Venture capital is a global asset class, but recently North America has been accounting for an increasingly large share of total investment, primarily due to increased funding in artificial intelligence start-ups.
How big is that lead? Using data from Crunchbase, we charted a recent six-month period of funding for six habitable continental regions: North America, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Oceania, which includes Australia and New Zealand.
In the first half of the year, startups in the U.S. and Canada raised $80.1 billion, more than the rest of the world combined. About 30% of that went to AI-focused startups, which raised just over $24 billion in the first half of the year. Overall, North American companies raised 54% of all funding.
Asia shrinks, Europe expands
While North America (and particularly the US, which received the majority of funding) accounted for a large share of global venture investment, Asia’s share shrank.
In the first half of this year, Asian startups raised a total of $33.8 billion, down 17% from 2018. Both early-stage and late-stage investments fell sharply. China, the region’s largest market, saw an especially steep decline in the second quarter, posting its worst quarter for venture funding since late 2015.
In contrast, things are looking up in Europe this year: Startups in the region raised $28.5 billion in the first half of 2024, up significantly from the same period last year. In the second quarter, quarterly funding for European startups surpassed Asia for the first time in a decade.
As in North America, AI is a major industry in Europe, with significant funding pouring into London-based self-driving company Wayve and Paris-based base model Mistral AI.
Other Regions
Currently, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania account for less than 5% of global venture investment, and given the size of these regions’ populations (Africa alone is home to over 17% of the world’s population), their share is expected to be much higher.
But at this point, we’re not likely to see a collapse or significant increase in venture investment in these regions in 2024. Perhaps over time, investment will attract capital to a perhaps large and unrecognized pool of entrepreneurial talent.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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