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According to PitchBook data released on Tuesday and obtained by Bloomberg, venture capitalists poured $209 billion total into U.S. startups in 2024 — and nearly half of that funding, or a record $97 billion, went towards startups focusing on AI. The amount raised by this one category of startups is more than the entire amount of startup funding raised by early-stage companies in Europe and Asia. Europe saw funding for all startups reach $61.6 billion in 2024 while funding in Asia hit $75.9 billion. https://lnkd.in/emCKQtCK #aistartups #raised #half #all #funding #2024 #venturecapitalists #pouring #billions #unitedstates #startups #funding #focusing #ai #startups

Great article at TechCrunch on our new SparkLabs AIM AI Fund by Kate Park! This is an early-stage fund focused on AI startups across the globe, and part of this will be to invest in participants in our AIM-X accelerator in Riyadh. Our team greatly appreciates Ibrahim Neyaz, Abdullah M. Alhaqbani, Meshal Alkabeer, Aeshah F. Almutairi, and others at National Technology Development Program for selecting SparkLabs Saudi Arabia to run their AIM-X accelerator program and supporting us in the launch of this new AI fund. The 14 AI startups on our first batch are all excellent companies led by world-class founders. Our ever-expanding global network continues to find and attract top founders from Mumbai to Milan to Berlin to Hong Kong to Silicon Valley. The first accelerator batch in Riyadh continues to build upon the types of startups SparkLabs Group attracts, which is a range from strong bootstrapped to series B startups: - A few 1st batch companies will hit $3M, $5M and $10M in revenue for 2024. - 9 companies have raised $1.5M or more before entering our program, and 5 who have raised more than $3M prior to joining. - Great traction from hitting $1M in profit for 2024 (40% net profit) to signing 350+ enterprise clients and on track to hit $7M in revenues for 2024 to becoming cashflow positive and growing 4X in the last 12 Months ($4M+ in revenues for 2024). #startups #AI #GenAI #venturecapital #NTDP #accelerator #Riyadh #SaudiArabia #founders #entrepreneurs #chatGPT William Chu Ivan Grlic Bodin Scepanovic Sohail Alangari Scott Sorochak Rob DeMillo Lucidya | لوسيديا viAct Swirl® Contents ORKO askLAYLA Arctech Innovation OptimHire WideBot Orbo.ai Vyrill Stack Tech Farm Ahya Ideas Lab

The top cities for average funding per AI startup in 2023 were Bristol and Oxford 🤖🪙 New analysis from the O3 platform, an AI-powered venture classification platform developed by the University of Oxford and early-stage venture capital investor OpenOcean, has revealed surprising insights into the UK's AI startup funding landscape. The findings challenge the common perception that London has always dominated the sector. They show that, between 2012 and 2021, the average funding per AI startup was actually higher outside the capital. In fact in 2023, despite having more than half of the AI startups in the UK, London was only the fourth-highest UK region for average funding. While the shelving of £1.3 billion in AI funding seems like a setback, the reallocation of £32 million to regional AI projects is poised to support AI startups outside London and help rebalance the UK's tech landscape. Continue reading... https://lnkd.in/eimX2dev #AI #technology #innovation #growth #startup #finance #funding #investing #businessnews #businessintelligence

The official press release on our new SparkLabs AIM AI Fund. This is an early-stage fund focused on AI startups across the globe, and part of this will invest in participants in our AIM-X accelerator in Riyadh. We greatly appreciate Ibrahim Neyaz, Abdullah M. Alhaqbani, Meshal Alkabeer, Aeshah F. Almutairi, and others at National Technology Development Program for selecting SparkLabs Saudi Arabia to run their AIM-X accelerator program and supporting us in the launch of this new AI fund. The 14 AI startups on our first batch look strong 👊. Our ever-expanding global network continues to find and attract top founders from Mumbai to Milan to Berlin to Hong Kong to Silicon Valley. The first accelerator batch in Riyadh continues to build upon the types of startups SparkLabs Group attracts, which is a range from strong bootstrapped to series B startups: - A few 1st batch companies will hit $3M, $5M and $10M in revenue for 2024. - 9 companies have raised $1.5M or more before entering our program, and 5 who have raised more than $3M prior to joining. - Great traction from hitting $1M in profit for 2024 (40% net profit) to signing 350+ enterprise clients and on track to hit $7M in revenues for 2024 to becoming cashflow positive and growing 4X in the last 12 Months ($4M+ in revenues for 2024). Our AI accelerator is led by William Chu with great support from our partner, Bodin Scepanovic, who is based in Riyadh. And of course Ivan Grlic (Partner at AI Fund & Co-founder at SparkLabs Saudi Arabia), Spiros Margaris (Venture Partner), Brian Behlendorf (Venture Partner), Amr Awadallah (Advisor, Co-founder & CEO at Vectara), Dr.Fatmah Baothman (Founder & the Board President of AI Society in Saudi Arabia), and others. #startups #AI #NTDP #GenAI #venturecapital #accelerator #Riyadh #SaudiArabia #founders #entrepreneurs #chatGPT Sohail Alangari Sameer Chishty Scott Sorochak Rob DeMillo Lucidya | لوسيديا viAct Swirl® Contents ORKO askLAYLA Arctech Innovation OptimHire WideBot Orbo.ai Vyrill Stack Tech Farm Ahya Ideas Lab Vectara OpenAI

Global #venture funding in 2024 edged above 2023 totals, with #AI showing the biggest leap year on year. Per @CrunchBase, startup funding in 2024 reached $314B, up around 3%. The higher total in 2024 was due to a big push in Q4, up 36% over Q4 2023. Venture funding to U.S. companies totaled $178B, or 57% global funding #investors #investing #startup #venturecapital #viaduct #viaductventures #tech #ai https://lnkd.in/gBQemWdz

Global #venture funding in 2024 edged above 2023 totals, with #AI showing the biggest leap year on year. Per @CrunchBase, startup funding in 2024 reached $314B, up around 3%. The higher total in 2024 was due to a big push in Q4, up 36% over Q4 2023. Venture funding to U.S. companies totaled $178B, or 57% global funding #investors #investing #startup #venturecapital #viaduct #viaductventures #tech #ai https://lnkd.in/dfKscUSH

SparkLabs closes $50M fund to back AI startups SparkLabs — an early-stage venture capital firm that has made a name for itself for backing OpenAI as well as a host of other AI startups such as Vectara, Allganize, Kneron, Anthropic, xAI, Glade (YC S23) and Lucidya AI — is gearing up to double down more startups in the space. The VC firm announced Tuesday that it has closed a new $50 million fund, AIM AI Fund, which will back AI startups out of its own AIM-X accelerator in Saudi Arabia as well as other AI startups across the globe. SparkLabs’ new fund and its wider investment aims underscore the bigger trends that have swirled around artificial intelligence for the last few years. The explosion of interest in generative AI in particular has led to a surge of startups in the space, as well as a rush of investors looking for the next Open AI — or at the least, a startup that a bigger company might snap up as it looks to sharpen its own AI edge. There has been a significant increase in AI startups on a global scale over the past few years. As of March 2024, more than 210 AI unicorns, valued at over $1 billion, have emerged, per the Edge Delta report. Yet despite it being a global phenomenon, the U.S. overall still leads the pack for founding the most AI startups between 2013 and 2022 with 4,633 startups, according to the report. About 35% of SparkLabs’ new fund will support accelerator participants, with the remaining 65% targeted at making Series A and Series B investments beyond Saudi Arabia, according to co-founder and partner of SparkLabs Bernard Moon. “The accelerator will seek a minority allocation for Saudi Arabia or MENA investments, about 10%-20%,” Moon said. “The majority will be just the best AI startups regardless of location… I assume the majority in the U.S.” The average check size for accelerator participants will be $200,000, but it can go up to $500,000 in unique situations, Moon told TechCrunch. The Series A and Series B investments will be between $1 million and $5 million, Moon added. It aims to invest between 50 and 70 companies in total from the fund. SparkLabs will announce its first AI fund investments at the GAIN Summit in Riyadh on September 10. The fund has backed 14 startups, including viACT (workplace safety AI), IdeasLab (body movement AI), Ahya (climate AI), Swirl (video platform), Orko (EV fleet AI), Layla (travel AI), and Stack Tech Farm (vertical farming). SparkLabs has invested in over 550 startups worldwide.

TLDR from our recent State of Venture Report: -AI startups are dominating global funding, capturing 28% in Q2’24. This is the highest quarterly share on record. AI startups drew $18.3B in Q2’24 — up 32% QoQ — driven by mammoth $1B+ deals to Elon Musk’s xAI as well as Scale, CoreWeave, and others. -At $14.4M, the average deal size is up 17% this year so far vs. 2023. Even in a more cautious investing environment, the deals that do happen have ballooned in size as investors put more behind select startups. Full report in the comments!

Can big corporations innovate like fast-moving startups? Aucctus, a Toronto-based #AI startup, believes it's possible. With a $1.5 million seed investment, Aucctus has developed an AI-powered platform designed to turn every employee into a potential innovator, ready to bring the next big idea to their company. This platform identifies new ideas, aligns them with market trends and corporate strategy, proposes financial models, identifies target customers, and validates key assumptions. These streamlined workflows enable teams to launch initiatives more rapidly and reduce time to market. https://lnkd.in/eNciUVbw #sredforstartups #Canadianstartups #AICanada #innovation #canadianbusiness