Highlights of the Day: Key Events in the Venture Market
- Cognition AI, the developer of the AI agent for programming Devin, closes a round of approximately $1 billion at a valuation of around $47 billion — investor interest in the deal approached $10 billion.
- Crusoe, an AI infrastructure and data center operator, raised over $3 billion at a post-money valuation of approximately $30 billion from Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Mubadala Capital.
- Megafunds with assets over $1 billion control 72% of the total value of venture deals in 2026, up from 25% a year earlier.
- More than 70% of global venture capital in the second quarter was directed toward AI companies — a historic peak of concentration.
Cognition AI: Valuation of $47 Billion and the New Economy of AI Agents
The central deal of the week is the funding round for Cognition AI. The startup behind the autonomous AI programmer Devin is raising about $1 billion, bringing its valuation to approximately $47 billion. Notably, investor demand to participate in the round was nearly ten times the target amount: the company received bids totaling nearly $10 billion.
For venture funds, this deal signals a shift of capital away from foundational language models toward applied AI agents with measurable revenues. Cognition demonstrates one of the fastest ARR growth rates in the industry's history, and investors are willing to pay a premium for confirmed monetization — a premium that is not available to companies with “conceptual” products. Funding rounds of this scale in the AI coding segment are setting a new price benchmark for the entire category of development tools.
AI Infrastructure: Crusoe, Gimlet Labs, and the Battle for Computational Power
The infrastructure segment remains the second magnet for capital following applied AI. Key recent deals include:
- Crusoe completed funding exceeding $3 billion at a valuation of around $30 billion. The funds will be directed toward building data centers and expanding cloud capacities for AI workloads.
- Gimlet Labs raised $300 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of $3 billion. New investors include Arm Holdings and Microsoft’s venture arm M12. The company is developing software for distributing AI workloads across different types of processors — a critical technology amid the fragmentation of computing infrastructure.
- HiddenLayer, specializing in the security of agent and generative AI applications, closed a $100 million Series B round — the AI security segment is becoming a mandatory line item in fund theses.
The logic for investors is clear: as the cost of training and inference models rises, companies that reduce computational costs or enhance efficiency gain a structural advantage and predictable corporate demand.
Megafunds Reshaping the Industry: 72% of the Market is Controlled by Giants
A structural shift in 2026 is the total dominance of megafunds. According to PitchBook data, funds with assets exceeding $1 billion accounted for 72% of the total value of venture deals in the first half of the year, compared to just 25% a year ago. Megafunds raised $50 billion in new capital over six months, compared to $8 billion during the same period last year, with 73% of all new capital commitments coming from just five management firms.
Among the largest closures are: Thrive Capital with its $10 billion Thrive X fund, Sequoia Capital with a late-stage AI fund of $7 billion, and Andreessen Horowitz with a growth fund of $6.75 billion — meanwhile, a16z is reportedly setting up an AI megafund of up to $20 billion. In Europe, the European Commission designated EQT as the manager of the €5 billion Scaleup Europe fund, half of which is already contracted with institutional investors, including Novo Holdings, Allianz, and APG.
Record Half-Year: $510 Billion and the Phenomenon of Two Companies
Crunchbase statistics indicate a historical anomaly: OpenAI and Anthropic have collectively raised $217 billion — 43% of all global venture funding in the first half of 2026. OpenAI's $122 billion round in the first quarter became the largest private deal in history, while Anthropic, after raising $65 billion in the second quarter, topped the list of the world's most valuable private companies. In the second quarter, 16 companies closed rounds exceeding $1 billion for a total of $108.6 billion — more than half of the quarterly investment volume.
North America maintains its leadership: investments in startups in the U.S. and Canada reached $392 billion in the half-year. Notably, there is a renaissance at early stages — early capital surpassed $31 billion for the quarter, nearly double last year’s levels, largely due to a $12 billion round for Prometheus, a physical AI startup with participation from Jeff Bezos.
Beyond AI: Where Else Venture Capital is At Work
Despite the dominance of the AI narrative, capital is finding applications in adjacent verticals:
- Defense Technology: $12.3 billion in investments for the half-year — nearly double last year’s result; Anduril Industries closed a Series H at $5 billion.
- Healthcare: AusperBio Therapeutics raised $120 million in Series C, Elucid secured $55 million in Series D, and Scan.com raised $90 million for the development of medical imaging.
- Fintech: Ghanaian startup Moment received $22 million in Series A from Speedinvest and QED Investors to build payment infrastructure for African markets.
- Consumer Sector: coffee chain Blank Street raised $105 million for expansion, while travel platform WeRoad secured $58 million.
Europe and Early Stages: Selectivity Instead of Scarcity
The European market is demonstrating targeted activity. Munich-based Zeit AI, founded by former Palantir employees, raised €5 million in seed investment with participation from Y Combinator and Sequoia’s scout fund — the company is building an autonomous data engineering agent that integrates with over 600 corporate systems. Brussels-based Backbone closed a pre-seed round of €4 million in the food industry compliance segment. Notably, the participation of strategic investors and industry players in early syndicates is increasing: corporations are increasingly entering at the seed stage to secure access to technologies ahead of growth rounds.
What This Means for Investors: Three Takeaways
- The barbell market structure has solidified. Capital is being distributed between megara rounds for leaders and selective early deals, while the mid-tier — Series B and C for companies without outstanding metrics — is under maximum pressure. Mid-sized funds require clear specialization to compete for quality deal flow.
- Due diligence is tightening across the funnel. Investors demand confirmed revenues, a clear structure of intellectual property, and understandable unit economics even at the seed stage. The premium for the “AI narrative” without commercial evidence is rapidly disappearing.
- Infrastructure and vertical AI are the main theses for the second half of the year. Computational efficiency, AI security, robotics, and industry agents with measurable effects for businesses remain the most competitive segments for new allocations.
Outlook: A Fall of High Stakes
September traditionally marks the start of the business season, and 2026 will be no exception: new megara rounds in the frontier AI segment, activation of the IPO window after a strong second quarter, and continued consolidation in applied AI verticals through M&A and strategic acquisitions are expected in the market. For venture funds, the key question of the fall will be not the availability of capital, but the discipline of its allocation: in a market where two issuers absorb nearly half of global investments, the quality of selection is determining portfolio returns more than ever in the last decade.
