Our World in Data Browse by topic Data Insights Resources About Subscribe Donate Data External funding for privately held AI companies raising above $1.5 million See all data and research on: Artificial Intelligence Explore the Data Sources & Processing Reuse This Work Data sources and processing Insights about this data Data sources and processing Related articles Related charts Insights about this data Related articles Related charts What you should know about this indicator This data focuses on external private-market investment, such as venture-capital and private-equity deals. It does not include internal corporate R&D, capital expenditure (CapEx), or public-sector funding. Publicly traded companies, including large tech firms, are excluded. Because this data covers only one form of financing, it underestimates total global spending on AI. Large single deals can cause spikes in specific years. Broader economic conditions (interest rates, investor sentiment) can also drive changes that are not specific to AI. AI firms are identified by the source based on keywords and industry tags; some misclassification is possible. External funding for privately held AI companies raising above $1.5 million Money put into privately held AI companies that raised more than $1.5 million from private investors. This excludes publicly traded companies (e.g., public Big Tech companies) and companies’ own internal spending, such as R&D or infrastructure. Expressed in US dollars, adjusted for inflation. Source Quid via AI Index Report (2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data Last updated April 8, 2025 Next expected update April 2026 Date range 2013–2024 Unit constant 2021 US$ What you should know about this indicator This data focuses on external private-market investment, such as venture-capital and private-equity deals. It does not include internal corporate R&D, capital expenditure (CapEx), or public-sector funding. Publicly traded companies, including large tech firms, are excluded. Because this data covers only one form of financing, it underestimates total global spending on AI. Large single deals can cause spikes in specific years. Broader economic conditions (interest rates, investor sentiment) can also drive changes that are not specific to AI. AI firms are identified by the source based on keywords and industry tags; some misclassification is possible. External funding for privately held AI companies raising above $1.5 million Money put into privately held AI companies that raised more than $1.5 million from private investors. This excludes publicly traded companies (e.g., public Big Tech companies) and companies’ own internal spending, such as R&D or infrastructure. Expressed in US dollars, adjusted for inflation. Source Quid via AI Index Report (2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data Last updated April 8, 2025 Next expected update April 2026 Date range 2013–2024 Unit constant 2021 US$ Sources and processing This data is based on the following sources Quid via AI Index Report – AI Index Report The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). The mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data to enable policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI. Retrieved on April 8, 2025 Retrieved from https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HAI_2024_AI-Index-Report.pdf Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. Nestor Maslej, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Yolanda Gil, Vanessa Parli, Njenga Kariuki, Emily Capstick, Anka Reuel, Erik Brynjolfsson, John Etchemendy, Katrina Ligett, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, Juan Carlos Niebles, Yoav Shoham, Russell Wald, Tobi Walsh, Armin Hamrah, Lapo Santarlasci, Julia Betts Lotufo, Alexandra Rome, Andrew Shi, Sukrut Oak. “The AI Index 2025 Annual Report,” AI Index Steering Committee, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, April 2025 The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). The mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data to enable policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI. Retrieved on April 8, 2025 Retrieved from https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HAI_2024_AI-Index-Report.pdf Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. Nestor Maslej, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Yolanda Gil, Vanessa Parli, Njenga Kariuki, Emily Capstick, Anka Reuel, Erik Brynjolfsson, John Etchemendy, Katrina Ligett, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, Juan Carlos Niebles, Yoav Shoham, Russell Wald, Tobi Walsh, Armin Hamrah, Lapo Santarlasci, Julia Betts Lotufo, Alexandra Rome, Andrew Shi, Sukrut Oak. “The AI Index 2025 Annual Report,” AI Index Steering Committee, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, April 2025 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – US consumer prices The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) of individual goods and services for urban consumers at the national, city, and state levels. CPI is presented on an annual basis, which we have derived as the average of the monthly CPIs in a given year. Retrieved on April 12, 2025 Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/data/tools.htm Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) of individual goods and services for urban consumers at the national, city, and state levels. CPI is presented on an annual basis, which we have derived as the average of the monthly CPIs in a given year. Retrieved on April 12, 2025 Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/data/tools.htm Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics How we process data at Our World in Data All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator. At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data. Read about our data pipeline Notes on our processing step for this indicator Reporting a time series of AI investments in nominal prices would make it difficult to compare observations across time. To make these comparisons possible, one has to take into account that prices change (inflation). It is not obvious how to adjust this time series for inflation, and our team discussed the best solutions at our disposal. It would be straightforward to adjust the time series for price changes if we knew the prices of the specific goods and services purchased through these investments. This would make it possible to calculate a volume measure of AI investments and tell us how much these investments bought. But such a metric is not available. While a comprehensive price index is not available, we know that the cost of some crucial AI technology has fallen rapidly in price. In the absence of a comprehensive price index that captures the price of AI-specific goods and services, one has to rely on one of the available metrics for the price of a bundle of goods and services. Ultimately, we decided to use the US Consumer Price Index (CPI). The US CPI does not provide us with a volume measure of AI goods and services, but it does capture the opportunity costs of these investments. The inflation adjustment of this time series of AI investments, therefore, lets us understand the size of these investments relative to whatever else these sums of money could have purchased. Reuse this work All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data. All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license . You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. Citations How to cite this page To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation: “Data Page: External funding for privately held AI companies raising above $1.5 million”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from Quid via AI Index Report, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20251119-141827/grapher/private-investment-in-artificial-intelligence.html [online resource] (archived on November 19, 2025). How to cite this data In-line citation If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation: Quid via AI Index Report (2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data Full citation Quid via AI Index Report (2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “External funding for privately held AI companies raising above $1.5 million” [dataset]. Quid via AI Index Report, “AI Index Report”; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “US consumer prices” [original data]. Retrieved January 8, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20251119-141827/grapher/private-investment-in-artificial-intelligence.html (archived on November 19, 2025). Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone. Help us do this work by making a donation. Donate now Our World in Data is a project of Global Change Data Lab , a nonprofit based in the UK (Reg. Charity No. 1186433). 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