US venture capital reached $67.03 billion across 409 companies in May 2026 — a month that will be remembered as much for a single transaction as for the remarkable activity beneath it. Anthropic’s $50 billion Series H, one of the largest venture capital rounds ever recorded, accounted for 74.6% of all capital deployed nationally and effectively redefined what a venture round can be. Excluding Anthropic, the underlying US market produced $17.03 billion across 408 companies — itself a strong month, anchored by Anduril Industries’ $5 billion defense technology raise, Cognition’s $1 billion AI coding round, and an extraordinary $700 million Series A for Hark, the largest Series A recorded in this dataset. The month’s deal volume fell 7.5% from April’s 442 transactions, but the concentration of capital in a small number of high-conviction bets tells a more important story: institutional investors are writing larger checks, with greater confidence, into fewer but more consequential companies.
- US venture capital reached $67.03B across 409 companies in May 2026, a 222.3% increase in capital from April — driven entirely by Anthropic’s $50B Series H, the largest venture round in recorded history.
- Excluding Anthropic, the underlying US market totaled $17.03B across 408 companies — a healthy baseline that still represents a strong month by historical standards.
- AI companies captured 94% of all US capital deployed in May, with 193 of 409 funded companies identified as AI-focused — though nearly all of that concentration traces back to Anthropic alone.
- Hark’s $700M Series A was the largest Series A in the dataset, underscoring a market willing to write institutional-scale checks at earlier stages for high-conviction AI bets.
- Anduril Industries raised $5B in a late-stage defense technology round, the second-largest deal of the month and a signal of deepening venture conviction in dual-use and national security technology.
- Year-over-year, US capital surged 560.4% from May 2025’s $10.15B, while deal count declined 10.7% from 458 companies.
US Venture Capital Activity by Stage — May 2026
| Stage | Deals | Total Capital | % of Total | Avg Deal | Median Deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early-Stage | 236 | $1.07B | 1.6% | $4.5M | $2.5M |
| Series A | 92 | $2.71B | 4.0% | $29.4M | $14.0M |
| Series B | 40 | $2.52B | 3.8% | $63.0M | $30.5M |
| Late-Stage | 41 | $60.74B | 90.6% | $1.48B | $70.0M |
| Total | 409 | $67.03B | 100% | $163.9M | $6.5M |
Top 10 US Venture Capital Deals — May 2026
| # | Company | Amount | Stage | Location | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anthropic | $50B | Late-Stage | San Francisco, CA | Foundational AI, Generative AI |
| 2 | Anduril Industries | $5B | Late-Stage | Costa Mesa, CA | Defense, Aerospace, Autonomous Systems |
| 3 | Cognition | $1B | Late-Stage | San Francisco, CA | Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering |
| 4 | Sierra | $950M | Late-Stage | San Francisco, CA | AI Agents, Enterprise Software, SaaS |
| 5 | Hark | $700M | Series A | San Jose, CA | AI-Native Hardware, Personal Intelligence, Agentic AI |
| 6 | Mind Robotics | $400M | Late-Stage | Palo Alto, CA | AI, Robotics, Manufacturing |
| 7 | Modal Labs | $355M | Late-Stage | New York, NY | AI Infrastructure, Cloud Computing |
| 8 | Cowboy Space | $305M | Series B | San Carlos, CA | Aerospace, AI Infrastructure, Energy |
| 9 | Decart | $300M | Late-Stage | San Francisco, CA | AI Infrastructure, Generative AI, Gaming |
| 10 | Astranis | $300M | Late-Stage | San Francisco, CA | Aerospace, Satellite Communication |
Anthropic’s $50B Round Rewrites the Record Books
Anthropic’s $50 billion Series H is unlike anything venture capital has seen before. The San Francisco-based AI safety and research company, which develops Claude and a suite of enterprise AI products, raised a round that exceeds the total annual venture capital deployed in many countries. The $50B figure represents the new equity component of a $65 billion financing structure; the remainder consists of $15 billion in previously announced hyperscaler commitments. At 74.6% of all US capital deployed in May, the raise is not just one of the largest venture rounds ever recorded — it is a structural event that makes any meaningful month-over-month or year-over-year comparison of US totals essentially impossible without accounting for it explicitly.
Excluding Anthropic, the US market produced $17.03 billion across 408 companies in May — a figure that, on its own, would represent the second-highest monthly total of 2026 and a healthy reading of underlying market conditions. That $17.03B baseline is the more analytically useful number for understanding where venture capital is actually flowing.
Anduril and the Defense Technology Moment
The second-largest deal of the month was Anduril Industries’ $5 billion late-stage raise — a number that would headline any month not dominated by Anthropic. The Costa Mesa-based defense technology company develops autonomous systems, AI-powered surveillance platforms, and next-generation weapons systems for the US and allied militaries. Anduril’s raise reflects a sustained and accelerating shift in venture capital toward dual-use and national security technology. The company now sits alongside a cohort of well-funded defense-adjacent startups — including drone manufacturers, satellite operators, and autonomous systems companies — that have collectively attracted tens of billions in venture capital over the past 24 months.
Astranis, which develops small communications satellites for geostationary orbit, closed a $300M late-stage round in May, adding a space infrastructure layer to the defense and national security theme. Cowboy Space’s $305M Series B, for solar-powered orbital data centers designed to support AI computing, extended the theme further into the intersection of space and AI infrastructure.
Hark’s $700M Series A Sets a New Benchmark
Hark’s $700 million Series A was the most structurally unusual deal of the month. The San Jose-based AI lab, founded in late 2025 by serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock (also founder of robotics company Figure AI and electric aircraft maker Archer), raised at a scale that has historically been the territory of Series C or late-stage companies. A $700M Series A implies either an extraordinary valuation mark or a deliberate strategy to capitalize the company at a level that forecloses competitive fundraising — or both. Hark is building an agentic AI system designed to serve as a universal human-machine interface, combining proprietary models with AI-native hardware — a thesis backed by NVIDIA, AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and ARK Invest among others. Whatever the rationale, the round signals that a subset of investors has abandoned stage-based pricing discipline entirely in favor of conviction-weighted bets on AI companies they believe will be category-defining.
AI Infrastructure Emerges as the Dominant Investment Theme
Beyond the headline rounds, May’s deal activity revealed a consistent thread: capital is flowing aggressively toward the infrastructure that makes AI possible, not just the models themselves. Cognition ($1B) builds Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer that handles coding, testing, and debugging with minimal human oversight. Sierra ($950M) deploys AI agents to handle enterprise customer experience workflows — from mortgage processing to insurance claims to e-commerce. Mind Robotics ($400M) applies AI to industrial environments. Modal Labs ($355M, NYC) provides the serverless cloud layer for ML workloads. Decart ($300M) builds real-time generative AI models for immersive environments. Cowboy Space ($305M) is constructing orbital data centers for AI compute.
Taken together, these rounds describe a venture market that has moved past debating whether AI is transformative and is now focused entirely on which infrastructure layers will be most defensible. The $2.71 billion deployed across 92 Series A rounds — averaging $29.4 million per deal — suggests the conviction extends well beyond the mega-rounds into the mid-market, where a significant pipeline of AI infrastructure companies is being built out at scale.
NYC vs. US National Venture Capital Activity — May 2026
| Stage | NYC Capital | NYC Deals | US Capital | US Deals | NYC % Capital | NYC % Deals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early-Stage | $158.7M | 36 | $1.07B | 236 | 14.9% | 15.3% |
| Series A | $277.6M | 18 | $2.71B | 92 | 10.3% | 19.6% |
| Series B | $454.9M | 9 | $2.52B | 40 | 18.1% | 22.5% |
| Late-Stage | $1.11B | 12 | $60.74B | 41 | 1.8% | 29.3% |
| Total | $2.01B | 75 | $67.03B | 409 | 3.0% | 18.3% |
New York City accounted for 3.0% of US venture capital by dollars in May 2026 and 18.3% of national deal count. The capital share is heavily distorted by Anthropic’s $50B round; on an ex-Anthropic basis, NYC represented approximately 11.8% of the underlying $17.03B US market. NYC’s strongest showing was at Series B, where it captured 18.1% of national capital and 22.5% of deals — a consistent indicator of the city’s mid-stage depth. At the late-stage level, NYC held 29.3% of national deal count despite only 1.8% of capital, reflecting how concentrated the national late-stage dollar total is in a handful of Bay Area mega-rounds.
Newsletter
Looking Ahead
May 2026 will serve as a reference point for years — the month venture capital crossed a threshold that seemed theoretical until it happened. But the more important signal for June and beyond is what the underlying $17.03B market is doing. Deal count is contracting modestly, which is consistent with a market that is concentrating capital rather than expanding it. The Series A cohort’s $29.4M average suggests that companies reaching that milestone are doing so with more traction and at higher prices than a year ago. Defense technology, space infrastructure, and AI agents are three themes that produced multiple large rounds in May and show no signs of cooling. Whether the Anthropic round catalyzes a new wave of foundational model investment or remains an outlier will depend largely on how Anthropic’s enterprise revenue trajectory develops over the next two quarters.
Methodology
Data for this report is sourced from AlleyWatch proprietary funding data (funding.alleywatch.com) and covers venture capital rounds announced or closed in May 2026 by US-headquartered startups. Deals are classified into four stages: Early-Stage (pre-seed, seed, angel, accelerator, and incubator rounds); Series A; Series B; and Late-Stage (Series C and beyond). AI company classification is based on the presence of relevant keywords across company description and industry fields. NYC figures in the comparison table reflect the NYC-specific dataset. Anthropic’s $50B figure reflects the new equity component of its $65B financing structure. All figures are in USD.
