After four consecutive down quarters, North American startup investors haven’t staged a definitive comeback yet. However, first-quarter numbers do show pockets of resilience, even as the general funding climate remains constrained.

North American funding in the first quarter reached $46.3 billion — a decline of 46% from the same period last year. That’s even including a reported $10 billion investment into OpenAI — largely from Microsoft — and a $6.5 billion round for payments giant Stripe. Without those two large deals, Q1 venture funding would have been down even more dramatically, with a more than 60% decline from the same period last year. READ MORE