xAI, Anthropic and Xaira Therapeutics led CRN’s ranking of U.S.-based AI startups by publicly disclosed capital raised or committed during 2024 through approximately midyear. The list is a historical funding snapshot—not a ranking of company value, lifetime fundraising, revenue, technical quality or investment returns.
CRN compiled the ranking from Crunchbase and PitchBook data. Its methodology excludes companies headquartered outside the United States and businesses founded more than five years earlier under its startup definition. The result therefore does not represent every major AI financing worldwide.
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How this 2024 AI-startup ranking works
The amounts below are the 2024 financings counted by CRN through approximately mid-2024. “Raised” generally refers to a disclosed equity financing or investment; Xaira’s figure is committed capital assembled at launch. Strategic corporate investments and conventional venture rounds appear together in the source ranking, so the financing type is shown explicitly.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchThis is not a cumulative-funding ranking. Anthropic, for example, had nearly $8 billion in disclosed total funding by May 2024 according to CRN’s cited reporting, while the ranking counts $2.75 billion invested by Amazon during 2024. A company’s valuation is a separate figure again: it is the implied value of the business after a financing, not the amount of cash raised.
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CRN’s source and methodology are documented at CRN’s 2024 ranking. Companies with undisclosed rounds, debt-only financing, later closings or non-U.S. headquarters may not appear.
The 10 largest disclosed 2024 financings
| Rank | Company | 2024 amount counted | Financing type | Main market | Notable backers named by CRN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | xAI | $6 billion | Series B | Generative AI and foundation models | Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Kingdom Holding |
| 2 | Anthropic | $2.75 billion | Amazon strategic-investment installment | Foundation models and Claude | Amazon, Google, Salesforce, SAP, Zoom |
| 3 | Xaira Therapeutics | $1 billion | Committed capital at launch | AI drug discovery | ARCH, Foresite, F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia and others |
| 4 | Figure AI | $675 million | Series B | Humanoid robotics | Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions, Intel Capital |
| 5 | Cyera | $300 million | Series C | Data security | Coatue, Spark, Georgian, Sequoia, Accel, Redpoint |
| 6 | Augment | $227 million | Series B | AI coding assistance | Sutter Hill, Index, Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed, Meritech |
| 7 | Glean | More than $200 million | February financing | Enterprise search and agents | Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Coatue, Iconiq and strategic investors |
| 8 | Cognition AI | $196 million | $175 million June round plus $21 million March round | Autonomous software engineering | Investors reported by CRN |
| 9 | Celestial AI | $175 million | Series C | Optical AI infrastructure | U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, AMD Ventures, Temasek, Samsung Catalyst and others |
| 10 | Perplexity AI | $136.3 million | $73.6 million Series B plus $62.7 million financing | Conversational search | Stanley Druckenmiller, Garry Tan, Jeff Bezos, Nvidia and others |
Company-by-company breakdown
1. xAI: $6 billion
Founded in 2023 and led by Elon Musk, xAI announced a $6 billion Series B in May 2024. CRN listed the company in Burlingame, California, and named Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research and Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding among the reported investors.
The capital was intended for product development, computing infrastructure and research. xAI’s Grok conversational system was being offered to X Premium users, with image and visual-information capabilities added around the same period. The $6 billion is the round counted by CRN, not a definitive lifetime-financing total; later reports may classify additional financings differently.
2. Anthropic: $2.75 billion
Anthropic, founded in 2021 and led by Dario Amodei with co-founder Daniela Amodei, received the final $2.75 billion installment of Amazon’s previously announced $4 billion investment. CRN listed its headquarters in San Francisco.
Anthropic’s Claude 3 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet models were central products during the period. The strategic relationship included developing, training and deploying models through Amazon Web Services, including Amazon Bedrock and AWS AI chips. Google, Salesforce, SAP and Zoom were also cited as investors or strategic participants. The 2024 installment should not be confused with Anthropic’s nearly $8 billion total disclosed funding by May 2024.
3. Xaira Therapeutics: $1 billion in committed launch capital
Xaira launched in April 2024 with more than $1 billion in committed capital. That structure is different from a conventional Series A or Series B: it describes capital pledged or assembled at launch rather than necessarily a single priced equity round. The San Francisco company is led by CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Xaira applies machine learning, biological-data generation and therapeutic-development methods to drug discovery. Reported backers included ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures. Drug development also has long laboratory and regulatory timelines, so launch capital does not establish a commercial product or approved medicine.
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4. Figure AI: $675 million
Sunnyvale-based Figure AI, founded in 2022 and led by Brett Adcock, announced a $675 million Series B in February 2024. Investors named by CRN included Microsoft, OpenAI’s Startup Fund, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions and Intel Capital.
Figure develops general-purpose humanoid robots. The company said the money would support AI training, manufacturing, engineering expansion and commercial deployment, and it announced work with OpenAI on models for humanoid robots while planning to use Microsoft Azure. Figure is an AI-enabled robotics business, so its financing reflects the manufacturing and deployment costs of physical automation, not only software-model training. Claims about commercial viability or robot performance remain company claims unless independently benchmarked.
5. Cyera: $300 million
New York-based Cyera, founded in 2021 and led by CEO Yotam Segev, raised a $300 million Series C in April 2024. Coatue, Spark Capital, Georgian, AT&T Ventures, Sequoia, Accel and Redpoint were among the reported investors.
Its platform discovers, analyzes and classifies data across an organization, positioning AI as a tool for data security, governance and risk reduction. Cyera illustrates why an “AI startup” list extends beyond model developers: the company’s primary commercial problem is enterprise data protection rather than building a general-purpose chatbot.
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Augment announced a $227 million Series B in April 2024. The Palo Alto company was founded in 2022 and is led by Scott Dietzen. Sutter Hill Ventures, Index Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Meritech Capital were among the reported backers.
Augment builds AI coding assistance for large codebases. The company said its models were optimized for coding patterns, inference speed, security and intellectual-property protection. Statements that its system avoids hallucinations or outperforms competitors are company claims, not independently established comparative results in the available reporting.
7. Glean: more than $200 million
Glean, founded in 2019 and headquartered in Palo Alto under CEO Arvind Jain, raised more than $200 million in a February 2024 financing; CRN’s table rounds the amount to $200 million.
The company develops enterprise search and assistants grounded in an organization’s own data. CRN highlighted permissions-aware answers, custom agents, chatbots, applications, actions and APIs. Reported investors included Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Coatue, Iconiq Growth, Capital One Ventures, Citi, Databricks Ventures and Workday Ventures. “More than $200 million” is the more precise description in prose because the source does not state an exact amount above the rounded table value.
8. Cognition AI: $196 million
San Francisco-based Cognition AI, founded in 2023 and led by Scott Wu, had $196 million counted by CRN: a $175 million round disclosed in June plus a $21 million round reported in March.
Its Devin product was marketed as an autonomous AI software engineer capable, according to the company’s positioning, of building and deploying applications, finding and fixing bugs, and helping with model training and fine-tuning. Those are product claims; the funding figure does not independently measure Devin’s reliability, productivity or ability to replace software engineers.
9. Celestial AI: $175 million
Celestial AI raised a $175 million Series C in March 2024. The Santa Clara company, founded in 2020 and led by Dave Lazovsky, reported backing from the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Temasek, Samsung Catalyst and Porsche Automobil Holding, among others.
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Its Photonic Fabric is an optical-interconnect platform intended to separate compute and memory. Celestial AI presents optical links as a way to increase bandwidth and memory capacity while reducing latency and power consumption compared with some copper-based designs. Those performance advantages should be attributed to the company unless supported by independent benchmarks.
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10. Perplexity AI: $136.3 million
Perplexity AI, founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco under CEO Aravind Srinivas, had $136.3 million counted by CRN. The amount consists of a $73.6 million Series B and another $62.7 million announced in April 2024.
The company builds a conversational search or “answer engine” designed to provide answers with citations and promoted Perplexity Enterprise Pro alongside the additional financing. Reported investors included Stanley Druckenmiller, Garry Tan, Jeff Bezos and Nvidia. Traffic or query-volume figures are omitted here because the ranking source does not independently establish them; separate allegations involving Perplexity’s Pages feature should be treated as attributed disputes, not adjudicated findings.
Why xAI and Anthropic attracted such large checks
Frontier-model companies face unusually high capital requirements. Training requires large clusters of advanced chips, data-center capacity and specialized engineering, while serving users requires continuing inference infrastructure. Strategic cloud and chip relationships can therefore be as important as the cash amount: Amazon’s Anthropic investment was tied to AWS deployment and chip access, while the broader sector depends on scarce computing capacity.
A large financing shows that investors and strategic partners are willing to fund that capital intensity. It does not show that a model will become profitable, reliable or dominant.
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The list captures several distinct AI investment themes:
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- Foundation models: xAI and Anthropic spend heavily on training and operating general-purpose systems.
- Physical AI: Figure combines model development with manufacturing, hardware and deployment.
- Scientific AI: Xaira applies machine learning to biological data and drug discovery, where experiments and development cycles are expensive.
- Enterprise workflow and security: Glean, Cyera, Augment and Cognition target search, data governance and software work inside organizations.
- Infrastructure: Celestial AI sells technology intended to address bandwidth, memory and power constraints in AI systems.
- Consumer and prosumer search: Perplexity competes in answer-oriented search and offers an enterprise tier.
These companies are not direct competitors in the same market. Comparing an optical-interconnect platform with a search engine on product maturity or revenue would be misleading.
Who was left out—and why
Exclusion from this list reflects the methodology, not necessarily weaker technology or lower investor interest.
- Cohere reportedly raised $450 million in June 2024 but is based in Canada, outside CRN’s U.S.-headquarters rule.
- CoreWeave reportedly raised $1.1 billion in May 2024 but was founded in 2017, making it older than CRN’s startup-age limit.
- OpenAI was not included in CRN’s narrower cutoff and methodology, although later reporting put a 2024 financing at $6.6 billion.
- Databricks is a heavily funded AI and data company but does not fit the same young-startup definition.
- Inflection AI demonstrates a harder edge case: Microsoft hired its co-founders and much of its staff while licensing its technology, complicating whether it should be treated as the same standalone startup.
Later fundraising changed the market picture. A subsequent Crunchbase News review shows why rankings must be dated: new rounds close, private-company totals are revised and financing structures differ.
What “well-funded” can—and cannot—tell investors
Funding is not product-market fit
Capital represents investor conviction and a company’s ability to finance an ambitious plan. It does not establish recurring revenue, profitability, customer retention, safety, technical reliability or a winning business model.
Financing types are not interchangeable
A priced venture round, a strategic investment installment and committed launch capital can have different terms and deployment schedules. Debt, convertible notes, SAFEs, secondary stock sales and parent-company funding should be identified separately when comparing companies.
Public disclosure creates selection bias
Companies with undisclosed financing cannot be ranked reliably. The same is true of rounds announced after the cutoff or transactions that were primarily debt or secondary sales rather than new equity capital.
The ranking is historical
CRN’s list describes disclosed activity through approximately mid-2024. It should not be presented as a current 2026 leaderboard or as a forecast of which companies will ultimately succeed.
Further context for researching startup funding
Readers investigating venture rounds, investors and company histories can consult Crunchbase, although current plan details and pricing should be checked directly. For broader historical investment context, see the Stanford AI Index 2024. Neither a funding database nor an AI answer engine substitutes for reviewing transaction terms, filings and dated primary announcements.
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