million AI round.

Mexico-based startups raised $944 million in Q2, surpassing Brazil’s $350 million for the third straight quarter and accounting for the region’s three largest deals, while Latin America overall drew $1.36 billion across seed- to growth-stage rounds. The surge was driven by late-stage and growth funding, with big U.S.-led financings including Clip’s $500 million private-equity deal, Plata’s $405 million Series C, and Kavak’s $300 million Series F, showing rising global VC participation in the region.

Venture funding into fintech startups rose 22.7% year over year to $28.6 billion in H1 2026 even as deal count fell 25.7% to 1,605, with more than 52% of capital, or $15 billion, flowing to U.S.-based companies. Investors are writing fewer, larger checks into wealth management, financial infrastructure, stablecoins and AI-driven financial services, a split that favors bigger incumbents like Ramp and Stripe while early-stage startups chase new categories like automated hedge funds and prediction markets.

Cybersecurity and privacy startups raised $10.6 billion globally in H1 2026, with Q2 contributing $4.4 billion across seed- through growth-stage rounds after a roughly 30% decline from the prior quarter and year-ago levels. Despite the slowdown, the quarter still saw eight $100 million-plus rounds, including Cyera’s $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, NinjaOne’s $400 million-plus Series C extension at a $12.3 billion valuation, and Dream’s $260 million raise at a $3 billion valuation, showing the sector is still producing large financings and exits even as AI dominates attention.