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

In our edge AI market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
Edge AI funding is much healthier right now: far more companies are raising money, typical rounds are modestly larger, and a genuine scale-up market has emerged, even though headline dollars are wildly distorted by a handful of huge physical-AI financings.
The broadening is the biggest change. We counted 72 financings and 71 funded companies in the latest 12 months, versus 29 deals and 28 companies one year earlier, so this is not simply the same small group raising more capital.
The boom survives the Waymo test. Capital from rounds below $50 million more than doubled to $733.3 million, while the median round rose 18% to $12.5 million, which shows that the underlying market improved even before the megarounds are added back.
At the same time, the headline $22.57 billion figure badly overstates what happened to a normal startup. Waymo alone accounts for about 71% of current-period capital, and the top three deals absorb roughly 82%.
The market has developed a clearer funding ladder. First financings rose from five to 18 even as their median size fell to about $3.28 million, while the median follow-on increased from $12 million to $18 million.
That means investors are making more small entry bets and then concentrating much larger checks behind companies that have shown deployment, commercialization or production progress. The pattern is especially visible in robotics and autonomous vehicles.
Edge AI is not simply aging into a later-stage market. Seed and Series A deals rose from 19 to 48 and still represent about two-thirds of activity, while Series B and later-stage or growth financings climbed from four to 20.
Industrial Edge AI and Vehicle Edge AI are where momentum is strongest today. Industrial deals rose from 11 to 26 with a $26 million median, while Vehicle Edge AI went from one financing to nine and reached a $63.2 million median.
The market is also much more global by deal count. North America still captures most of the capital, but Europe and Asia-Pacific expanded much faster in funded-company terms, with particularly visible increases in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, China, India and South Korea.
Investor participation broadened too. We counted 128 unique named investors versus 44 previously, while strategic investors appeared in 41.7% of current deals and increasingly joined Series B, Series C and growth rounds rather than staying near the seed stage.
The practical takeaway is that Edge AI funding is moving out of a narrow experimental phase. More companies can get financed, and the largest checks are increasingly tied to production, deployment, fleets, customer rollout and geographic expansion rather than just proving that the underlying technology works.

This market map, featured in our edge AI market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the edge AI market
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.
| Company | Category | Date | Stage | Deal size | What they do | Region | Lead investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rapta Inc. | Industrial Edge AI | September 2026 | Unknown | $10.8M | Provides local and on-prem manufacturing AI using cameras and sensors for real-time workstation inspection, guidance and quality intelligence. | North America | Not disclosed |
| Synclair Vision AB | Edge Vision Systems | September 2026 | Seed | ≈$0.5M | Builds onboard computer-vision and autonomy systems that let drones and other unmanned platforms detect, track, navigate and make decisions locally. | Europe | Not disclosed |
| Jaipur Robotics AG | Industrial Edge AI | September 2026 | Seed | ≈$5M | Runs on-site computer vision and AI on industrial edge systems to monitor waste streams and automate waste-to-energy, cement and biomass plants. | Europe | EquityPitcher Ventures; High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) |
| Navana.ai | On Prem AI | September 2026 | Series A | ≈$4.2M | Provides multilingual enterprise voice-AI agents and speech models designed to run on customers' on-prem infrastructure, particularly for regulated financial institutions. | Asia-Pacific | Ronnie Screwvala |
| AITAN | Vehicle Edge AI | September 2026 | Series A | $41M | Builds edge-AI autonomy, command-and-control and model-deployment systems for coordinated military drones and unmanned vehicles. | Middle East | Deep33; Dell Technologies Capital |
| Hazen.ai | Edge AI Cameras | September 2026 | Series A | $8M | Builds edge-AI traffic and road-safety cameras that process computer vision locally for real-time incident and risk analytics. | Middle East | Impact46 |
| Clipto | On Prem AI | August 2026 | Seed | $15M | Builds an AI search and memory layer that indexes and searches users' video, audio, image and document libraries entirely on their own devices. | North America | Not disclosed |
| EdgeVerse India Private Limited | Vehicle Edge AI | August 2026 | Seed | ≈$0.3M | Develops edge-native camera-and-radar perception software and hardware for real-time rider-assistance and vehicle safety systems. | Asia-Pacific | GVFL |
| WATER | On Prem AI | August 2026 | Seed | $2.5M | Builds adaptive chairs and beds whose embedded sensing and AI models interpret human biomechanics and adjust the physical surface in real time. | Asia-Pacific | Endiya Partners |
| Edgify | Industrial Edge AI | August 2026 | Series A | $9M | Provides edge MLOps infrastructure that trains, deploys and orchestrates AI models directly across in-store cameras, checkouts, scales and other local devices. | Europe | Rank Ventures; Mangrove Capital Partners |
| RIME | Industrial Edge AI | August 2026 | Seed | >$2M | Provides an AIoT platform that deploys autonomous AI agents directly on cameras and sensors at retail and other operational sites for local real-time decisions. | Middle East | SEEDRA Ventures |
| Luffy AI | Industrial Edge AI | July 2026 | Series A | ≈$10.8M | Develops neuroplastic AI controllers that run and adapt locally in real time to control industrial motors and other physical systems. | Europe | BGF |
| Mowito | Industrial Edge AI | July 2026 | Seed | $3M | Builds physical-AI foundation models that run on standard industrial robot arms and learn manufacturing tasks from demonstrations. | Asia-Pacific | Version One Ventures |
| Whispp | On Prem AI | July 2026 | Unknown | ≈$5.7M | Develops real-time voice-reconstruction AI that runs directly on smartphones and PCs to transform impaired or whispered speech into a natural voice. | Europe | LUMO Labs |
| Luxonis | Edge Vision Systems | July 2026 | Series A | $14M | Builds OAK spatial-AI cameras and DepthAI software combining visual sensors with on-device inference and depth processing for robots and automated systems. | North America | Denali Growth Partners |
| Almetra | Edge Vision Systems | June 2026 | Series A | $19M | Uses privacy-preserving factory video and locally processed computer vision to turn shop-floor activity into real-time operational intelligence. | Europe | blisce/ |
| Ubotica Technologies | Edge Vision Systems | June 2026 | Series A | $11M | Runs Earth-observation AI models aboard satellites so imagery is interpreted and acted on in orbit before downlink. | Europe | Act Venture Capital; Greencode Ventures |
| Tryll | On Prem AI | June 2026 | Seed | $0.6M | Builds an on-device AI engine that runs language, speech and vision models directly on players' GPUs for offline AI-native games. | North America | Early Game Ventures |
| Maneva | Edge Vision Systems | June 2026 | Series A | $27M | Runs deep-learning video-to-action agents on NVIDIA edge devices connected to existing factory cameras for inspection, safety and line control. | North America | U.S. Venture Partners |
| Kodesage | On Prem AI | June 2026 | Seed | $6.6M | Provides an on-premise and air-gapped AI platform for understanding, documenting and modernizing legacy enterprise software. | Europe | VentureFriends |
| Slamcore | Edge Vision Systems | May 2026 | Series B | $14M | Provides visual-spatial intelligence software and stereo-camera AI that lets industrial vehicles localize, track movement and detect hazards in real time. | Europe | ROKStar Ventures |
| PerPlant | Edge AI Cameras | May 2026 | Seed | ≈$1.2M | Builds tractor-mounted edge-AI camera sensors that classify crops and field conditions locally in real time to guide precision spraying. | Europe | Jytte Rosenmaj; Kræn Østergaard Nielsen |
| Hellbender | Edge AI Cameras | May 2026 | Seed | $12.5M | Designs and manufactures on-device AI camera platforms that run perception, reasoning and computer vision directly at the edge. | North America | Magarac Venture Partners; Veredas Partners |
| Shyld AI | Edge Vision Systems | May 2026 | Seed | $13.4M | Builds edge-native multimodal physical-AI devices that perceive hospital-room activity locally and automate clinical workflows and disinfection. | North America | Aulis Capital |
| HRDWYR | Industrial Edge AI | May 2026 | Series A | $13M | Designs AI-native system-on-chip processors for low-power, low-latency inference in embedded and physical-AI edge devices. | Asia-Pacific | Ideaspring Capital |
| Mosaic SoC | Edge Vision Systems | April 2026 | Seed | $3.8M | Designs ultra-low-power perception chips for real-time vision and spatial-AI inference in wearables and other battery-constrained devices. | Europe | Founderful |
| Locai | On Prem AI | April 2026 | Seed | $1.4M | Provides infrastructure for moving AI inference from cloud APIs onto users' own devices and locally controlled hardware. | Europe | Fuel Ventures |
| Sapient Perception ApS | Edge Vision Systems | April 2026 | Seed | $2.4M | Builds software-defined UAV cameras and edge-AI perception software that process imagery locally for autonomous and mission-critical operations. | Europe | Balnord; FORWARD.one |
| Mobilint | On Prem AI | April 2026 | Series C | $46.4M | Designs low-power NPUs, accelerator cards and edge boxes for running AI models locally on devices and on-premise systems. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| ORAN Development Company, LLC | Telecom Edge AI | March 2026 | Series A | $45M | Builds an AI-native radio-access-network platform combining communications, sensing and distributed edge intelligence at telecom sites. | North America | Booz Allen; Cisco Investments; Nokia; NVIDIA; AT&T; MTN; Telecom Italia |
| VectorWave Corporation | Telecom Edge AI | March 2026 | Seed | $2.5M | Develops neuromorphic analog chips that perform AI inference directly on raw RF signals at the wireless edge. | North America | J2 Ventures; Coalition Ventures |
| Captur | Edge Vision Systems | March 2026 | Seed | $6M | Provides an on-device visual-AI SDK that validates user-submitted mobile photos locally and in real time. | Europe | Rally Ventures |
| Surveily | Edge Vision Systems | March 2026 | Series A | $2.9M | Runs computer-vision models locally on existing industrial CCTV to detect workplace hazards and safety violations in real time. | Europe | Momenta |
| RLWRLD | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Seed | $26M | Develops robotics foundation models trained on real industrial data to give robots perception, dexterity and autonomous manipulation capabilities. | Asia-Pacific | Headline Asia; Z Venture Capital |
| Wayve | Vehicle Edge AI | February 2026 | Series D+ | $1200M | Develops embodied-AI autonomous-driving software that performs real-time perception and driving decisions onboard vehicles. | Europe | Eclipse; Balderton Capital; SoftBank Vision Fund 2 |
| X Square Robot | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Unknown | Not Disclosed | Builds general embodied-AI foundation models and robots that perceive, reason and act autonomously in real-world environments. | Asia-Pacific | SAIC Capital; CICC-SAIC Fund |
| Axelera AI | On Prem AI | February 2026 | Series C | >$250M | Develops AI accelerator hardware and software for high-performance neural-network inference on edge devices and local systems. | Europe | Innovation Industries |
| AI² Robotics | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series B | $173M | Builds embodied foundation models and general-purpose robots that perform autonomous tasks across industrial and service environments. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Mirai | On Prem AI | February 2026 | Seed | $10M | Builds an inference engine and SDK for running and optimizing AI models directly on phones, laptops and other consumer devices. | Europe | Uncork Capital |
| Barbara | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Growth Equity | $5.3M | Provides an industrial edge-AI platform for deploying and managing AI applications directly on distributed industrial infrastructure. | Europe | Aramco Ventures |
| Apptronik | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series A | $520M | Develops AI-powered humanoid robots that autonomously perceive and execute tasks in manufacturing, logistics and other physical environments. | North America | Google; Mercedes-Benz; B Capital |
| Galaxea AI | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series B | $144M | Develops embodied-AI foundation models and autonomous humanoid robots for real-world industrial and service tasks. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Algorized | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series A | $13M | Builds edge-native AI foundation models that turn radar, UWB and wireless sensors into real-time human-awareness systems for robots and machines. | Europe | Run Ventures |
| Trener Robotics | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series A | $32M | Develops Physical AI software that gives industrial robots learned skills, adaptive control and autonomous task execution. | North America | Engine Ventures; IAG Capital Partners |
| Gather AI | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series B | $40M | Uses autonomous drones and computer vision to inspect and digitize warehouse inventory in real time. | North America | Smith Point Capital Management |
| Bedrock Robotics | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series B | $270M | Develops autonomous retrofit systems that enable excavators, bulldozers and other construction machinery to operate without a driver. | North America | CapitalG; Valor Atreides AI Fund |
| LimX Dynamics | Industrial Edge AI | February 2026 | Series B | $200M | Develops full-stack humanoid and legged robots using embodied-AI models, autonomous motion control and on-robot intelligence. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Waymo | Vehicle Edge AI | February 2026 | Growth Equity | $16000M | Develops the Waymo Driver autonomous-driving stack for fully driverless passenger vehicles operating with real-time onboard perception and decision-making. | North America | Dragoneer Investment Group; DST Global; Sequoia Capital |
| RobCo | Industrial Edge AI | January 2026 | Series C | $100M | Builds autonomous industrial robots combining modular hardware with perception, motion planning and self-learning Physical AI software. | Europe | Lightspeed Venture Partners; Lingotto Innovation |
| Waabi | Vehicle Edge AI | January 2026 | Series C | $750M | Develops an AI-first autonomous-driving system that performs real-time perception, prediction and driving on trucks and passenger vehicles. | North America | Khosla Ventures; G2 Venture Partners |
| Helin | Industrial Edge AI | January 2026 | Growth Equity | $11.8M | Provides an industrial edge-intelligence platform that runs AI and operational applications locally on remote industrial assets. | Europe | FORWARD.one |
| Sense Semiconductor | On Prem AI | January 2026 | Seed | $2.8M | Develops edge-AI semiconductor platforms for locally processing sensor and neural-network workloads in embedded systems. | Asia-Pacific | Piper Serica |
| Luna Systems | Edge AI Cameras | January 2026 | Seed | $1.7M | Builds AI camera systems that perform real-time road-risk detection on bicycles and powered two-wheelers. | Europe | Fundracer Capital; EIT Urban Mobility |
| Mytra | Industrial Edge AI | January 2026 | Series C | $120M | Builds AI-driven autonomous robots and software that move and store goods inside warehouses and industrial facilities. | North America | Avenir Growth |
| Quadric | On Prem AI | January 2026 | Series C | $30M | Develops unified edge-AI processor IP for running neural-network inference and conventional code on embedded devices. | North America | ACCELERATE Fund |
| Skild AI | Industrial Edge AI | January 2026 | Series C | $1400M | Builds a general-purpose robotic foundation model designed to control different robot bodies and tasks in real-world environments. | North America | SoftBank Group |
| Applied Brain Research | On Prem AI | January 2026 | Seed | $3.6M | Develops ultra-low-power neural-network software for real-time voice AI inference directly on embedded devices. | North America | Two Small Fish Ventures |
| X Square Robot | Industrial Edge AI | January 2026 | Series A | $140M | Builds general embodied-AI foundation models and robots that perceive, reason and act autonomously in real-world environments. | Asia-Pacific | ByteDance; HongShan |
| Nullmax (Cayman) Limited | Vehicle Edge AI | December 2025 | Series C | $10M | Develops full-stack in-vehicle ADAS and autonomous-driving vision/AI systems for production vehicles. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Prem AI | On Prem AI | December 2025 | Unknown | $5.5M | Builds private and sovereign AI infrastructure for running, customizing and fine-tuning models on customer-owned on-premise or private compute. | Europe | Not disclosed |
| Mach | Vehicle Edge AI | December 2025 | Seed | $7M | Supplies full-stack off-highway vehicle autonomy with edge-AI perception and onboard control computers for OEMs in agriculture, defense and landcare. | North America | The Venture Collective |
| Gravis Robotics | Industrial Edge AI | November 2025 | Series A | $23M | Builds retrofit autonomy kits with onboard compute, sensors, vision and AI that turn excavators and other earthmoving machines into autonomous robots. | Europe | IQ Capital; Zacua Ventures |
| Cerrion AG | Edge Vision Systems | November 2025 | Series A | $18M | Deploys factory video-AI agents on local edge servers to detect production, quality and safety problems and trigger real-time interventions. | Europe | Creandum |
| Peekaboo Labs | On Prem AI | November 2025 | Seed | $0.3M | Builds an on-device AI optimizer that converts and tunes computer-vision and language models for local inference on target phones, PCs and robots. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Shenzhen Zhuoyu Technology Co., Ltd. | Vehicle Edge AI | November 2025 | Growth Equity | >$507M | Supplies in-vehicle ADAS systems, controllers and end-to-end perception/planning software executing on automotive AI compute. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Flexion | Industrial Edge AI | November 2025 | Series A | $50M | Builds a robotics autonomy stack whose latency-critical perception and whole-body control run on the robot's onboard compute. | Europe | Not disclosed |
| Turing Inc. | Vehicle Edge AI | November 2025 | Series A | $63.2M | Develops end-to-end autonomous-driving AI and in-vehicle compute mapping camera inputs directly to perception, planning and vehicle control. | Asia-Pacific | JIC Venture Growth Investments; Global Brain |
| Forgis AG | Industrial Edge AI | November 2025 | Seed | $4.5M | Develops edge-native AI software connecting PLCs, robots and industrial machines so production logic can adapt autonomously in real time. | Europe | redalpine |
| Olares | On Prem AI | November 2025 | Series A | $45M | Builds personal AI-cloud hardware and software for running advanced models locally with user-owned data. | Asia-Pacific | SIG |
| Hearvana AI | On Prem AI | November 2025 | Seed | $6M | Develops ultralow-latency on-device auditory AI that augments and interprets sound in real time for hearables, phones and assistants. | North America | Point72 Ventures; SCB 10X |
| Sunflower Labs | Edge AI Cameras | November 2025 | Series B | $16M | Builds autonomous AI security drones whose local Hive base station processes and analyzes camera and sensor feeds on embedded compute. | North America | Sequoia Capital |
| CLE Inc. (now CLE Robotics) | Edge Vision Systems | November 2025 | Series A | $11.3M | Develops integrated 3D machine-vision cameras and AI vision software/industrial PCs for real-time robot guidance and factory inspection. | Asia-Pacific | SBVA |
| EDGX | Edge Vision Systems | August 2025 | Seed | ≈$2.7M | Builds onboard edge-AI computers and software that process satellite sensor data directly in orbit. | Europe | imec.istart Future Fund; Flanders Future Tech Fund |
| Tristar AI | Edge Vision Systems | August 2025 | Seed | $2.7M | Provides factory-floor computer vision using proprietary models, standard cameras and GPU edge units for sub-150ms defect and process monitoring without cloud connectivity. | North America | Blackhorn Ventures |
| SiMa.ai | Industrial Edge AI | August 2025 | Unknown | $85M | Builds purpose-built ML system-on-chips and software for power-efficient AI inference in robots, vehicles, industrial systems and vision devices. | North America | Maverick Capital |
| Lumana | Edge AI Cameras | July 2025 | Series A | $40M | Provides AI video-security software and local GPU appliances that process camera feeds and generate real-time detections and alerts on-site. | North America | Wing Venture Capital |
| Netrasemi | Industrial Edge AI | July 2025 | Series A | $12.5M | Designs power-efficient edge-AI SoCs and software for on-device inference in surveillance, industrial robotics, IoT and smart infrastructure. | Asia-Pacific | Zoho Corporation; Unicorn India Ventures |
| BrightAI | Industrial Edge AI | July 2025 | Series A | $51M | Deploys specialized sensors, drones and on-device AI models that locally monitor and diagnose critical physical infrastructure. | North America | Khosla Ventures; Inspired Capital |
| 36ZERO Vision | Edge Vision Systems | July 2025 | Unknown | ≈$4.2M | Provides AI visual-inspection software whose trained models run locally on industrial PCs for real-time manufacturing defect detection. | Europe | JOIN Capital; Bayern Kapital; Vanagon Ventures |
| Overwatch Imaging | Edge Vision Systems | July 2025 | Series A | $6M | Builds airborne imaging sensors and autonomy software that run proprietary neural-net vision models on onboard GPU processors for real-time intelligence and surveillance. | North America | Squadra Ventures |
| TASS Vision | Edge AI Cameras | July 2025 | Seed | ≈$1.5M | Builds retail analytics on proprietary edge-AI cameras that process customer journeys and shelf interactions entirely on-device. | Asia-Pacific | Purple Ventures |
| RealSense | Edge Vision Systems | July 2025 | Series A | $50M | Develops depth cameras and embedded computer-vision systems for real-time machine perception in robots, biometric systems and industrial devices. | North America | Not disclosed |
| Embedl AB | Industrial Edge AI | June 2025 | Seed | $6.3M | Provides software that optimizes deep-learning models for efficient inference on embedded and edge hardware used in automotive, robotics and defense. | Europe | Fairpoint Capital; SEB Greentech VC; Spintop Ventures |
| Compound Eye Inc. | Vehicle Edge AI | May 2025 | Series B | $12.8M | Develops real-time AI and computer-vision perception software running on embedded computers for autonomous vehicles and machines. | North America | Not disclosed |
| Glass Imaging | Edge Vision Systems | May 2025 | Series A | $20M | Develops AI imaging software that performs computational image enhancement directly on camera platforms including smartphones, drones and wearables. | North America | Insight Partners |
| Brainyware | On Prem AI | May 2025 | Seed | $1.5M | Provides private generative AI systems combining local hardware and proprietary software for inference inside customer premises. | Europe | Not disclosed |
| EdgeRunner AI | On Prem AI | May 2025 | Series A | $12M | Develops air-gapped, domain-specific AI agents that run locally on devices without internet connectivity. | North America | Madrona Ventures |
| MemryX, Inc. | Edge Vision Systems | March 2025 | Series B | $44M | Designs low-power compute-at-memory AI accelerator chips and software for running inference locally on edge devices and edge servers. | North America | Not disclosed |
| Scaleout Systems | Industrial Edge AI | February 2025 | Unknown | ≈$3.3M | Develops federated-learning infrastructure that trains and manages AI across distributed edge environments while keeping source data local. | Europe | Fairpoint Capital; Navigare Ventures |
| ClustroAI | Industrial Edge AI | February 2025 | Series A | $12M | Provides a containerized edge-AI platform for running and orchestrating AI workloads on local devices and edge servers rather than relying on centralized cloud inference. | North America | Forum Ventures |
| OpenInfer | Industrial Edge AI | February 2025 | Seed | $8M | Builds hardware-agnostic inference software that runs large AI models locally across edge devices, PCs, robots and other constrained compute platforms. | North America | Cota Capital; Essence VC |
| EnCharge AI | Industrial Edge AI | February 2025 | Series B | >$100M | Develops analog in-memory AI accelerator chips designed to move inference from centralized cloud infrastructure onto PCs and other local devices. | North America | Tiger Global |
| VisiNextek | Edge Vision Systems | January 2025 | Unknown | ≈$13.7M | Designs endpoint intelligent SoCs combining ISP, NPU and related processing for smart-vision cameras, robotics and automotive inference. | Asia-Pacific | Shenzhen Capital Group; Sunic Capital; Future Capital |
| UNIUBI AI / Universal Ubiquitous AI Co., Ltd. (宇泛智能科技股份有限公司) | Edge Vision Systems | January 2025 | Growth Equity | >$27.4M | Develops AI-powered intelligent-vision terminals, cameras and edge/AIoT systems for locally analyzing people, objects and video in buildings and other physical environments. | Asia-Pacific | Yijia Fund (壹嘉基金) |
| Netrasemi | Industrial Edge AI | December 2024 | Unknown | ≈$1.2M | Designs AI/ML system-on-chips that execute analytics locally in IoT, vision, robotics and other intelligent edge devices without relying on cloud servers. | Asia-Pacific | Unicorn India Ventures |
| GEMESYS | On Prem AI | November 2024 | Seed | $9.1M | Develops fully analog neuromorphic chips designed to perform AI inference and learning directly on mobile, sensor and other edge devices. | Europe | Amadeus APEX Technology Fund; Atlantic Labs |
| Argmax, Inc. | On Prem AI | November 2024 | Seed | $8M | Provides software frameworks and infrastructure for running foundation-model inference directly on phones and other user devices. | North America | Salesforce Ventures |
| Algorized | Industrial Edge AI | November 2024 | Seed | $4.3M | Develops edge-AI people-sensing and positioning software that processes radar and other sensor data locally for robots, industrial systems and vehicles. | Europe | Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund |
| Spot AI, Inc. | Edge AI Cameras | October 2024 | Unknown | $31M | Provides AI camera systems with an on-site intelligent video recorder that performs video inference at the edge and exposes results through a cloud management platform. | North America | Qualcomm Ventures |
| TwinSense Inc. | Edge Vision Systems | September 2024 | Seed | ≈$0.7M | Develops neuromorphic edge-AI sensing and processing technology combining event-based vision, CNN/SNN inference and computer vision for low-power real-time applications. | Asia-Pacific | Not disclosed |
| Leap Automation Ltd | Industrial Edge AI | September 2024 | Series A | ≈$10.6M | Builds AI-powered robotic packing systems using machine vision and learning to automate production tasks in food and other manufacturing environments. | Europe | Scottish National Investment Bank |
| ContextSDK GmbH | On Prem AI | September 2024 | Seed | $4M | Provides an SDK that runs machine-learning models on smartphones to infer real-world user context for privacy-preserving app personalization. | Europe | Speedinvest |

As this chart shows, and as featured in our edge AI market deck, search interest in edge AI has increased sharply
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.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, illustrates yearly venture capital investment in edge AI startups
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.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, shows how Hailo is winning in edge AI
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.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, illustrates yearly funding for edge AI startups
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.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, compares the main business model options for edge AI accelerator companies
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 |

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, shows revenue distribution by customer segment in the edge AI market
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 |

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, shows how on-device AI assistant technology has evolved over time
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.

In our edge AI market deck, we identify pain points entrepreneurs should prioritize
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.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, shows revenue breakdown by region across Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, and South America in the edge AI market
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis compares Edge AI fundraising across two consecutive 12-month periods: September 20, 2025 to September 19, 2026, and September 20, 2024 to September 19, 2025. The goal is to measure whether the market is genuinely healthier now, rather than let one or two exceptional financings dictate the answer.
We use a deliberately strict definition of Edge AI. AI inference or autonomous decision-making had to be central to the company's business and take place on devices, machines, vehicles or local infrastructure rather than being primarily dependent on centralized cloud processing. Borderline companies were excluded.
We included qualifying private-company equity financings announced inside the relevant period. Debt, grants, loans, public offerings and other non-equity financing were excluded from funding totals unless an equity component could be separated reliably. Undisclosed rounds were not estimated, and amounts described as "more than" or "approximately" remain lower bounds or approximations.
Each genuine financing was counted separately, while duplicate reports of the same transaction were consolidated. Extensions, additional closes and tranches were reviewed case by case. AI² Robotics' five Series B tranches were treated as one financing, while Apptronik's separately announced $520 million extension was counted as a distinct deal. Future milestone-based commitments connected to Waabi and Wayve were excluded from closed-round totals until they met the same financing standard.
Dates, stages, investors, previous rounds, company founding dates and financing context were recorded only when public evidence supported them. We did not infer a stage from round size, label an investor as a lead simply because it was prominent, or turn an imprecise disclosure into a false exact number.
We also ran the comparison with large rounds removed. That is why the analysis looks at total reported capital alongside capital excluding rounds above $50 million and $100 million, as well as medians, first-financing activity, stage mix, geography and investor participation.
Key sources used for the company-level and market context include Waymo on its $16 billion financing and commercial expansion, Wayve on its $1.2 billion Series D and deployment plans, Waabi on its $750 million Series C and commercialization plans, Apptronik on its $520 million extension and Apollo deployment plans, and Skild AI on its $1.4 billion Series C.
Additional sources include NVIDIA on physical-AI deployment and robotics infrastructure, Silicon Valley Bank's 2026 physical-AI and robotics research, Axelera AI on its more than $250 million financing, Algorized on its $13 million Series A, Ubotica Technologies on its $11 million orbital-AI financing, Sunflower Labs on its $16 million Series B, and Turing on its autonomous-driving financing in Japan.
Some fields are naturally less complete than others, especially previous-round histories, milestones and use-of-funds disclosures. We only draw strong conclusions from them where the coverage is good enough, and we keep uncertainty visible rather than filling gaps with assumptions.

This chart, featured in our edge AI market deck, illustrates yearly venture capital investment in edge AI startups