BIS finds 55.2% of AI funding comes from other AI firms

The AI industry has no shortage of investors. Increasingly, those investors look a lot like the companies they are backing. A new study from the Bank for International Settlements found that 55.2% of incoming investment into AI firms between 2021 and 2025 came from other AI firms. Put another way, more than half the money fueling the sector is the sector funding itself. The research, published as BIS Bulletin 137 on October 1, 2026, carries the title “Circular relationships among AI firms.” Inside the loop The BIS team examined 1,246 AI companies spread across different layers of the AI supply chain. Within that group, they identified 972 investment relationships where one AI firm put money into another. On the outgoing side, 28.7% of the deal value AI firms deployed went into other AI firms. Deals tied to commercial supply-chain relationships made up 46.4% of intra-AI deal value. Yet those same deals represented only 16.1% of intra-AI deals by count. Translated: the deals where a supplier invests in a customer, or trades with a firm it funds, are relatively rare. When they happen, though, they tend to be enormous. The report notes that larger investment deals are a significant dri...