7 Q1 Charts That Reveal the Real AI Funding Landscape

1,253 Deals, $104 B, and a Vanishing Middle

In Q1, the vast majority of AI startups quietly raised Series-A-sized tickets. I tracked 1,253 deals and mapped every dollar, tagged as Core AI or adjacent, to reveal the real Q1 funding story.¹

I’m excited to share with you the real Q1 capital map in seven charts. Let’s begin by looking at the overall capital stack:

Capital Stack: Where the Money Piled Highest

Investor appetite was intense in Q1 yet sharply polarized.

Here’s how the overall numbers look:

Disclosed Deal Amounts: 1,154

Undisclosed Deals: 99

Total Deal Volume: 104.28 billion US$²

Of the 1,154 rounds with disclosed values:

• 83 % (956 deals) fell below $50 M,

• 9% (104 deals) topped $100 M—including the seven $1B+ rounds I shared in the last post.

What’s striking is the gulf between the mean and median cheque:

• Average: $90.36 M (inflated by mega-rounds)

• Median: $12.75 M (squarely Series A-range)

Stage Velocity: Seed & A Deals Go Vertical

Early-stage momentum built steadily. Seed rounds leapt 57 % from January (82) to March (129), while Pre-Seed held flat and Series A ticked up modestly.

In contrast, at the mid-stage, Series B/C volume quietened throughout the quarter. There were a decent number of growth and strategic investments, but often not clearly tagged. For later stages, only 19 Series D and 7 Series E rounds were cleared in Q1.

Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of the funding type:

When I looked at the data for the whole quarter, interestingly, Pre-Seed (99 rounds) has fewer rounds than Series A (229).

This is indicative that many companies are probably entering the funding ecosystem directly at the Seed or Series A stages.

Indeed, Motif (Jan) and Auxia (Mar) skipped straight to combined Seed + Series A rounds. These two deals show evidence of pre-emptive capital for marquee teams.

Here’s a look at the whole quarter by funding deal type:

Geographic Concentration: 85 % of Cash Still Lands in the US

The United States towered over the rest of the world, drawing $87.3 billion, ~85% of all disclosed Q1 capital.

The United Kingdom was a distant second with 22 times lower funding at $4.0 billion (3.9 %), while a single $2 B platform raise vaulted the Cayman Islands into third place.

Here’s a look at the 10 markets:

1. US: $87.3 B

2. UK: $4.0 B

3. Cayman Islands: $2.0 B

4. Germany: $1.58 B

5. India: $0.97 B

6. Canada: $0.87 B

7. Israel: $0.83 B

8. Spain: $0.61 B

9. Australia: $0.60 B

10. Ireland: $0.53 B

A big disclaimer here is that Chinese AI rounds often exceed estimates but remain difficult to track reliably.

Here’s a bar graph showing how the countries stack up in AI capital in Q1:

Overall the geographical concentration is extreme. Eight of the ten largest markets each accounted for less than 2% of global spend.

Regionally, Europe, with funding distributed across seven countries, comes a distant second behind North America.

For investors, non-US markets remain under-capitalised relative to talent density: especially across Asia-Pacific and the EU.

Takeaways & Next Steps

Early-stage activity remains robust, and marquee teams continue to command outsized follow-on rounds. But the genuine opportunity lies in the missing middle. It’s something I've shared before, even in one of my funding dashboards.

Here’s how the deal count funnel looks:

Will Q2 widen this gap or restore balance? Would love to hear your thoughts. Oh, and I would be grateful for your feedback in the poll below too.

That’s all I have for this Q1 report. I’ll publish a market gap report—breaking down key Q1 sectors and industries—in two weeks. Subscribe to get it first.

1. Figures are refreshed continuously; minor variances may appear as deals are revised or re-classified.

2. All amounts have been converted into USD using these FX rates:

• GBP → 1.33,

• EUR → 1.13,

• CAD → 0.72,

• INR → 0.012,

• KRW → 0.00070