Latest industry insight has revealed a leap in startup funding in Africa for February 2026, largely from huge deals from equity and debt.

The funding, which showed recovery from funding obtained a month earlier, showed that 40 startups across the continent raised more than $272 million last month through deals worth at least $100,000. The figure marked a clear rise from $174 million in January and is slightly above the $254 million monthly average recorded over the past year.

According to Africa: The Big Deal, most of the funding was obtained by a few companies. Six startups accounted for about 80 per cent of the total funding raised in February, highlighting how capital in Africa’s tech sector remains concentrated in larger ventures.

Among the biggest deals was Spiro, a Benin-based electric mobility company, which secured $57 million in debt financing across 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 significant deals included Terra Industries in Nigeria, which added $22 million to a previously announced funding round, education group Enko Education in South Africa with $22 million in debt, and South African fintech lender Lula, which secured $21 million from Dutch development finance institution FMO.

Africa: The Big Deal noted that equity investments accounted for 54 per cent of the capital raised in February, while debt financing made up about 45 per cent, showing 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 per cent of the total, followed by North

Africa with 24 per cent and Southern Africa with 21 per cent.

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 shift was the sharp drop in East Africa’s share of funding, which fell to just three per cent in February. The region had previously dominated Africa’s startup ecosystem, accounting for 34 per cent of total funding in 2025.

With February’s rebound, 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 observed that in 2025, global funding for AI startups reached $270.2 billion, representing 52.7 per cent of the $512.6 billion deployed by venture capital firms. While the total number of deals fell over the year, AI investment proved unusually resilient, with deal volumes holding steady even as broader venture activity slowed.

Of the $270 billion invested in AI startups worldwide in 2025, North American companies raised $214.5 billion, or 79.3 per cent of the global total. Within the region, AI funding accounted for 63.8 per cent of all venture capital invested in North American companies, showing that the majority of VC activity in the region went into AI rather than other sectors.

This strong concentration of capital reflects investor confidence in firms building the infrastructure behind the AI boom, from high-performance hardware to cloud-based inference platforms. For example, U.S. startup Groq secured $750 million to expand its GroqCloud and LPU deployments, reinforcing its central role in the American AI ecosystem.

Europe also saw growth, though at a more measured pace, with AI deal value reaching $36.7 billion, or 13.6 per cent of the global total. Within the continent, AI investment accounted for 43.4 per cent of all venture capital deployed, showing that a substantial share of

European VC continued to flow into artificial intelligence.

Several startups helped drive this momentum: France’s Mistral AI and the U.K.’s Nscale each raised multi-billion-dollar rounds during 2025, securing their positions as some of the region’s most prominent AI companies. Overall, investment in the Old Continent appears 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 just the first eight weeks of the year, with $189 billion raised in February alone. To put this in perspective, the total funding captured in Q1 2025 was $75.5 billion, meaning AI startups have already nearly tripled last year’s opening-quarter total, and exceeded the combined $197.8 billion raised across the first nine months of 2025.

According to the Researcher, Paul Hoffman, the record-breaking start to 2026 has been propelled by a series of colossal funding rounds, most notable of which was OpenAI’s $110 billion raised in February by major investors including NVIDIA, SoftBank, and Amazon.

Other standout deals include Anthropic’s $30 billion Series G, Elon Musk’s xAI raising $20 billion, and Waymo securing $16 billion as the Alphabet subsidiary plans to expand its robotaxi operations globally. Additional large rounds include Skild AI ($1.4 billion), Cerebras Systems ($1 billion), and Waabi ($1 billion), reflecting a clear investor preference for companies that combine infrastructure, hardware, and scalable AI applications. (The Guardian)