Global venture capital funding reached $21.5 billion in February 2024 — flat month over month and slightly up from February 2023, Crunchbase data shows.
Globally, more than $2 billion was invested in seed-stage companies last month. Close to $10 billion was invested in early-stage companies. And venture investors spent $9.3 billion at late-stage, including technology growth companies.
The largest funding round in February went to 32-year-old North Carolina-based Epic Games. That was a $1.5 billion strategic investment in the Fortnite maker from Disney at a valuation of $22.5 billion, which was 30% lower than the $32 billion valuation set in a 2022 funding round for Epic.
The next largest funding went to a much younger company: Beijing-based AI startup Moonshot AI, which is just a year old. The large language foundation model company raised a $1 billion Series B funding at a $2.5 billion valuation led by strategic investor Alibaba and Sequoia Capital China.
AI sector captures large share of funding
Overall, AI companies captured a larger share of startup investment in February, Crunchbase data shows. More than a fifth of all venture funding in February went to AI companies, with $4.7 billion invested in the sector. That was up significantly from the $2.2 billion invested in AI companies in January 2024 and the $2.1 billion invested in February 2023.
Other large rounds in AI went to a number of Bay Area-based companies. Two-year-old humanoid robot company Figure raised $675 million at a $2.7 billion value and partnered with OpenAI. The slew of investors included Microsoft, OpenAI’s Startup Fund, Nvidia and Bezos Expeditions, among others.
Cloud-based GPU company Lambda and AI search company Glean also both raised large fundings, each north of $200 million.
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