According to the latest statistics from PitchBook, a leading global VC (venture capital) data provider, the global "money-burning battle" closely associated with artificial intelligence (AI) remains in full swing. Venture capital institutions worldwide have invested approximately $192.7 billion in AI startups including OpenAI and Anthropic so far this year — setting a new record for global VC funding flowing into the AI sector and positioning 2025 to potentially become the first year where more than half of all venture capital funding flows to artificial intelligence-related industries.

Statistical data shows that in the most recent quarter, AI startups received a historically high proportion of VC funding (approximately 62.7% in the US and about 53.2% globally), undoubtedly pushing 2025 toward becoming the first year in history where "more than half of all annual VC funding flows to AI."

However, most of the capital has flowed to large-scale AI startups with mature business models, while some lesser-known AI newcomers are struggling, particularly startup companies that are not focused on artificial intelligence. Statistical data indicates that most capital has flowed to the industry's largest AI startups — such as Anthropic and xAI, which both raised billions of dollars this quarter — while other lesser-known rising stars are struggling, especially companies not focused on AI.

PitchBook researchers found that the lingering effects of a tightened public listing and M&A environment have also made some venture capital funds less enthusiastic about betting on unproven, immature startups.

Meanwhile, the AI infrastructure investment and construction wave dominated by major US tech giants is also in an extremely accelerated expansion process, driving the entire AI computing power industry chain to remain the global industry chain with the highest prosperity. This is why recent stock prices of AI computing power industry chain leaders like NVIDIA, TSMC, Broadcom, Micron Technology, and SK Hynix have repeatedly hit historical highs.

The record $192.7 billion raised by AI startups largely indicates that the global AI "money-burning battle" remains in full swing, highlighting that the bull market trajectory of the AI computing power industry chain is far from over.

Led by the epic stock price surges and consistently strong performance of major tech giants and AI computing power industry chain leaders like NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Oracle, TSMC, and Broadcom, an unprecedented AI investment boom has swept US stock markets and global equity markets, driving the S&P 500 index and the global stock benchmark — the MSCI World Index — to surge significantly since April, with recent continuous record highs.

The recent sharp rise in global DRAM and NAND series storage product prices, along with Oracle's recent contract backlog of $455 billion that far exceeded market expectations, and Broadcom's strong performance and future outlook as the global AI ASIC chip "super hegemon" have significantly strengthened the "long-term bull market narrative" for AI infrastructure sectors including AI GPUs, ASICs, HBM, and data center SSD storage systems.

The AI computing power demand driven by generative AI applications and AI agent-dominated inference can be described as "vast as the ocean of stars," expected to drive the artificial intelligence computing power infrastructure market to continue showing exponential growth. "AI inference systems" are also what Jensen Huang considers NVIDIA's largest future revenue source.

**AI Dominates Global VC Investment in 2025, Attracting $192.7 Billion**

As shown in PitchBook's latest statistics, as of current 2025, the total VC funding flowing into AI startups globally has reached $192.7 billion, setting the strongest annual pace on record (on a year-to-date cumulative basis), with the proportion of VC funding flowing to the AI sector also hitting historical records.

However, looking at global flows, VC funding undoubtedly shows very obvious "AI investment preferences."

"What we're seeing everywhere is severe polarization," said Kyle Sanford, PitchBook's research director, in an interview. "Either you're an AI company or you're not. Either you're a leader in the AI startup space or you're not."

In the most recent quarter, US venture capital firms (mainly concentrated in Silicon Valley VC firms) invested as much as 62.7% of their investment funds in artificial intelligence-related startups, while this proportion among global VC firms reached 53.2%.

So far this year, global VC funding totals $366.8 billion, with the US market's share continuously rising to $250.2 billion.

Although a few AI startups have received massive funding support, the broader VC landscape for startups overall is much more bleak. The number of companies receiving VC funding globally in 2025 is heading toward multi-year lows, and the number of venture capital firms raising new funds is almost equally low.

Therefore, AI-driven venture capital scale has continued to expand against the trend during two years of global VC pressure. PitchBook data shows that globally, 823 VC-type funds have raised a total of over $80 billion so far this year — in sharp contrast to 2022, when 4,430 VCs collectively raised about $412 billion.

Sanford said in an interview that VC fund investors and VC firm partners are "more cautious in capital allocation" and "fully concentrating their focus on the AI sector."

**AI Computing Power Industry Chain Bull Market Trajectory Continues**

Sam Altman, CEO of global AI super unicorn OpenAI, recently stated in media interviews that OpenAI will invest trillions of dollars "in the near future" in AI's most core infrastructure, including AI chips, data center high-performance networking equipment, advanced power systems, and other underlying resources supporting increasingly large AI training/inference systems.

Altman believes that in the long term, AI will be the most important thing globally, and society as a whole cannot possibly regret investing heavily in AI.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram), recently stated plans to invest at least $600 billion in US AI infrastructure construction by 2028.

"If we end up wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, I certainly think that would be very unfortunate. But what I want to say is, actually I think the risk on the other side — the risk of falling behind in the AI boom — is higher," Zuckerberg said in a recent interview.

The continued explosive expansion of global AI computing power demand, combined with increasingly large US government-led AI infrastructure investment projects and tech giants' continued massive investments in building large data centers, largely means that for investors long bullish on NVIDIA and the AI computing power industry chain, the global "AI faith" driving "super catalysis" for computing power leaders' stock prices is far from over. They are betting that stock prices of AI computing power industry chain companies led by NVIDIA, TSMC, and Broadcom will continue to perform "bull market curves."

In the view of Wall Street financial giants Citi, Loop Capital, and Wedbush, the global artificial intelligence infrastructure investment wave centered on AI computing power hardware is far from over and is only at the beginning. Driven by an unprecedented "AI computing power demand storm," this round of AI investment wave could reach $2-3 trillion in scale.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang further predicts that AI infrastructure spending will reach $3-4 trillion before 2030, with project scale and scope providing NVIDIA with significant long-term growth opportunities.

A research report released by Citigroup in late September shows that artificial intelligence infrastructure investment and deployment is "dramatically accelerating" at speeds far exceeding Wall Street expectations, stating this is definitely not a repeat of the 2000 internet bubble period. The key difference is that real explosive enterprise AI demand provides strong "outlets" for this investment boom, forming a closed loop of value validation.

Citi senior analysts in their research report significantly raised AI infrastructure spending forecasts for the world's largest tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and SAP, upgrading 2026 AI infrastructure spending forecasts from $420 billion to $490 billion.

Additionally, Citi expects cumulative AI infrastructure spending by tech giants through 2029 to rise from $2.3 trillion to $2.8 trillion.

Furthermore, according to the research report's calculations, global AI computing power demand will require an additional 55 gigawatts of power capacity by 2030, expected to translate into incremental AI computing power-related spending of up to $2.8 trillion, with the US market accounting for $1.4 trillion.