Updated at 8:15 a.m. on Friday: Revised to include information on super PAC spending in the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Beto O'Rourke ended up raising an astonishing $80 million in his failed bid to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, putting an exclamation point on the El Paso Democrat's record-setting Senate fundraising haul.

The final tally, released late Thursday, is sure to intensify speculation that O'Rourke could mount a campaign in 2020 against Republican President Donald Trump.

Despite his relatively lean political résumé, O'Rourke has received perhaps the most buzz of any potential Democratic contender for the White House. Even former President Barack Obama hailed him last month after the two reportedly met at Obama's office in D.C.

Much of the attention on O'Rourke has focused on a frenetic campaign style that helped him come within 3 points of toppling Cruz — the best a Democrat has done statewide in Texas in years — and a social-media-friendly charisma that captivated liberals all over the U.S.

But there's no overlooking the El Pasoan's herculean ability to muster up campaign cash.

O'Rourke's latest campaign finance report, filed with the Federal Election Commission, showed he hauled in $10.1 million from Oct. 18 to Nov. 26, a period that covers roughly the three weeks before and after the Nov. 6 election.

That final push only upped O'Rourke's record haul, which came despite his decision to reject donations from political action committees.

O'Rourke instead built his war chest with individual contributions, collecting more than $61 million alone via ActBlue, an online portal that has made it easy for Democrats across the country to make recurring small-dollar gifts to their favorite candidates.

He also had little trouble spending his bounty, ending the campaign with just $477,000 cash on hand.

"Future campaigns will be won, influenced by the one we built," O'Rourke said last month in a thank-you email to supporters. "Candidates will run who otherwise wouldn't have. Some will take heart in knowing that you don't have to accept PAC money."

O'Rourke ended up far outpacing Cruz in the money race, even though the Republican raised a substantial amount in his own right.

Beto O'Rourke's record fundraising in his failed bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz has added to the buzz that the El Paso Democrat might run for president in 2020. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Cruz brought in $5.5 million in the most recent reporting period, according to new filings for his campaign account and two affiliated political action committees. That tally, which included a $260,000 loan, increased his haul to $37 million since O'Rourke joined in the race in early 2017.

The Republican ended the campaign with a combined $2.1 million cash on hand.

Cruz never disputed O'Rourke's fundraising prowess, calling him the "No. 1 Democratic fundraiser in the country."

He accused the Democrat of being fueled by California liberals and other meddling non-Texan donors, though a Dallas Morning News analysis in October found that the candidates had a similar percentage of their itemized donations come from out of state.

More important, Cruz noted that "elections are about a lot more than just dollars and cents." And he was right, with Texas voters deciding to send him back to the Senate for a second term.

But the outcome has done little to dim "Beto-mania" in Texas, early-presidential-primary states like Iowa and Washington power circles — even though O'Rourke will be out of office in January since he gave up his House seat to run for Senate.

Sen. Ted Cruz was a fundraising force in his own right, bringing in $37.1 million since Beto O'Rourke joined the race in March 2017. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

The Democrat is partly to blame for the continued chatter, at least on the presidential front.

While he said during his Senate campaign that he would "not be a candidate for president in 2020" no matter the result against Cruz, he said in El Paso last month after the election that he and his wife, Amy, had now "made a decision to not rule anything out."

"Anything is possible," he said. "We'll see."

That pronouncement came after O'Rourke got the presidential treatment from the last Democrat to occupy the White House.

Obama in mid-November hosted the Texan at his post-presidential office in Washington, according to The Washington Post. Then the former president, speaking on a podcast days later, described O'Rourke as an "impressive young man who ran a terrific race in Texas."

"What I liked most about his race was that it didn't feel constantly poll-tested," Obama said on The Axe Files. "It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed. And that, you'd like to think, is normally how things work. Sadly it's not."

.@BarackObama on @BetoORourke:

“What I liked most about his race was that it didn’t feel...poll-tested. It felt as if he based his statements and positions on what he believed. That, you’d like to think, is normally how things work. Sadly, it’s not.” https://t.co/6FqN9idg37. — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 24, 2018

Several Obama acolytes have also touted O'Rourke's prospects, though Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former top Obama aide, noted that "you don't usually promote a loser to the top of the party."

An O'Rourke White House bid would shake up a Democratic field that's expected to be crowded. Among those on the long list of names that have been floated: former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro.

O'Rourke would have to mostly start over from a fundraising perspective, since both he and Cruz spent freely on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in the campaign's waning days.

Though the TV ad wars captured a lot of news media attention, the Democrat's digital spending is what stood out to some experts. The Wesleyan Media Project found O'Rourke to be a national leader in pursuing voters through Facebook and Google ads.

The two candidates weren't the Senate campaign's only big spenders. The veil was lifted on Thursday on one of the outside groups.

The anti-Cruz super PAC Texas Forever, which ran TV ads in Dallas and Houston dinging Cruz on health care, revealed in its campaign finance filings that it was funded almost entirely by the Senate Majority PAC, a D.C.-based Democratic group with ties to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Texas Forever had organized in way that meant it didn't have to disclose the source of the $2.36 million it raised until after the election.

The fact that the group included "Texas" in its name, featured Texas iconography like barbecue, football and cattle in its ads, and had a Texan spokesman who criticized Cruz for being propped up by "out of state dark dollars," belied its reliance on out-of-state donors.

Still, the anti-Cruz super PAC spending, including more than $600,000 by the separate Fire Ted Cruz PAC, paled in comparison to the efforts by anti-O'Rourke forces.

A pro-Cruz super PAC, Texans Are, raised about $6.5 million during the election cycle, according to the latest filings. That sum, which funded a slate of TV ads, featured support from North Texas business elite like Bob Rowling, Lee Roy Mitchell and Harlan Crow.

Two other conservative groups, Club for Growth Action and Ending Spending Action, also ran TV ads in Texas in support of Cruz's bid.