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Copenhagen-based Spektr, which uses AI to tackle the manual drudgery of financial compliance, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
In the first quarter of 2026, a handful of large, well-funded AI companies, almost all based in the U.S., captured the vast majority of venture dollars, even as global startup deal count fell, Crunchbase data shows.
GetWhys, a Boise, Idaho-based AI-powered customer intelligence platform, has raised $5.2 million in funding, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Several multibillion-dollar megadeals drove a spike in first-quarter investment in autonomous vehicles, signaling that investors aren't just paying for research, but betting on companies that are ready to scale up and put their AI technology into actual cars people can buy or hail.
The week’s largest round was a $650 million financing for electric pickup truck maker Slate Auto. Other sizable investments went to spaces including drug development, autonomous public transit and software engineering.
Although the conventional wisdom in tech is that real ambition means staying independent, sometimes joining forces through an acquisition by a large, established company is what it takes to improve your mission's odds. Guest author Louis Blankemeier, co-founder and CEO of Cognita, explains how that
Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12 billion across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per Crunchbase data. In terms of dollars invested, that’s up 5% year over year, but that money went into almost a third fewer deals.
European venture funding reached $17.6 billion in Q1 2026, Crunchbase data shows. That’s up nearly 30% year over year and marks the second consecutive quarter of growth. The main driver was AI, which for the first time claimed more than 50% of the continent’s total funding for the quarter.
Overall, investors put $27.4 billion to work across seed- through growth-stage financings for Asian companies in Q1, per Crunchbase data. That’s up about 20% from the prior quarter and nearly double year-ago levels, with total funding also hitting its highest level in more than three years.
Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12 billion across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per Crunchbase data. That’s a 5% increase in dollars raised compared to the $11.4 billion raised across 1,097 deals during the same time period in 2025.
While no billion-dollar rounds led this week’s list, we nonetheless saw a variety of startups in industries ranging from semiconductors to aerospace to biotech raise sizable rounds.
Startups in Latin America raised a combined $1.03 billion across seed- and growth-stage deals in the three-month period ending March 31 — up year over year, but down from Q4 2025.
AI tax prep automation startup Juno, founded to address the opportunities — and risks — that come with advances in AI, and built for underserved SMB accounting firms, says it has received a $12 million seed investment.
In a quarter when nearly two-thirds of global venture capital went to just four companies, it’s easy to lose track of the many other companies getting funding to tackle interesting problems. We spotted five companies in just the past month working on issues from cleaner ferries and trains to foundat
The investors backing the highest number of startup rounds in a record-setting Q1 were mostly not the ones writing the biggest checks. And the ones funding the largest deals were not the most prolific dealmakers. To see who ranked high for deal counts and totals, we looked at active investors across
U.S. and Canadian companies secured a staggering $252.6 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding rounds in the first quarter of 2026 per Crunchbase data. That’s more than 3x the total raised in the prior quarter, and the largest quarterly total of all time.
While AI and automation can be powerful, many applications use complex global systems to solve simple problems that could be handled locally. Guest author Itay Sagie shares three risks of undisciplined automation of everything, urging more thoughtful and disciplined use of technology.
A total of 47 seed- and early stage companies joined the unicorn ranks in the first quarter of this year, per Crunchbase data. Barring a major slowdown, that puts 2026 on track to deliver the largest cohort of young unicorns to date.
Startup investors kept up the busy dealmaking pace this week with a number of big rounds. Top among them was a $1.75 billion Series D for Austin-based Saronic, developer of autonomous vessels.
As of March 31, foundational AI startups had raised $178 billion across 24 deals, compared with $88.9 billion across 66 deals in all of 2025 in a 100% increase. That’s also significantly higher — 466.9% higher to be exact — than the $31.4 billion raised across 52 deals in 2024.
