UK fintech funding falls to a decade low

UK fintech startups raised £1.8 billion in the first half of 2026, the lowest six-month total in a decade, according to KPMG figures reported by Finextra. In the same window, AI companies captured more than 70% of global venture funding. OpenAI and Anthropic alone took $217 billion, or 43% of every reported venture dollar worldwide.

The money that used to chase payments, lending, and banking infrastructure startups didn't vanish. It moved to two companies.

A venture fund only has so much committed for a given cycle. When 43 cents of every dollar goes to OpenAI and Anthropic, the rest gets split across everything else. Fintech is competing in that remainder against every other category an LP still wants exposure to.

What this means for builders

If you're building fintech now, "large addressable market" won't carry a pitch on its own. That argument works when capital spreads itself around. It doesn't work when a fund has already committed its AI allocation and has less left for everything else. The founders who raise will be the ones with revenue to show, or a moat a generalist LLM can't undercut next year.

KPMG's next report will show whether fintech AI plays, not fintech overall, absorb what's left of the category's shrinking share.