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U.S. AI funding jumps 76% in H1 2025

AI powers 64% of startup funding this year

Author

Eddie Yoon
July 15, 2025 • Read time: 6 minutes

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Tuesday.

AI is dominating the startup landscape.

According to PitchBook, U.S. AI startups raised $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, a 76% jump from last year, capturing 64% of all startup funding.

Despite a slowing broader VC market, AI investments are surging. Mega-deals like Thinking Machines Lab’s $2 billion round lead the charge, but the momentum is widespread.

This is a critical moment. AI builders are flush with capital, while others face a widening gap.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

AI motion capture videos will go mega viral.

You're not ready for this. This has the potential to be way bigger than all the AI trends you’ve seen in the last few months (e.g., ASMR, Bigfoot/Yeti, etc.)

On the surface you’ll see the usual suspects: musicals, scene remakes, crossovers, dance battles, and memes coming to life.

But there’s a deeper layer: the second chance.

The actor who never got the role.
The singer finally dueting with their hero.
The daughter who missed her last dance with her father.

💡 Here’s what you should know

💰 The numbers

  • Over $90B in AI and energy investments announced at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit.

    • Google: $25B over two years for AI and data center infrastructure in the mid-Atlantic region, including revitalizing two hydropower facilities.

    • Blackstone: $25B for data centers and natural gas-fired power plants in northeastern Pennsylvania, starting by 2028.

    • Amazon: $20B for AI and cloud computing data centers in Salem Township, Luzerne County, and Falls Township, Bucks County, supporting nuclear energy and job creation.

    • Knighthead Capital Management: $15B to convert the former Homer City Generating Station into the largest natural gas-fired power plant in North America.

    • CoreWeave: $6B for a state-of-the-art AI data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

    • Brookfield: Over $3B in power contracts to support Google's data centers via hydroelectric dams on the Susquehanna River.

    • Constellation: Billions committed to nuclear energy projects to drive economic growth in Pennsylvania (exact figure not specified).

    • Gradiant: Investment (amount unspecified) for lithium production from gas drilling wastewater in northeastern Pennsylvania, starting in 2026.

    • Note: Additional unlisted contributions may account for the total exceeding $90B.

  • MiniMax, valued at $4B, filed for a Hong Kong IPO and aims to debut this year, fueling a race among China’s AI startups backed by Alibaba and Tencent.

  • Oracle announced a $3B investment to expand AI and cloud infrastructure in Germany and the Netherlands over the next five years.

  • Thinking Machines Lab, founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raises $2B led by a16z with NVIDIA and AMD, reaching a $12B valuation for multimodal AI.

  • OpenEvidence landed $210M at a $3.5B valuation, targeting real-time medical search and decision support.

  • Georgia Tech’s $20M Nexus supercomputer, funded by NSF, will deliver over 400 quadrillion operations per second to boost AI research by spring 2026.

  • Felt raised $15M in Series B to power AI-driven geospatial mapping for wildfire, flood, and environmental monitoring.

  • Callidus Legal AI raised $10M to build an AI “co‑pilot” for litigation workflows.

🧠 Thought starters

Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) says their AI agent detected and blocked an imminent exploit before it happened.

It wasn’t just reacting to a known issue…it predicted the threat and shut it down in real time.

How long until tools like this are used by attackers too?

Either way, the cybersecurity game just changed.

More details on Big Sleep here.

Also, check out John Jumper’s 27-min talk on AlphaFold. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner shares how deep learning is revolutionizing protein folding.

😂 Meme of the day

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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