Crunchbase

Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits

Investors poured more than $200 billion into startups globally in the just-ended quarter, making Q2 2026 the second-largest quarter on record, our data shows. And, with IPOs and acquisitions...

Google, Meta, Unity Invest in AppsFlyer; TV Brand Integrations

AppsFlyer has agreed a funding deal with Google, Meta, Unity and Moloco in which each investor takes a minority, non-controlling stake. AppsFlyer did not disclose the amount; Axios, citing people familiar with the financing, reported the round exceeds $1 billion and values the company at $2.7 billion — a figure also repeated by Crunchbase referencing Axios. AppsFlyer says investors will not receive preferential access to APIs, measurement signals, attribution logic or commercial terms, and customers will retain control over partner connections and data sharing. The company intends to use the new capital to accelerate AI-driven advertising measurement, cross-platform attribution and agentic workflows. AppsFlyer serves more than 15,000 brands; the transaction provides liquidity to existing shareholders, may include further strategic partners in later closings, and remains subject to typical closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

12-Surface AI Visibility Audit for B2B Brands

This article by Megan Kessler (Founder & CEO, Dark Horse Strategies) presents a practical, step-by-step methodology to audit a B2B brand’s visibility across the specific sources LLMs and AI search draw from. The framework defines 12 distinct “surfaces” (AI interfaces, AI search, reviews, publishers, owned content, developer/technical platforms, social, knowledge graphs, marketplaces, case studies, community/Q&A and enterprise/private AI) and provides a worksheet, scoring rubric and timeboxed steps to run tests across LLMs, search results, review sites, knowledge-graph sources and social/community channels. It lists platforms to test (ChatGPT/GPT-4o, Perplexity, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude, Microsoft Copilot), gives logging templates and diagnostic rules, and recommends scoring each surface 1–10 to prioritise remediation. The full audit is estimated to take about three hours and supporting resources are available on GitHub.