Venture funding surges 30% in 2025 as AI investments dominate startup deals and valuations

Global Venture Funding In 2025 Surged As Startup Deals And Valuations Set All-Time Records

After three years of declining or flat venture investment, global startup funding grew year over year in 2025, Crunchbase data shows. Last year was also defined by new startup records: the largest private funding round of all time ($40 billion to OpenAI), the largest private valuation ever recorded (SpaceX's $800 billion valuation), and the largest venture-backed acquisition on record (Wiz's $32 billion purchase by Google). Venture and growth investors poured $425 billion into more than 24,000 private companies in 2025, per Crunchbase data. Funding gained 30% year over year, up from $328 billion in 2024. All told, 2025 was the third-highest venture financing year on record, Crunchbase data shows, trailing only the peak years of 2021 and 2022. Table of Contents Higher valuations, billion-dollar rounds Year-over-year funding growth concentrated in the largest rounds and in the AI sector, Crunchbase data shows. OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Project Prometheus and xAI each raised more than $5 billion in 2025. These five companies alone raised $84 billion, or 20% of venture capital funding in 2025 -- an unprecedented amount for the largest fundings in any given year. As a result, The Crunchbase Unicorn Board approached $7.5 trillion in value at the close of 2025, showing a more than $2 trillion increase in value compared to the close of 2024. That surge was driven in large part by the most valuable private companies including SpaceX (now with an $800 billion valuation), OpenAI ($500 billion), ByteDance ($480 billion) and Anthropic ($183 billion). This gain in value was well above 2024 with a $400 billion rise by year end. US venture gains Last year was the second-highest year on record for U.S. startup funding as capital concentrated into the largest AI companies. The U.S. also gained market share last year. Around $274 billion in startup capital was invested in U.S.-based companies in 2025, per Crunchbase data, representing 64% of global startup funding. That's up from 56% of global venture investment in 2024. Contrast that with 2019 through 2023, when the U.S. market represented around 47% to 48% of global venture capital. Industry analysis Roughly 50% of all global venture funding in 2025 went to companies in AI-related fields, making artificial intelligence the leading sector for funding, as it was for the past three years. Venture funding to AI reached $211 billion -- up 85% year over year from $114 billion in 2024 -- Crunchbase data shows. Funding to the AI sector in 2025 surpassed every year in the past decade, including the peak global funding year of 2021. The second-largest industry in 2025 was healthcare and biotech with around $71.7 billion in funding, up slightly from 2024 amounts. Financial services was the third-largest sector for venture investment, receiving $52 billion. That's up from $41 billion in 2024. Other industries where funding gained ground year over year include aerospace, robotics, developer tools, cryptocurrency and defense. Quarterly funding The past five quarters' funding totals have all been higher than previous quarters, driven by a surge in late-stage global funding. Funding in Q4 2025 was up 14% year over year and 13% quarter over quarter, reaching over $113 billion. Late-stage funding in the fourth quarter totaled $66.5 billion, up slightly quarter over quarter and year over year, Crunchbase data shows. The largest late-stage rounds went to automated coding, energy, semiconductors, prediction markets and image-generation companies. Early-stage funding reached $37 billion, up 20% quarter over quarter and up 36% year over year. Large early-stage rounds went to automated coding, security, robotics, self-driving and blockchain companies. Seed funding reached $9.9 billion in Q4, flat quarter over quarter and up 12% year over year. Of those larger seed rounds, deals $20 million and larger accounted for just over a quarter of seed funding. (Seed fundings are often added to the Crunchbase dataset after the close of a quarter, with counts increasing over time.) Concentration and liquidity Last year was marked by capital concentration. Of the 10 most highly valued private companies, seven raised new funding at significantly higher valuations in 2025. Close to 60% of invested capital went to 629 companies that raised rounds of $100 million or more, Crunchbase data shows. More than a third of global funding went to 68 companies that raised rounds of $500 million or more in 2025, compared to 24% of funding in 2024. Meanwhile, global M&A in 2025 was the second-highest year on record. For the U.S. M&A market, 2025 dealmaking was the highest -- even a notch higher than 2021 -- with cybersecurity company Wiz acquired by Google in the largest M&A deal for a venture-backed company over all time. The IPO market also opened up in 2025. With investors placing bigger bets on the most highly valued private companies, larger IPOs for venture-backed companies appear more likely in 2026 -- another catalyst for venture funding to grow again this year. Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the "Series [Letter]" naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a "venture" round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Venture Capital Is Bouncing Back, but Not for Everyone

Looking for a reason to be optimistic as we head into the new year? Data released today by the research firm PitchBook suggests that a venture capital rebound is in full swing -- even if the continued dominance of AI funding may leave some bubble-watchers nervous. The Venture Monitor First Look report released today by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association, which looks back at VC trends over the past year, indicates that the post-pandemic drop-off in American venture capital deals is continuing its return to prior heights, with the estimated final tally for 2025 sitting at $339.4 billion in dealmaking across 16,709 deals. That's still less than the COVID-era peak of 2021, when there was $358.2 billion invested across 19,634 deals. Nevertheless, it marks a clear improvement over the interim years of 2022 ($236.2 billion across 18,290 deals), 2023 ($168.8 billion across 15,379 deals) and 2024 ($213.2 billion across 15,250 deals). "The 2025 deal count jumped 9.6 percent year over year, with a large portion of that increase driven by AI investment," says Kyle Stanford, PitchBook's director of American venture research. "Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, AI investment has grown from $73.0 billion that year to $222.1 in 2025, with deal counts increasing 24 percent over that time period." The final push for dealmaking came in the last quarter of 2025, when PitchBook reports an estimated $91.6 billion in deal value over 4,482 deals. That means things are improving on a quarter-by-quarter basis, too: it's the highest deal quantity on record since Q2 of 2022, and only the second time since Q4 2021 when the cumulative deal value has surpassed $90 billion. (The other time was Q1 of 2025, which just barely beat out Q4 at $91.9 billion.) "With two quarters exceeding $91 billion in deal value, 2025 finished with the second-highest annual deal value ever, just $18.8 billion behind 2021," Stanford said in his commentary, making for a "a strong rebound." In what will not be a surprise to anyone who's been watching trends in American innovation -- but may nevertheless stress out those inclined to think that we're in the early stages of a bubble -- AI remains a favorite of venture capitalists, who spent over $222 billion on 5,793 deals in the sector. Indeed, 2025 marked the biggest year for AI investment over the last decade, with PitchBook's new data indicating that American VCs spent a whopping 65.4 percent of their deal money on AI and machine learning prospects -- that is to say, two dollars out of every three. The total number of deals reflects the same obsession, with AI and ML accounting for 39.4 percent of estimated deals. For both deal value and count, these metrics are unparalleled in PitchBook's dataset (which goes back to 2015). In 2024, for instance, AI accounted for 50.9 percent of deal value and 34.6 percent of deals. Almost all other "top verticals" broken out by PitchBook saw a decrease in deal quantity from 2024 to 2025, with the count dropping off for the likes of SaaS, health tech, financial tech, life sciences, climate tech, cloud and crypto. Only manufacturing, cybersecurity, robotics/drones and advanced manufacturing saw growth, and even that growth paled in comparison to what's happening with AI. (Net deal values still mostly increased across the board.) Exits, which are an important mechanism for recycling profit back into the venture capital ecosystem, are also in the midst of a rebound. PitchBook estimates that 2025 saw almost $300 billion in exit value across 1,635 exits, marking the high water point for both metrics since 2021. Those numbers are substantial improvements over 2024 -- by about 93 percent and 29 percent, respectively -- says Stanford. But, he writes, "that figure represents just 34.5 percent of the annual record from 2021, leaving a lot for investors to desire." As usual, acquisitions accounted for the majority of exits in 2025 (1,029), while buyouts came in second (315). With 66 recorded instances, public listings are not only the least common type of exit but also saw their lowest rate since 2016 (just barely under the 67 recorded in 2024). That will be something to keep an eye on as chatter of an IPO rebound picks up steam, especially with retail investors eager to get their hands on shares of big private tech companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. Although 2025 generally seems to have shaken out as a very positive year, two other trends may be worth keeping an eye on as we enter the new year: a continued drop in VC fundraising, which Stanford says "fell to its lowest total since 2019" with only $66 billion in capital raised, and a decline in the annual total of new funds, which at 537 was the lowest in at least a decade. "LPs remain wary of VC's lengthening liquidity cycles, as a high number of companies remain private well past traditional timelines," the PitchBook research director notes. "The relative increase in liquidity should help 2026 fundraising, though it is unlikely to be a major surge in new commitments." Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.