US VC hit $19.3B in June 2026: AI inference took 60%

Key Takeaways

• AI-focused startups captured 59.8% of all US venture capital in June 2026, totaling $11.53B
• Baseten's $1.5B Series F at $13B valuation signals inference infrastructure is now its own capital category
• New York hit a record 24.4% share of national VC funding, its highest in at least a year

US venture capital activity reached $19.27 billion across 429 companies in June 2026, according to AlleyWatch's monthly funding report. The headline number matters less than where the money went: AI infrastructure dominated, with inference serving emerging as a distinct capital category that attracted billions in a single month.

Baseten's $1.5 billion Series F, valuing the company at $13 billion, anchored the month. AppsFlyer followed with a $1 billion Series E. Together with Groq's $650 million raise, the data paints a clear picture: investors are betting that AI's bottleneck has shifted from training models to serving them at scale.

Why inference infrastructure is attracting billions

Baseten processes more than 1 billion inference calls per day across 87 clusters on 18 cloud providers. Its revenue grew 20x year over year. This was the company's fourth fundraise in 18 months, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction, and Spark Capital.

The timing of Groq's $650 million raise in the same month is not coincidental. Enterprises are moving AI workloads from pilot programs to production. Agentic systems multiply the number of model calls per task. Inference capacity has become the critical constraint, and capital is flooding the companies that own that layer.

Baseten and Groq's combined $2.15 billion represented more than 11% of total US venture activity in June. The serving layer, not the training layer, is where the money is moving.

AI captured nearly 60% of all capital

Of the 429 companies funded in June, 200 were AI-focused. They absorbed $11.53 billion, or 59.8% of all national venture capital. Concentration at the top was extreme: 46 companies raised $100 million or more, and the top 10 deals alone accounted for 34.6% of all capital deployed.

Late-stage capital dominated, representing 58.8% of national venture deployment with a $218 million average round size. This reflects a cohort of genuinely large companies raising at scale, not inflated valuations on thin fundamentals.

The Series A market is bifurcated

June saw 98 Series A deals with an average of $37.6 million. That number is misleading. Eight Series A rounds exceeded $100 million, pulling the average upward. The median was $20 million, nearly half the average.

This gap signals two distinct markets operating under the same label. A handful of high-conviction bets are raising at growth-stage sizes. The larger volume of first institutional rounds reflects a more cautious environment. Early-stage activity was healthy in deal count (248 rounds) but modest in capital ($1.83 billion), consistent with a market that has repriced seed and pre-seed rounds downward.

New York's record share, California's continued dominance

California captured 47.9% of national funding, structurally typical but worth examining. The state's four companies in the top 10 (Baseten, AppsFlyer, Supabase, and Groq) accounted for $3.65 billion of the $9.23 billion total. More than half of California's June funding flowed outside the top 10 into a deep bench of mid-sized rounds.

New York's 24.4% share was its highest in at least a year. The city's 84 deals averaged $56.6 million, nearly matching California's per-deal size. NYC startups raised $4.70 billion total.

The rest of the country collected a combined $4.59 billion across 186 companies. The two coasts continue to dominate venture geography even as absolute dollars raised elsewhere are growing.

Beyond AI: energy and space attracted serious capital

Helion Energy's $465 million Series G reflected the same underlying constraint as the inference raises, from a different angle. AI data centers are creating power demand that existing infrastructure cannot meet. Fusion energy is attracting capital as a long-horizon answer to that problem.

Impulse Space's $500 million Series D, while not AI-driven, reflected parallel conviction in physical infrastructure. Capital is increasingly willing to fund hard tech with long timelines.

June's top 10 spanned software, chips, developer tooling, space propulsion, and nuclear energy. The current investment cycle is broader than any single category, even if AI captures the majority of dollars.

The top 10 deals of June 2026

1. Baseten: $1.5B Series F (AI inference platform)
2. AppsFlyer: $1B Series E (mobile attribution)
3. Groq: $650M (custom inference chips)
4. Impulse Space: $500M Series D (space propulsion)
5. Helion Energy: $465M Series G (fusion energy)
6. Suno: $400M (AI music generation)
7. Ionic Digital: $400M (Bitcoin mining)
8. NinjaOne: $400M (IT management)
9. Generalist AI: $400M (AI)
10. Supabase: data not specified (developer platform)

Frequently Asked Questions

How much US venture capital was deployed in June 2026?

US venture capital reached $19.27 billion across 429 companies in June 2026, according to AlleyWatch data.

What percentage of VC funding went to AI startups?

AI-focused startups captured 59.8% of all US venture capital in June 2026, totaling $11.53 billion across 200 companies.

What was the largest funding round in June 2026?

Baseten's $1.5 billion Series F was the largest, valuing the AI inference platform at $13 billion.

How did New York perform in June 2026 VC funding?

New York captured 24.4% of national VC funding, its highest share in at least a year, with 84 deals averaging $56.6 million.

What is the typical Series A round size in the current market?

The median Series A in June 2026 was $20 million, though eight outlier rounds exceeding $100 million pushed the average to $37.6 million.

Source: AlleyWatch