Global venture funding showed no signs of slowing in July, with startup capital totaling $65 billion, up 100% year over year, as the month notched the highest-ever number of billion-dollar venture rounds, 14, per Crunchbase data.

The largest deal was a $10 billion investment in Blue Origin, the first external financing for the Jeff Bezos-founded space exploration company. Safe Superintelligence, a frontier lab founded by former Open AI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, reportedly raised $5 billion from Nvidia. Moonshot AI and Kling AI followed with $3.5 billion and $2.8 billion raises respectively, while two Germany‑based defense tech firms, Helsing and Quantum Systems, also secured billion‑dollar rounds.

Funding to AI‑focused companies totaled $35 billion, about 53% of global venture funding, with U.S. companies contributing $39 billion, or 59% of the total, half of which went to AI. Exits were robust, with venture‑backed M&A exceeding $9 billion and 12 companies going public above $1 billion in value, including Chang Xin Memory Technologies’ $85 billion IPO.

If the first half of 2026 set a new era of mega‑financings, July reinforced that the trend is broadening rather than fading, as record numbers of billion‑dollar rounds in hardware and software, strong IPO and M&A activity show capital concentrating in leaders while recycling through exits.