What’s funding like in the edge AI market right now?

All funding deals in the edge AI market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Edge AI Market.

Is Edge AI funding actually healthier today?

Edge AI funding is healthier today because many more companies are raising money, although the market has also become far more top-heavy in dollars.

We counted 72 financings over the latest 12 months, up from 29 during the previous 12-month period. The number of funded companies moved almost exactly the same way, from 28 to 71. This is a much broader market than it was one year ago.

The improvement also survives the megaround test. Capital from deals below $50 million more than doubled, while the median financing increased from $10.55 million to $12.5 million. New-company formation strengthened too, with first financings rising sharply.

The obvious complication is the $22.57 billion headline. Waymo alone raised $16 billion, and several other physical-AI companies closed exceptionally large rounds. Capital has become much more concentrated even as access to funding has widened.

So the market is stronger and more mature today, but the biggest winners are absorbing an extraordinary amount of money.

Metric	Latest 12M	Previous 12M	Change
Deals	72	29	+148%
Unique funded companies	71	28	+154%
Reported capital	$22.57B+	$581.4M+	+3,782%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$733.3M	$345.4M	+112%
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	$896.5M	~$481.4M	~+86%
Median round	$12.5M	$10.55M	+18%
Average disclosed round	$317.9M	$20.0M	+1,486%
First-financing share	25.0%	17.2%	+7.8 pp
Follow-on share	75.0%	79.3%	-4.3 pp
Early-stage deal share	66.7%	65.5%	+1.1 pp
Later-stage deal share	27.8%	13.8%	+14.0 pp

Is the Edge AI boom real without Waymo?

Yes. Edge AI funding still looks much stronger once Waymo's $16 billion round and the other megarounds are stripped out.

Removing every financing above $50 million leaves $733.3 million of capital, versus $345.4 million one year earlier. That is a 112% increase. Using a $100 million cutoff produces roughly 86% growth.

The monthly numbers point the same way. The median rolling month generated about $91.8 million of funding, compared with $42.6 million previously. Deal flow averaged six transactions per month instead of 2.4.

The extreme capital totals are much less representative. One rolling month produced roughly $18.1 billion, which pushed average monthly capital to $1.88 billion. The gap between a $91.8 million median and a $1.88 billion average shows how distorted the headline has become.

Concentration is also far higher these days. The largest deal represents about 71% of current-period capital, and the top three account for roughly 82%.

The underlying funding market has roughly doubled on several cleaner measures. The megarounds added another layer on top of that growth.

Are more Edge AI startups actually getting funded now?

Yes. Edge AI funding is reaching a much wider set of companies now.

As seen above, we found 71 funded companies compared with 28 in the previous period. There were only 72 deals in total, so repeated fundraising inside the same 12-month window was exceptionally rare.

That changes how we should read the boom. If the same ten companies were repeatedly raising larger rounds, we would have a much narrower market. Instead, dozens of additional businesses entered the funded cohort.

New-company formation also improved. First financings increased from five to 18, while their share of all transactions rose from 17.2% to 25%.

The expansion reaches well beyond one type of Edge AI. Industrial systems, local inference, autonomous vehicles and several smaller edge applications all added funded companies. Even categories that lost market share sometimes recorded more deals in absolute terms because the whole market grew so quickly.

Are investors funding new Edge AI startups or just backing the same winners?

Edge AI investors are opening the door to more newcomers, then writing much bigger checks once a company has proved itself.

The median first financing fell from $8 million to about $3.28 million. In other words, more new companies are getting funded, but their initial checks are smaller than they were a year ago.

Follow-ons moved in the opposite direction. Their median increased from $12 million to $18 million.

That creates a fairly clear funding ladder. Investors can make smaller bets on a wider group of new Edge AI companies and increase their exposure later when one of those businesses has customers, deployments, production capacity or some other evidence that the technology works outside a lab.

We can see the upper end of that pattern in companies such as Skild AI, Apptronik, Waabi and Wayve. Their later financings are measured in hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

For a new startup, getting into the funding market has become easier in aggregate. Reaching the stage where investors commit very large amounts is still a much more selective game.

Are Edge AI rounds really getting bigger?

For the typical Edge AI company, rounds are only moderately bigger; the huge change is the sudden appearance of far more $100 million-plus financings.

The median increased 18% to $12.5 million. That is a healthy move, but nothing like the 15-fold jump in the average disclosed round.

The reason is visible at the top of the distribution. We counted 14 financings of at least $100 million in the latest period, compared with just one previously. These rounds now represent almost one-fifth of transactions.

Small deals have not disappeared. Financings below $20 million still make up 62.5% of all deals.

The market currently looks more like a barbell: plenty of smaller Seed and Series A rounds at one end, alongside a much larger group of enormous scale-up financings at the other. The $20 million to $100 million middle has grown much less quickly.

Is Edge AI finally moving from experiments to real scale?

Edge AI now has a genuine scale-up market alongside a very active early-stage market.

Seed and Series A financings increased from 19 to 48. Early-stage deals still account for roughly two-thirds of the market, almost exactly the same share as one year earlier.

At the same time, Series B and later-stage or growth financings increased from four to 20. Later-stage share consequently doubled.

That combination is more interesting than a simple shift toward older companies. Edge AI is still creating startups while a growing group of existing businesses reaches the point where much larger rounds make sense.

Skild AI's $1.4 billion Series C is an obvious example. Apptronik added a $520 million financing extension. Waabi closed a $750 million Series C, and Wayve raised $1.2 billion at Series D.

Those are scale-up rounds from companies trying to turn physical AI into deployed infrastructure, vehicles or machines. They now sit on top of an early-stage market that is also bigger than before.

Where is Edge AI funding moving right now?

Industrial Edge AI and Vehicle Edge AI are attracting the strongest funding momentum right now.

Industrial Edge AI looks particularly solid because several indicators improved together. Deals increased from 11 to 26, its median financing rose from $10.55 million to $26 million, and reported capital reached roughly $3.33 billion.

The group is also broad. Skild AI is developing a general-purpose robotics model, Apptronik builds humanoid robots, Bedrock Robotics works on autonomous construction equipment, AI² Robotics develops embodied AI systems in China, and Algorized is building edge-native perception for industrial machines.

Vehicle Edge AI made an even bigger jump in capital, helped heavily by autonomous driving. Deals went from one to nine, and the median financing reached $63.2 million.

On Prem AI expanded in a different way. We found 17 deals versus four previously, but the median round fell. Edge Vision Systems grew more slowly than the wider market, while Edge AI Cameras added deals but saw typical round size shrink sharply.

Recent industry evidence fits the funding pattern. NVIDIA has been pushing its physical-AI stack further into production environments, while Silicon Valley Bank's 2026 physical-AI research found much heavier venture participation in hardware than a few years ago.

Category	Previous deals	Latest deals	Previous median	Latest median	What changed
Industrial Edge AI	11	26	$10.55M	$26M	More companies and larger rounds
On Prem AI	4	17	$8.55M	$5.72M	Much broader, smaller typical checks
Edge Vision Systems	10	13	$9.85M	$11.3M	Grew, but slower than the market
Vehicle Edge AI	1	9	$12.8M	$63.2M	Major acceleration
Edge AI Cameras	3	5	$31M	$8M	More deals, lower capital intensity
Telecom Edge AI	0	2	N/A	Small sample	New funding pocket
All Edge AI	29	72	$10.55M	$12.5M	Much broader overall

Is autonomous-driving Edge AI really booming?

Autonomous-driving Edge AI is genuinely booming today, although Waymo makes the dollar increase look much more extreme than the wider category really is.

Vehicle Edge AI went from one financing to nine, and its median round increased from $12.8 million to $63.2 million. That alone tells us the category changed well beyond a single transaction.

Waymo is still in a different league. Its $16 billion financing is worth more than twice all other current-period Edge AI funding combined.

But there is a real cohort behind it. Wayve closed a $1.2 billion Series D. Waabi raised $750 million. Turing raised about $63.2 million in Japan, while several Chinese autonomous-driving and robotics companies also attracted large rounds.

The companies are raising against increasingly concrete commercial plans. Waymo tied its funding to a major expansion of its ride-hailing footprint. Wayve is moving toward commercial robotaxi trials and deployment in consumer vehicles. Waabi is pushing autonomous trucking toward commercialization while expanding into robotaxis.

For now, Waymo dominates the dollars, but the autonomous-driving funding revival clearly extends beyond Waymo.

Is On Prem AI actually getting stronger?

On Prem AI is getting much broader today, although investors are putting less money into the typical round.

Deal count increased from four to 17, pushing On Prem AI from 13.8% to 23.6% of all Edge AI financings. Reported capital also rose from $30.6 million to $435.6 million.

The median tells a less exuberant story. It dropped from $8.55 million to $5.72 million.

Axelera AI explains a meaningful part of the gap between those two pictures. The company raised more than $250 million as it expanded its edge-inference hardware business. At the smaller end, Clipto raised $15 million, WATER raised $2.5 million, and Tryll raised $600,000.

This currently looks like a category with far more experimentation and product variety, rather than one where every startup suddenly commands a bigger valuation or financing.

Local AI is finding more places to live: industrial hardware, consumer devices, voice processing, gaming, media search and other environments where sending every inference to a centralized cloud is unattractive or impossible.

Is Edge AI funding becoming more global?

Edge AI deal flow is much more global now, even though North America still dominates the money.

North America's share of deals fell from 51.7% to 30.6%. Its actual number of financings increased, but Europe and Asia expanded much faster.

Europe now represents 38.9% of deals, up from 27.6%. Asia-Pacific increased to 26.4%, while the Middle East appeared as a meaningful, if still small, part of the dataset.

The country-level changes are even more visible. Switzerland recorded eight current-period financings versus one previously. The United Kingdom went from one to seven, China from two to seven, India from two to six and South Korea from zero to four.

Capital has globalized much less. North America still captures about 86% of funding because many of the biggest autonomy and robotics rounds are concentrated there.

Europe's experience captures the broader pattern well: far more funded companies, but only a modest change in its share of global Edge AI dollars.

Geography	Previous period	Latest period	What changed
North America deal share	51.7%	30.6%	Lost share despite more deals
Europe deal share	27.6%	38.9%	Strong breadth expansion
Asia-Pacific deal share	20.7%	26.4%	More companies and larger rounds
Middle East deal share	0%	4.2%	New activity
United States deals	15	19	Grew slower than the world
China deals	2	7	Strong expansion
United Kingdom deals	1	7	Strong expansion
Switzerland deals	1	8	Strong expansion
India deals	2	6	Strong expansion
South Korea deals	0	4	New current-period cluster

Are more investors showing up in Edge AI now?

A lot more investors are showing up in Edge AI, rather than the same small club simply doing more deals.

Using named lead and strategic investors as the comparable field, we counted 128 unique investor names in the latest period versus 44 previously.

Unique named leads rose from 34 to 89. Investors that appeared more than once increased from six to 18.

Repeated leadership remained uncommon, though. Only two named investors appeared more than once as lead investors in each period.

That mix is useful. The market has more recurring investors, which we would expect as funding activity expands, but participation has broadened at roughly the same time as the startup population.

Names such as NVentures, Google, Mercedes-Benz, Dell Technologies Capital and Aramco Ventures appear around several deals, yet there is no small group controlling most funding events.

Capital concentration and investor concentration have moved in very different directions.

Are corporate investors becoming more important in Edge AI?

Corporate investors are playing a bigger role in Edge AI these days, especially once companies reach industrial deployment.

Strategic investors participated in 41.7% of current deals, up from 34.5%. The bigger change is the size of the rounds they are joining: the median strategic-backed financing increased from about $12.25 million to $50 million.

Their stage profile has moved too. The earlier period was heavily concentrated around Seed and Series A. Current strategic participation stretches much further into Series B, Series C and growth financing.

Apptronik is a good example. Google and Mercedes-Benz returned for its $520 million extension, while John Deere joined as a new strategic investor. Skild AI's $1.4 billion Series C brought in companies including LG and Schneider Electric alongside NVentures. Waabi's round included Uber, NVentures and Volvo Group Venture Capital.

Those combinations make sense commercially. Automakers, industrial companies, compute providers and logistics platforms have something to gain if these technologies make it into real production environments.

Corporate money currently looks less like occasional venture experimentation and more closely connected to how physical-AI companies intend to scale.

Strategic-investor measure	Previous 12M	Latest 12M
Strategic-backed deals	10	30
Strategic participation rate	34.5%	41.7%
Median strategic-backed round	~$12.25M	$50M
Seed deals with strategic backing	4	4
Series A deals with strategic backing	4	10
Series B deals with strategic backing	Limited	6
Series C deals with strategic backing	Limited	5
Growth Equity deals with strategic backing	Limited	3

Are Edge AI investors getting more selective?

Edge AI investors look more selective about where they put very large checks, but there is little evidence that getting any funding has become harder.

Company age barely changed. The median funded company was four years old in both periods, and the typical follow-on company actually became slightly younger.

At the entry level, the market is funding more first-time companies with smaller checks. That looks more like controlled experimentation than a retreat from risk.

The stronger filtering appears later. Follow-on rounds have become larger, strategic investors are participating further along the maturity curve, and the biggest financings increasingly belong to companies that can point to deployment or commercialization plans.

We should be careful with fundraising speed. Only five current follow-ons and three previous-period follow-ons have enough prior-round history in our research to compare timing properly. Those observations suggest companies may be taking longer to return to market, but the sample is far too small to treat that as a market trend.

We also cannot calculate a credible market-wide "milestone requirement" because companies disclose progress in inconsistent ways. The evidence is much stronger for selectivity at the large-round end than for a general tightening across all Edge AI startups.

What are Edge AI companies raising money for now?

At the top end, Edge AI funding is increasingly paying for deployment, production and geographic expansion.

Waymo linked its $16 billion financing to commercial growth across many more cities. Wayve is funding global deployment of its autonomous-driving platform. Waabi plans to accelerate autonomous-trucking commercialization and expand into robotaxis. Apptronik says its capital will help scale production and deployment of Apollo humanoid robots.

The same direction appears in smaller industrial deals. Algorized said its $13 million Series A would support commercial expansion and deployment of its edge-native perception technology with industrial customers. Ubotica raised $11 million to expand an orbital-AI platform that already runs inference aboard satellites.

This is one of the clearest signs that part of the Edge AI market is growing up. Investors are increasingly financing the difficult work that comes after a technology has been demonstrated: manufacturing it, integrating it, putting it in customer environments and supporting it at scale.

We cannot put a reliable percentage on that shift because use-of-funds information is not consistently disclosed across every financing. The direction is much clearer among the large rounds than it is across the full dataset.

What would a lazy headline get wrong about Edge AI funding?

A lazy headline would say Edge AI funding exploded almost 39-fold and leave it there.

The calculation is technically correct. Reported capital rose from more than $581 million to more than $22.57 billion.

It is also a terrible description of what happened to the typical company.

As we saw previously, the biggest transaction alone contributes about 71% of current capital, and the top three contribute more than four-fifths. Average round size has become almost useless as a description of an ordinary financing.

A much better summary is that the broad Edge AI funding market roughly doubled on several underlying measures while a new class of physical-AI scale-ups began raising hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

Those two changes happened at the same time. Combining them into one headline number hides the most interesting part of the story.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

The biggest change is breadth. Edge AI currently has far more funded companies, more first financings and a much wider investor pool. The market has grown beyond a small collection of specialized startups.

The second change is concentration. The ecosystem has become broader while funding dollars have become much more dependent on a few autonomous-driving and industrial-robotics companies. Looking only at total capital would make the improvement appear far larger than it is for a normal startup.

The funding ladder has also become clearer. More companies can attract relatively small initial rounds, while successful follow-on companies can now raise much larger amounts. Investors seem comfortable making more early bets and then concentrating capital heavily behind businesses that show real progress.

Physical AI is currently driving much of that change. Industrial robotics and autonomous vehicles gained both companies and larger rounds, while On Prem AI expanded mainly through a much bigger population of smaller financings.

The final change is what the largest rounds are paying for. These days, many of the companies attracting serious capital are talking about production, deployment, fleets, customer rollout and geographic expansion. Edge AI funding is increasingly following companies out of the lab and into the physical world.