Global venture funding reached $59 billion in October, a 45% increase from the same month a year earlier, according to Crunchbase data. The total was driven largely by a record-setting $15.9 billion round for China's DeepSeek, the largest venture deal ever for a Chinese company. Two other frontier labs also raised Series A rounds at or close to $1 billion during the month.
Companies in the U.S. and China accounted for most of the October funding, raising $28 billion and $20.6 billion respectively. It was the first time since June 2018 that more than $20 billion was invested in China in a single month, when Ant Group raised $14 billion in its Series C round. Funding was heavily concentrated: seven companies that raised billion-dollar rounds accounted for just over 40% of the month's total, spanning frontier labs, manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, prediction markets and spend management software. Private equity led much of the funding, alongside multistage venture firms including Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Lux Capital.
DeepSeek's raise valued the company at $90 billion, placing it among the Top 10 most highly funded private companies. It is now the second most highly valued Chinese company after ByteDance and the third most highly valued private frontier lab after U.S. companies Anthropic and OpenAI. Rival open-source lab Moonshot AI reportedly reached a $50 billion value in October, making it the 11th most valuable private company on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, and has reportedly confidentially filed to go public on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Massachusetts-based manufacturing startup Re:Build raised the second-largest deal of the month at $2.1 billion. The company partners with industrial companies and innovators from product design through large-scale production and says it has 2.4 million square feet of manufacturing capacity. Other large rounds included $2 billion for Axiom for power and grid capacity build out for data centers, $1.85 billion for spend-management platform Ramp, which said its ARR has reached $2 billion, a $1.5 billion Series E for open-source semiconductor company Tenstorrent, which recently moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley from Canada, a $1 billion Series E for prediction market Kalshi and a $1 billion Series A for frontier lab Flapping Airplanes.
Eight more companies raised rounds north of $500 million, spanning frontier labs, robotics, legal and chips to agentic AI and healthcare. Among the most notable was TypeSafe AI, which said it raised an $870 million Series A on the heels of rapid developer adoption of its decision model Jev. AI-driven companies accounted for 66% of global funding in October, with semiconductor companies gaining market share during the month.
The U.S. IPO market was slow in anticipation of Anthropic's November IPO, which could surpass SpaceX's record-setting June listing that raised $85.7 billion. At least nine venture-backed companies were acquired for more than $1 billion last month, including Uber's acquisition of 19-year-old ezCater for $2.3 billion. With two months remaining, 2026 has already set records for acquisitions, IPOs and funding rounds across major venture markets, and October highlighted how concentrated the cycle has become.
The data comes directly from Crunchbase and is based on reported figures as of Nov. 2, 2026. Cohere's announced $5 billion funding, which did not report an initial or final close, was not included in the October totals.
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