Analysis
Three separate Crunchbase categories tell the same story from different angles this year: capital is moving toward things that get built, not just things that get prompted. Physical AI -- robotics, aerospace manufacturing, energy hardware and the sensors/actuators layer underneath embodied AI -- is on a funding pace that dwarfs prior years, per Crunchbase News:
- H1 2026 — $47.4 billion raised across 521 deals
- H2 2025 — $12 billion raised (H1 2026's pace is nearly 4x this)
- 2022-2024 combined — $41.9 billion raised, less than H1 2026 alone
Pulse covered that data when Crunchbase first published it.
“Global VC overall hit a record $510 billion in H1 2026, more than all of 2025 combined, with AI-focused companies taking more than 70% of Q2 dollars.”
Defense tech and robotics are running the same trajectory on their own tracks:
- Defense tech — $35.6 billion raised year-to-date, up roughly 40% versus 2025's full-year pace
- Robotics, 2026 YTD — $18.8 billion raised
- Robotics, all of 2025 — $15 billion raised
- Robotics, 2021 peak — $14.1 billion raised
2026 has already topped the prior best full year in robotics funding with four months still on the calendar.
None of these categories exist in isolation. Waymo's $16 billion Series D in February -- co-led by Alphabet, Dragoneer, DST Global and Sequoia at a $126 billion valuation -- accounted for nearly a third of the entire H1 physical-AI total by itself, a reminder that these category totals can be more concentrated in a handful of mega-rounds than the headline number suggests. Strip Waymo out and the physical-AI base rate is still up meaningfully year over year, but the multiple compresses from "4x H2 2025" toward something more like 2.5-3x -- still a real acceleration, just a less extreme one than the raw total implies.
Global VC overall hit a record $510 billion in H1 2026, more than all of 2025 combined, with AI-focused companies taking more than 70% of Q2 dollars. The category-level breakdown above is the mechanism behind that headline number, not a separate trend.
