AI Startup Investments Soar to $104 Billion, Outpacing Exits in First Half of 2025

AI startups raised $104 billion in first half of year, but exits tell a different story

OpenAI and Anthropic continue to lead a fundraising bonanza in artificial intelligence, raising historic rounds and stratospheric valuations. But when it comes to finding AI exits for venture firms, the market looks a lot different. AI startups raised $104.3 billion in the U.S. in the first half of this year, nearly matching the $104.4 billion total for 2024, according to PitchBook. Almost two-thirds of all U.S. venture funding went to AI, up from 49% last year, PitchBook said. The biggest deals follow a familiar theme. OpenAI raised a record $40 billion in March in a round led by SoftBank. Meta poured $14.3 billion into Scale AI in June as part of a way to hire away CEO Alexandr Wang and a few other top staffers. OpenAI rival Anthropic raised $3.5 billion, while Safe Superintelligence, a nascent startup started by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, raised $2 billion. While Meta's massive investment into Scale AI amounted to a lucrative exit of sorts for early investors, the overarching trend has been a lot more money going in than coming out. In the first half, there were 281 VC-backed exits totaling $36 billion, according to PitchBook. That includes the roughly $700 million acquisition of EvolutionIQ, an AI platform for disability and injury claims management, by CCC Intelligent Solutions, and the public listing of Slide Insurance, which builds AI-powered insurance offerings for homeowners. Slide is valued at about $2.3 billion.

AI Startup Investments Outpace VC-Backed Exits | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. In the first half of the year, the amount raised by AI startups in the U.S. totaled $104.3 billion, while venture capital (VC)-backed exits totaled $36 billion, CNBC reported Tuesday (July 22), citing data from Pitchbook. Meta's investment in Scale AI "amounted to a lucrative exit of sorts for early investors," the report said. "The dominant exit trend right now is frequent but lower-value acquisitions and fewer IPOs with significantly higher value," Dmitri Zabelin, senior research analyst for AI and cybersecurity at Pitchbook, told CNBC. It was reported in March that excitement for AI had brought American startup investment to a three-year high but that much of this funding from the VC space had been focused on a few very large private tech firms. "AI is a transformative force that makes these companies better," Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, one of the biggest VC firms in Silicon Valley, told the Financial Times (FT) in March. "The way to think about it is 'can these businesses reasonably grow 10x from where they are?' The answer with all of these is yes, so they are reasonably priced." S&P Global Market Intelligence reported in March that many VC investors had turned their focus to companies in generative AI in search of growth rates and higher valuations. "With AI 'revolutionizing' multiple industries, venture capital is flowing where the next big breakthrough is expected," John Clark, partner with investment bank Royal Park Partners, said in the report.