Week of March 30, 2026

Kleiner Perkins raised $3.5 billion across two new funds dedicated to AI: a $1 billion early-stage fund (KP22) and a $2.5 billion growth fund. The raise is 75% larger than the firm's $2 billion fundraise less than two years ago. The growth fund is explicitly designed to back AI companies from seed through IPO, reflecting a structural shift in how top-tier venture firms are sizing their capital for AI-native portfolios. Source →

Aaru, a synthetic-customer research startup, raised a round in which lead investor Redpoint bought a large portion of equity at a $450 million valuation and a smaller portion at $1 billion, with other VCs joining at the higher price. TechCrunch reports this "dual-pricing" structure is becoming common in oversubscribed AI rounds, allowing startups to claim unicorn status while giving lead investors a discount. FPV Ventures co-founder Wesley Chan called the practice "a symptom of bubble-like behavior." Source →

Carta reported that AI startups captured 41% of the $128 billion in venture dollars raised on its platform in 2025 — a record annual share. Funds raised in 2023 and 2024 (post-ChatGPT vintages) are posting the highest IRR of any recent cohort, outperforming funds from 2017 through 2020. Ten percent of startups accounted for half of total funding. Source →

Retell AI crossed $40 million ARR after growing from $8 million to $36 million in eight months with 21 full-time employees — $1.71 million in revenue per employee. The AI voice agent platform handles more than 40 million real-time calls monthly and is profitable. Henry Shi's Lean AI Leaderboard flagged Retell as "fully AI-augmented across GTM, support, ops, and content." Source →

Gamma hit $100 million ARR profitably with 50 employees, having raised only $23 million in initial funding before a $68 million Series B at a $2.1 billion valuation. At $2 million ARR per employee and a 4.3x ratio of ARR to total capital raised, Gamma represents the capital-efficient end of the AI-native spectrum — the inverse of the compute-heavy foundation model playbook. Source →

Andy Budd, venture partner at Seedcamp, named a new pattern: the "Silicon Valley Small Business" — tiny, AI-leveraged companies where a handful of people using AI as force-multipliers ship faster, iterate more aggressively, and hit meaningful revenue in months rather than years. Budd notes that more than a fifth of all startup funding in some regions now flows to AI-related companies. Source →

Ángel Maldonado, founder of Empathy AI, told Sifted he has repeatedly turned down venture capital to keep the company bootstrapped, profitable, and fully independent. Over a decade, Maldonado grew Empathy — which builds private, self-hosted AI systems — to 100 employees without external funding. "I have had, and continue to have, offers from VCs," Maldonado said. "I say no." Source →