Hampleton Partners Report: AI funding at record volume but getting more selective

The latest Artificial Intelligence Fundraising and M&A report from Hampleton Partners, the international M&A and corporate finance advisory firm for software and technology companies, finds record capital moving into the sector even as it concentrates into fewer hands than ever.

The report identifies one force running through both sides of the market this half: concentration. Fundraising hit a record, and a narrow group of frontier labs and their infrastructure partners absorbed most of the increase on their own. M&A hit a record too, but two acquisitions, SpaceX's purchase of xAI and its purchase of Cursor developer Anysphere, carried nearly the entire increase in disclosed deal value. Beneath both headline numbers, the market moved with far more caution than the totals suggest.

Heiko Garrelfs, Sector Principal AI at Hampleton Partners, said: The headline numbers say AI has never had it better. Look at who's actually cashing the cheques and the picture changes: a narrower group is absorbing more of the capital every half, and everyone outside that circle is working harder for less.”"

It's the familiar split: a narrow set training their own frontier models and funding the compute behind them, everyone else building on top at a different scale entirely. That divide already shows up at the earliest stage of fundraising, where model builders command a premium, and it intensifies further up the funding ladder, where mega-rounds fund compute buildout as much as growth. The same split runs through the sector categories themselves: model-building companies dominate the amounts raised under Generative AI, while the far larger population of AI-using businesses , tagged mostly under Machine Learning, raise a fraction of the size.

Commenting on this divide, Heiko Garrelfs said: "Investors are not backing one thing called AI anymore. They are placing two different bets that happen to share a label: a capital-intensive race to own frontier compute, and a much larger number of smaller-ticket bets on who can build a lasting product on somebody else's model. Confusing the two is the fastest way to overpay."

Regionally, growth arrived through different mechanisms. North America and Asia both expanded largely behind a small number of outsized rounds and deals, in the United States concentrated among frontier labs and their infrastructure partners, in Asia driven substantially by state-directed capital in China. Europe stood apart: fundraising there widened across a broader base of companies as well as bigger cheques, even as the region's largest rounds still draw heavily on capital from outside the continent. The European Union's own response, a new enforcement phase for the AI Act and a tender for AI gigafactories, aims to keep more of that capacity and capital closer to home.

M&A structure has hardened along the same lines. Buyers seeking an AI asset increasingly buy the whole company instead of a minority or majority stake, and fewer deals disclose a price, a shift that has made the market harder to read from the outside even as it grows.

Capacity, Nvidia and Salesforce lead the field as the most active Artificial Intelligence acquirers over the past 30 months.

Capacity, including Chattigo (omnichannel conversational AI for customer support), DevRefactory (omnichannel customer experience software), and Lang.ai (agentic AI analytics for customer experience teams)

Nvidia, including Kumo AI (relational AI foundation models for enterprise predictions), Illumex (generative semantic fabric for enterprise data), and Aligned Data Centers (AI-ready data centre infrastructure)

Salesforce, including Mesh Mesh (AI-native Salesforce implementation platform), Fin (AI customer service agent platform, formerly Intercom), and Momentum (conversational insights and revenue orchestration platform)

Download the full Hampleton Partners Artificial Intelligence Fundraising and M&A Market Report 2H 2026, which explores capital flows and dealmaking trends across the AI stack, from the frontier labs training their own models to the generative AI, machine learning and infrastructure companies building on top of them.

Hampleton Partners' M&A Market Reports are compiled using data and information from the 451 Research database, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and S&P Capital IQ.

Hampleton Partners advises owners of software and technology companies on M&A transactions and growth financing with strategic buyers or financial investors. Hampleton's experienced deal makers have advised hundreds of tech industry shareholders to date, providing hands-on expertise and targeted advice to entrepreneurs looking to sell, partially retire, or accelerate their growth.

With hubs in London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, San Francisco and Shanghai, Hampleton offers a global perspective with industry expertise in the following areas: Enterprise Software, Digital Commerce, IT & Business Services, Artificial Intelligence, Automotive, Mobility & Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Fintech, Healthtech, Supply Chain Management Software, HR Tech, Insurtech and AR/VR.

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