The latest industry insights reveal a leap forward startup funding In Africa, large deals were struck largely from equity and debt for February 2026.
The funding, which showed a recovery from funding received a month earlier, revealed that 40 startups across the continent raised more than $272 million through deals of at least $100,000 last month. The figure is up markedly from $174 million in January and slightly above the monthly average of $254 million recorded over the past year.
According to Africa: The Big Deal, most of the funding was received by a few companies. Six startups accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total funding raised in February, highlighting how capital in Africa's tech sector remains concentrated in larger enterprises.
Among the largest deals was Benin-based electric mobility company Spiro, which secured $57 million in debt financing in two transactions. Egyptian online grocery platform Breadfast raised $50 million in a pre-Series C round, while ride-hailing platform GoCab in Côte d'Ivoire announced $45 million in combined debt and equity funding.
Other notable deals include Terra Industries in Nigeria, which added $22 million to a previously announced funding round, education group Enco Education in South Africa took a $22 million loan, and South African fintech lender Lula, which secured $21 million from Dutch development finance institution FMO.
Africa: The Big Deal notes this equity investment It accounted for 54 per cent of capital raised in February, while debt financing was around 45 per cent, suggesting that startups are increasingly turning to alternative funding structures as venture capital remains cautious.
From a regional perspective, West Africa attracted the largest share of funding, bringing in 53 percent of the total, followed by the North.
Africa with 24 percent and Southern Africa with 21 percent.
Egypt led the continent with $64 million in funding, followed by Benin with $57 million, Côte d'Ivoire with $45 million and South Africa with $44 million.
One notable change was the sharp decline in East Africa's funding share, which fell to just three percent in February. The region previously dominated Africa's startup ecosystem, accounting for 34 percent of total funding in 2025.
With the February comeback, African startups have now raised more than $446 million in the first two months of 2026, slightly ahead of the $417 million recorded during the same period in 2025.
Meanwhile, BestBrokers analysis found that in 2025, global funding for AI startups will reach $270.2 billion, accounting for 52.7 percent of the $512.6 billion deployed by venture capital firms. While the total number of deals declined during the year, AI investment proved unusually resilient, with deal volume remaining steady despite broader enterprise activity slowing.
Of the $270 billion invested in AI startups worldwide in 2025, North American companies raised $214.5 billion, or 79.3 percent of the global total. Within the region, AI funding accounted for 63.8 percent of all venture capital invested in North American companies, suggesting that most VC activity in the region went into AI rather than other sectors.
This strong concentration of capital reflects investor confidence in the companies building the infrastructure behind the AI boom, from high-performance hardware to cloud-based inference platforms. For example, US startup Grok secured $750 million to expand its GrokCloud and LPU deployments, solidifying its central role in the US AI ecosystem.
Europe also saw growth, albeit at a more measured pace, with the value of AI deals reaching $36.7 billion, or 13.6 percent of the global total. Within the continent, AI investments accounted for 43.4 percent of all venture capital deployed, indicating that a large share of
European VCs continue to flow into artificial intelligence.
Several startups helped drive this momentum: France's Mistral AI and the UK's Enscale each raised multi-billion-dollar rounds through 2025, securing their positions as some of the most prominent AI companies in the region. Overall, investment in the Old Continent appears to be more selective, with capital concentrated in startups that have proven technology and clear commercial potential as domestic markets continue to mature.
BestBrokers revealed that the AI sector has started 2026 with unprecedented momentum, raising $220 billion in the first eight weeks of the year, with $189 billion raised in February alone. To put this in perspective, the total funding secured in Q1 2025 was $75.5 billion, meaning AI startups have already nearly tripled in size from the initial quarter last year, and far exceeds the combined $197.8 billion raised in the first nine months of 2025.
According to researcher, Paul Hoffman, the record-breaking start to 2026 has been fueled by a series of huge funding rounds, the most notable of which was OpenAI's $110 billion raise in February by major investors including NVIDIA, SoftBank, and Amazon.
Other standout deals include Anthropic's $30 billion Series G, Elon MuskXAI has raised $20 billion, and Waymo has secured $16 billion, as the Alphabet subsidiary plans to expand its robotaxi operations globally. Additional large rounds include Skilled AI ($1.4 billion), Cerebras Systems ($1 billion), and Wabi ($1 billion), reflecting a clear investor preference for companies that combine infrastructure, hardware, and scalable AI applications.