The first quarter of 2026 was unlike any other for venture investment, driven by unprecedented spending on AI compute and frontier labs. Crunchbase data shows investors poured $297 billion into 6,000 startups globally in the quarter, up around 150% quarter over quarter and year over year. That marks an all-time high for global venture investment not approached by any other quarter on record. In fact, startup investment in the first quarter of 2026 alone totaled close to 70% of all venture capita...