Aperture Tracker
A working view of where private capital is moving across early-stage AI — Pre-Seed through Series B — across the United States, China, and beyond. Refreshed weekly.
Regions
Capital and deal flow by geography. We track US, China, and emerging activity in Europe, India, Israel, and beyond.
Sectors
Where capital concentrated. Box size scales with disclosed capital; color intensity scales with deal count. Click any sector to expand.
Stages
Pre-Seed through Series B — by deal count and capital deployed.
Deal count by stage
Capital ($M) by stage
Investors
Most active investors in the period — by deal count or total capital deployed across rounds they participated in.
Deal log
Every disclosed early-stage AI round in the period. Click any row for the full deal sheet, including founding team and primary sources.
| Company | Region | Stage | Amount | Founders | Lead | Sector | Date |
|---|
Class notes
Live cohorts from the two programs that publish their lineups — a16z Speedrun and Y Combinator. Refreshed each cycle from the official program pages.
Methodology
How this tracker is built and refreshed.
Every disclosed Pre-Seed, Seed, Pre-A, Series A, and Series B round at an AI-native or AI-enabled startup, announced from Jan 1, 2026 onward (2026 year-to-date). Series C / C+ coverage is in our roadmap and will land in a forthcoming sweep.
Global. Primary coverage of the United States and China, with growing coverage of Europe, India, Israel, and the rest of the world.
Crunchbase News, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, Sifted (Europe), 36Kr / KrAsia / Tech in Asia, CB Insights, Dealroom, plus official announcements and investor portfolio pages. Open any deal to see its primary sources.
Refreshed weekly. Each cycle sweeps the source list above for new announcements, dedupes against the existing log, and rebuilds aggregates.
All amounts displayed in USD. RMB-denominated rounds converted at ≈¥7.2/USD; figures rounded.
Live cohort lists pulled directly from each program's official site — the full lineup, not a curated subset. Currently covers a16z Speedrun (SR006) and Y Combinator (Spring, Summer, Fall 2026 batches).
Press-led trackers often miss stealth seeds and quiet co-investments. We counter this with a targeted backfill of 40+ marquee firms across the US and India—including Sequoia, a16z, Peak XV, and Accel. Our latest sweep (May 2, 2026) included a global press audit and a Southeast Asia top-up across Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and Malaysia to ensure full YTD coverage. Note: while we capture Corporate VC (M12, Salesforce, NVentures) via primary press, direct sweeps for these arms are still in development.