What last week’s map said about AI infrastructure

A sector doesn’t turn green because its number went up. It turns green when the rise is too large to be noise.

The map treats the two windows as one pool of 26 rounds and asks what share fell in the recent window: 18 of 26, or 69%. It puts a 90% interval around that share (a Wilson interval): 53% to 82%. As a ratio of recent to prior, that’s 1.13× to 4.47×. The whole range sits above 1, so the sector is rising.

The same test that colored AI green left others alone. A bar that crosses the dashed 1× line means the map can’t tell the change from noise:

Enterprise software & business services grew too, from 9 to 14, but its range still includes 1×, so the map calls it steady. That restraint is the point: a color on the map means the change is clear, not just that a number moved. A change clear only at 80% gets the palest tint and is marked leaning, and its hover still shows the 90% range.

More AI, data & digital infrastructure companies raised in the last four weeks than in the four before, by a margin noise is unlikely to explain. The names are on the rounds table: Company A ($18.0M of $20.0M, Denver, CO), Company F ($19.0M of $19.0M, Seattle, WA), Company G ($4.2M of $5.0M, Boulder, CO) among them. All 3 show Hiring or Hiring actively, so the money is already turning into roles.

One more filed the day after the window closed: Company B, a first-ever Form D in Austin, TX. It counts toward next week’s numbers, not this week’s. Every figure on the map carries the date it was computed for exactly this reason.

A sector’s color only changes once the new state holds on 2 computations for different days, so a one-day blip never recolors the map.

Next week, watch whether AI, data & digital infrastructure stays green once Company B and the week’s other filings count. Watch too whether Enterprise software & business services’s range moves clear of 1×.

The sector numbers are public, so this tool is planned to work without a key. Ask your assistant and it reads the same computation the map colors from.

sector_stats({
  "grain": "sector",
  "key": "ai-data-infrastructure",
  "week": "2026-09-21"
})

{
  "as_of": "2026-09-23",
  "interpreted_as": {
    "key": "AI, data & digital infrastructure (sector)",
    "window": "28 days to 2026-09-23 vs the 28 days before"
  },
  "rounds": {
    "recent": 18,
    "prior": 8
  },
  "ratio_range_90": {
    "low": 1.13,
    "high": 4.47,
    "method": "Wilson, z = 1.645"
  },
  "state": "rising",
  "valuation": null,
  "reason": "Form D does not report valuation or terms",
  "caveat": "Form D covers private placements, not venture capital; it undercounts some VC rounds and includes non-VC raises"
}

The response carries the date it was computed for, the interval behind the color, and a null with a reason where Form D has nothing to say.