European startups got just $1bn of the €22bn that VCs have invested in generative AI since 2019, according to data from Dealroom.
Unsurprisingly, American companies attracted the bulk of the money. A whopping $20bn — 89% of the global total — went to US startups. Their Asian counterparts raised only $790mn, while the rest of the world combined bagged just $454mn. Dealroom’s data collection ended on July 10, 2023.
US startups have raised 89% of globally GenAI investment ?
In the last decade, venture capital has gone global. More than half of VC investment is now raised outside the US. Not so in Generative AI.
VC x GenAI: the definitive guide, in numbers.https://t.co/BTn4r9DiSK pic.twitter.com/snFXDR8Cg7
— Dealroom.co (@dealroomco) September 11, 2023
The US dominance is partly explained by the rise of OpenAI. The company has been a VC darling since the launch of ChatGPT, which sparked the generative AI boom. Venture capitalists ploughed nearly $12bn into the San Francisco-based company.
OpenAI is also the leading name in Dealroom’s model maker segment, which accounts for over 60% of the total VC funding for GenAI. Other big players in the field include Anthropic, Adept AI, Inflection AI, and Aleph Alpha. The next most funded segments are applications and infrastructure.
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The Bay Area, where OpenAI is based, has become the epicentre of generative AI. VCs funnelled over $18bn into startups in the region. The next leading cities in the sector were New York ($676mn) and Tel Aviv ($433mn).
Outside of the top three, the landscape is a lot brighter for Europe.
London took fourth place in the rankings. GenAI startups in the UK capital raised around $36mn, led by the $101mn investment in Stability AI, which makes the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model. Three European cities rounded out the top 10: Berlin ($141mn), Amsterdam ($238mn), and Stockholm ($100mn).
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