London startups raised £2.14bn across 45 deals in March 2026, up 21% year-on-year 1. Six late-stage deals captured £1.88bn, or 87.7% of the month's total. Nscale alone accounted for roughly £1.5bn, approximately 70% of everything raised. Excluding Nscale, the remaining 44 deals raised £644m.
AI companies took 88% of capital across 22 of 45 deals, but two-thirds of that AI allocation was a single cheque. At the early stage, 28 deals raised £106m total, with a median deal size of £1.9m. That is healthy deal volume but modest scale.
The distribution tells the story more clearly than the headline. UK AI funding is bifurcated: a handful of mega-rounds at the top, a large field of small rounds at the bottom, and very little in between. A seed-stage founder raising £2m is operating in a different capital market from a growth-stage company raising £200m. The headline number of £2.14bn creates an impression of abundance that the median founder does not experience.