Late-stage startup funding has changed. $100 million rounds are now typical, not rare. Investors are concentrating bigger bets on fewer companies, especially in AI.
Just a few years ago, raising $100 million in a single funding round would have put a startup in rare company. Today, that milestone is routine for late-stage U.S. startups, according to new Crunchbase data. The median late-stage round in 2026 has reached exactly $100 million, signaling a dramatic shift in what counts as a major deal.
This trend is especially visible in the artificial intelligence sector, where companies like OpenAI have closed rounds that dwarf even the largest deals of the past. OpenAI’s record-breaking raise this spring was more than 1,000 times larger than the original “Supergiant Round” threshold. Its chatbot even suggests calling such deals “leviathan” or “titan” rounds, reflecting just how much the landscape has changed.
The path to this new normal wasn’t linear. The late 2010s saw the rise of $100 million-plus rounds as companies such as Uber, Rivian, and WeWork prepared for public offerings. The volume of these deals peaked during the 2021 bull market, dipped in the following years, and is now climbing again as AI funding accelerates.
While the number of giant rounds hasn’t returned to its all-time high, the total capital invested is at record levels. So far in 2026, investors have backed 250 U.S. startup rounds of $100 million or more. Half of those were for $200 million or above, and 18 topped $1 billion. Much of this capital is flowing into a handful of high-profile companies, leaving deal volume below previous peaks but pushing overall funding higher.
The median late-stage round size has doubled since 2020, rising from just over $50 million to $100 million. This isn’t a small sample: 250 U.S. startups have already secured rounds of $100 million or more this year, with many deals far exceeding that figure. Valuations are climbing as well. Twenty-one U.S. startups raising $100 million or more in 2026 had pre-money valuations above $10 billion, including OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have confidentially filed for IPOs that could approach $1 trillion in value.
Investors are not only writing bigger checks—they’re also betting on record-breaking returns. Whether public markets will deliver on those expectations remains to be seen. For startups, the era of the $100 million round as a headline-grabbing event is over; it’s now just business as usual.
This concentration of capital among a select few echoes broader trends in AI funding. For example, some startups are finding creative ways to manage costs and access advanced AI tools, as seen when one company leveraged individual OpenAI and Anthropic accounts to cut expenses—a strategy detailed in this report on AI startup cost-saving tactics.
According to Crunchbase, Cerebras Systems was among the companies to raise pre-IPO funding before going public last month, joining the ranks of startups achieving multi-billion-dollar valuations in this new funding environment.
