The Room and the Check

"Ten years and 500,000 AfroTechies later, we built our own room." Morgan DeBaun, founder, CEO and chairman of Blavity Inc., said that in the company's announcement of AfroTech Conference 2026. The room this week is the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. The conference runs there from November 2 to 6, with more than 300 speakers across 15 tracks and 11 stages.

The money draws a smaller room. About $942 million went to U.S. startups with a Black founder or co-founder in 2025, according to Crunchbase data. That was 0.32 percent of all U.S. venture funding. Crunchbase called it one of the lowest shares in years, down more than two-thirds from three years earlier. The conference has grown. The check has not followed.

Blavity, founded in 2014, describes itself as a media and technology company serving Black millennials and Gen Z. AfroTech is part of its portfolio. This year's theme is "Build What's Next." The company's release says the theme is backed by tangible investment in the leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners and P&L leaders "driving the future." DeBaun framed the next decade around ownership, influence and building companies, and said the opportunity is now "bigger than access." AfroTech also says it is advancing a commitment to train one million people in AI. It reports a year-round community of more than 75,000 professionals and more than 150 global companies.

The schedule points the same way. On Tuesday, Idea Hour offered attendees a live pitch session with Arlan Hamilton, in which they shared ideas and received feedback in real time. The same day, a Human Centered AI Summit promised sessions on algorithmic harm, and on who AI is built for and at what cost. Dr. Timnit Gebru of DAIR is among the named speakers. On Wednesday and Thursday, HealthStack, a two-day conference inside AfroTech presented by Sanofi, covers AI, digital health, MedTech, telehealth and maternal health. One of its featured sessions is titled "Bad Data Is Costing Black Lives." Dr. Uché Blackstock is on the speaker list. Friday's Creators Summit turns to personal brands and to making money from expertise. Other named speakers include Andrew Yang, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Vic Mensa, Louis Carr, president of BET, and Vanessa E. Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Texas became the conference's home in 2022, the Houston Chronicle reported. AfroTech started in Austin, and Houston became host two years later. Blavity COO Jeff Nelson told the paper that AfroTech brings tens of millions of dollars in local economic impact.

Earlier this year, the venture numbers looked better, but only on the surface. As of May 20, U.S. startups with a Black founder or co-founder had raised $643 million across 34 deals, most of it in the first quarter. Crunchbase said that was the most in a single quarter since the second quarter of 2022, when $653 million was raised. It also said the strong quarter was in large part due to one round. In February, SambaNova, a Palo Alto AI chip startup co-founded in 2017 by chief technologist Kunle Olukotun, raised a $350 million Series E, co-led by Cambium Capital Partners and Vista Equity Partners. One company, then, did a fair amount of the averaging.

The next-largest rounds this year came in well below that. Novig raised a $75 million Series B led by Pantera Capital. Harper raised a $47 million Series A led by Emergence Capital, and Posh a $37 million Series B led by FirstMark. GovDash, which sells AI-driven software for government contracting, raised a $30 million Series B co-led by BCI and Mucker Capital. Against the $252 billion raised by all U.S. startups in 2026, Crunchbase described the $643 million as a small percentage.

Even in good years the ceiling has been low. Investment in Black founders peaked at $5.2 billion in 2021, after the 2020 racial justice movement. Crunchbase data show that even then it was 1.5 percent of U.S. venture funding.

Why the ceiling stays that low depends on who is explaining. The first two answers, though, come back to the room: who is in it, and who knows whom. Henri Pierre-Jacques, managing partner at Harlem Capital, told Crunchbase News that firms and partners are doing fewer deals, so founders have to build personal relationships to reach the top of the stack. "In an age of AI, who you know matters more than ever," he said. Gené Teare, Crunchbase's head of research, told TechCrunch that what appears to be holding many Black founders back includes access to networks, relationships and early introductions, even in this year's AI-centered market.

Pierre-Jacques adds a second factor, as Crunchbase reported it, and this one sits outside any room: the decline coincides with a marked shift in the political environment.

Tanvi Lal, co-founder of VC Unleashed and an investor with Intuit Ventures, starts from the other end: who uses the tools. She cited research showing that 53 percent of Black Americans use AI tools daily or weekly, compared with 39 percent of people overall. "To me, this shows early signals that the investment cycle creating wealth from AI is not flowing back to the communities using AI the most," she said. Her proposed fix is aimed upstream at the check itself. It targets limited partners (LPs), the investors whose money venture firms manage. LPs, she said, should ask about founder demographics consistently and at scale.

Asking means counting, and some of that counting already exists. Harlem Capital, Pierre-Jacques's firm, counts 1,338 Black and Latino startups in its 2024 Diverse Founder Report. Each has raised at least $1 million in venture funding, $52.3 billion in all, up from 1,257 companies the year before. The same report found that the 10 largest rounds of 2024 made up 64 percent of all capital raised, up from 50 percent in 2023. More companies are being counted. The money appears to be settling into fewer of them.

Idea Hour put a founder's pitch in front of an investor's response in real time. A room built over ten years can deliver that much. Who in it writes the check is still open.

“To me, this shows early signals that the investment cycle creating wealth from AI is not flowing back to the communities using AI the most.”

1. AfroTech 2026 Returns to Houston for Its 10-Year Anniversary (PR Newswire)
2. AfroTech Conference schedule
3. HealthStack at AfroTech
4. Crunchbase News: Black founder venture funding, Q1 2026
5. TechCrunch: Black founders raise highest amount of quarterly funding since 2022, but there's a catch
6. Harlem Capital: 1,338 Black and Latino startups that have raised $1M+ in VC funding, $52.3B total
7. Houston Chronicle: AfroTech conference returns to Houston