OpenAI’s leadership crisis demonstrated the indirect influence wielded by tech giants in the generative AI startup ecosystem.

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella helped broker an overhaul of the board to preserve Sam Altman as CEO, resulting in former Salesforce co-CEO and ex-Twitter chairman Bret Taylor’s appointment as OpenAI chairman.

Tech giants have taken advantage of the simultaneous VC recession and generative AI boom to take a definitive position in the startup ecosystem, participating in deals contributing 89.7% of investment dollars to startups in the space this year.

As a result, VCs have ultimately been more discerning in deals without strategic investors than the talk of hype cycles would suggest.

Our research breaks out the investment data for companies in our generative AI market map, which is available to clients to explore early-stage leaders in the emerging space.

The data shows the concentration of deal activity growth in product segments like AI core and vertical applications, with flatter deal counts in multimedia domains as VCs weigh the merits of building on top of models like OpenAI’s.

Deal value growth stands out in code and healthcare if not visual media and audio.

For more data and analysis, download the free research: Generative AI VC Trends

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