That big-money deal has folks talking, but a deeper look at the funding numbers for AI in Q1 seem to show a slight pullback from investors, in both the private and public markets, as more questions arise concerning how much large enterprises will continue (or start in some cases) throwing at AI tools. After hitting nearly $44 billion in Q4, total venture funding to AI startups was almost $60 billion in the first quarter of this year. While that seems impressive ' and it is, to a certain extent ' it's hard to ignore the fact that two-thirds of that amount is directly related to one company and its massive raise led by SoftBank. If we put that to the side, AI startups in Q1 raised less than half of what was doled out in Q4 last year, getting about $19.6 billion, per Crunchbase data. The biggest deal ' aside from OpenAI's ' of the quarter saw Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude, raise a $3.5 billion funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that valued it at...
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