Crunchbase reported a record count of billion-dollar rounds in Q3 2026. In the first week of October, Instinct raised $1 billion and Armadin $255.5 million, while EliseAI raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation and Arena $200 million at $3.1 billion.
Beyond the megadeals, the pattern is vertical and infrastructure specialization: security (Island, Rein, Comp AI), physical AI (SiMa.ai, Neura), and vertical applications (EliseAI, Rillet). That suggests capital is moving to companies with clear customers rather than to general-purpose model builders alone.
Counts and values vary by data provider, so figures should be compared within a single source.
Source: Crunchbase News