Regardless of what some specialists have characterised as an surroundings more and more hostile to AI R&D, North America continues to obtain the majority of AI enterprise {dollars}, in response to knowledge from funding tracker PitchBook.
Between February and Could of this yr, VCs poured $69.7 billion into North America-based AI and machine studying startups throughout 1,528 offers. That’s in contrast with $6.4 billion that VC corporations invested in European AI ventures throughout 742 offers throughout the identical interval.
Asia-based startups have fared a bit worse than their European counterparts, in response to PitchBook. Between February and Could, VCs invested simply $3 billion in Asia-based AI startups throughout 515 offers.
Beneath President Donald Trump, the U.S. has dramatically cut funding to scientific grants associated to fundamental AI analysis, made it more difficult for international college students specializing in AI to check within the U.S., and threatened to dismantle university-housed AI labs by freezing billions of {dollars} in federal funds. The administration’s commerce insurance policies, in the meantime, together with its retaliatory tariffs, have led to a chaotic market unfavorable for dangerous new AI ventures.
In a post on X in March, AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton referred to as for billionaire Elon Musk, who till just lately suggested Trump’s cost-cutting group, the Division of Authorities Effectivity, to be expelled from the British Royal Society “due to the massive injury he’s doing to scientific establishments within the U.S.”
One may count on that Europe, which has pledged to turn into a world chief in AI, would entice extra enterprise capital in mild of Trump’s controversial insurance policies within the U.S., which have created uncertainty and confusion for founders, buyers, and researchers alike. Furthermore, the EU has dedicated a whole lot of billions of euros to help the event of AI inside its member international locations and already has a variety of profitable, well-funded AI startups in its ranks (see Mistral, H, and Aleph Alpha, to call just a few).
However that anticipated shift in world funding hasn’t come to move. There isn’t any signal of a mass VC exodus to the bloc, or of serious upticks in AI funding abroad — no less than not but.
The identical is true for China, which has spawned high-profile AI startups like DeepSeek and Butterfly Effect — the corporate behind the agentic platform Manus — however the place VC exercise within the nation and the broader Asian area stays comparatively austere. (Export controls impacting the power of sure Asian international locations to acquire AI chips are nearly definitely an element.)
In 2024, North American startups secured 75.6% of all VC AI funding — $106.24 billion. That share has solely elevated this yr. Up to now in 2025, North American AI investments symbolize 86.2% ($79.74 billion) of all VC funding for AI globally.
It paints a considerably stunning image. Even amid mounting political and regulatory headwinds beneath Trump’s second time period, the U.S. stays the undisputed heart for AI capital, that means buyers, fatigued as they might be by the administration’s unpredictability, are nonetheless relying on U.S. innovation to ship the largest returns, no less than for now.
