The global venture capital market is splitting into two lanes: AI mega-rounds racing ahead at full throttle, and everything else stuck in traffic.

Evidence For

• Kling AI, Kuaishou's video-generation unit, raised nearly $3 billion on July 2 at an expected post-money valuation of $18 billion, with Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu among the backers.
• Indian AI startups raised $676 million in the first half of 2026, a 4x jump from $162 million in H1 2025,...