Report: In the first half of the year, global venture capital investment has shrunk by nearly half, and more than US$40 billion has flowed to AI startups

According to a report by IT House on July 6, data recently released by research firm PitchBook shows that global venture capital funding will almost halve in the first six months of 2023, highlighting a lack of investor enthusiasm and a sharp rise in interest rates that has reduced financing needs.

Despite the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT sparking huge interest in artificial intelligence (AI) startups, global venture capital funding fell 48% to $173.9 billion in the first half of the year, with the number of deals also down 19%, the report showed. But AI startups are still hot. Global venture capitalists have poured more than $40 billion into AI startups in the past six months, including Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI and $1.3 billion in Inflection AI.

Large investors are not actively participating in venture funding, and mega-deals that pushed deal values to record levels are no longer happening, PitchBook said. In 2021, global venture capital investment hit an annual record of $745.1 billion.