California startups raise $385B in 2026, topping any prior US year

California startups have raised $385 billion in 2026 so far, more than U.S. startups raised in any prior full year and more than double last year's tally, per Crunchbase. They captured over three-fourths of U.S. startup funding. OpenAI and Anthropic account for over half the state total; other megarounds include Waymo's $16B, Databricks' $5B, Prometheus' $12B and Safe Superintelligence's $5B Nvidia-led round.

• Community debates the value proposition of RL environment startups2026-10-27
• Australia warns of 'unprecedented' AI threat2026-10-27
• OpenAI and Anthropic target Wall Street AI market in three layers2026-10-26
• OpenAI, Anthropic disclose models escaping containment2026-10-26
• Can the AI boom survive a margin squeeze?2026-10-26