‘Mega-deals’ could be inflating overall AI funding figures

It’s secure to say that VCs struck whereas the iron was sizzling this yr the place it involved generative AI.

Whereas enterprise capital investments total fell in comparison with final yr due to macroeconomic challenges and different associated elements, startups within the generative AI house — and AI extra broadly — did fairly effectively.

Funding for AI-related startups surpassed $68.7 billion in 2023, in line with PitchBook, with generative AI distributors like OpenAI, Stability AI and Anthropic accounting for a considerable portion of that determine. And it seems that the sector will doubtless shut the yr with considerably increased investments than the previous couple of years.

However might the top-level numbers be deceptive?

A report on AI funding in Q3 by PitchBook, launched this morning, discovered that “mega-deals” (i.e., multi-hundred-million-dollar investments from big-name backers) vastly inflated deal totals this yr.

For instance, only a few months in the past, Amazon pledged to take a position as much as $4 billion in Anthropic, the corporate creating the AI-powered chatbot Claude. OpenAI secured a $10 billion funding from Microsoft (albeit not and partly within the type of cloud compute credit). Inflection AI, a agency creating what it describes as extra “private” AI assistants, raised $1.3 billion in a funding spherical led by Microsoft. The checklist goes on.

In Q3, VC funding inclusive of mega-deals totaled round $22.1 billion. However after subtracting the tech-giant-led tranches secured by generative AI startups, the whole is nearer to $15.1 billion for the sector.