According to data released by financial data analysis company PitchBook, in the AI boom, the scale of venture capital funds in the United States in the second quarter soared to $55.6 billion, the highest quarterly performance in two years, and AI is the focus of most venture capital funds. However, despite the rebound in venture capital funds, most of the funds are still concentrated in a few popular projects.
On July 5, Cailian Press reported (editor Liu Rui) that along with OpenAI's ChatGPT sparking an AI frenzy around the world, "All In AI" seems to be increasingly becoming the consensus of the US venture capital circle.
On Wednesday US Eastern Time, data released by financial data analysis company PitchBook showed that in the AI boom, the scale of US venture capital investment funds in the second quarter soared to $55.6 billion, the highest quarterly performance in two years, with AI being the focus of most venture capital funds.
AI drives the revival of the US venture capital market.
The latest data shows that the financing amount of US venture-backed start-ups in the second quarter was $55.6 billion, a 47% increase from the $37.8 billion in the first quarter, mainly due to a large amount of investment by venture capital in AI companies.
Due to the high interest rates and weak market exits of the Federal Reserve in the past two years, US venture capital funds have been steadily declining since the fourth quarter of 2021. In the second quarter of 2023, the amount of US venture capital investment once hit a recent low point of $35.4 billion.
However, since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, the AI frenzy has revived the previously dormant US venture capital market for the past two years. Venture capitalists have poured large amounts of money into startups, hoping that AI will bring significant returns.
Casber Wang, a partner at Sapphire Ventures, said, "Investors give a premium to all AI - most AI companies require large amounts of capital."
However, despite the resurgence of venture capital, most of the funding is still concentrated in a few hot projects. For example, in the second quarter of this year, Musk's xAI company raised $6 billion in new funds, while CoreWeave, a cloud computing service provider invested in by Nvidia, raised $1.1 billion.
Data shows that in the second quarter of this year, venture capital funds in the US market flowed into only 3,108 transactions, the lowest level since the second quarter of 2020.
In addition, venture capitalists are still challenged by exits of venture capital funds. In the second quarter of this year, a series of small-scale transactions in the venture capital circle generated only about $23.6 billion in exit value, lower than the $37.8 billion in the first quarter.
Some experts predict that the M&A market for AI startups will revive in the second half of this year as technology giants such as Nvidia have been acquiring AI industry startups. In June of this year, insiders said that Nvidia had acquired software startup Shoreline for an estimated $100 million.