North American Startup Funding Soared 46% In 2025, Driven By AI Boom
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A boom year for North American startup funding ended on an up note.
Investors poured $280 billion into seed through growth-stage rounds for U.S. and Canadian companies in 2025, per Crunchbase data. It was the highest annual total in four years, with funding up a whopping 46% from 2024.
The fourth quarter also delivered a strong finish to 2025 with $67 billion in reported investment, the second-highest quarterly tally for the year. 1 Early-stage dealmaking was particularly robust, hitting the highest level in the past four quarters.
While funding rose, deal counts declined a bit in 2025 and in Q4, as more capital was concentrated in larger rounds. Overall, deal count declined about 16% year-over-year, with just under 10,500 reported rounds.2 Deal count also declined about 14% sequentially in Q4.
Of course, AI was the dominant technology trend for the year, capturing a record sum. Beyond new rounds, investors also logged some gains, as IPOs, M&A and multibillion-dollar deals conceived as acquihires all contributed to ROI.
Below, we look at these trends along with a more granular look at Q4 funding.
Artificial intelligence
We’ll start with AI, as that’s where most of the money went.
Around $168 billion — or roughly 60% of all North American startup funding — went to companies in AI-related categories, per Crunchbase. Investment held up in Q4, with around $36 billion, or more than half of total funding, going to AI.
The tally included multiple billion-dollar-plus rounds. For Q4, the largest AI deals were a $2.3 billion Series D for Anysphere and its Cursor coding automation platform and a $2 billion Series B for software development AI startup Reflection AI.
For the full year, meanwhile, the largest AI rounds were OpenAI’s $40 billion SoftBank-led financing in March and Anthropic’s $13 billion Series F in September.
Late stage
Startup funding was also strong across most stages in both Q4 and all of 2025. This held true for late-stage and technology-growth dealmaking, which drew $191 billion for the full year — up 75% from 2024.
For Q4, meanwhile, investors put about $41 billion into late- and growth-stage deals, down a smidge from the prior quarter.
For Q4, the largest late-stage deals included a $1.5 billion Series E for Lambda, a provider of supercomputers for AI inference, and a $1.4 billion Series E for AI data center developer Crusoe.
Early stage
Investors were also pretty generous about writing checks to early-stage companies last year.
Overall, close to $69 billion went to Series A and Series B-stage companies in 2025, up about 5% year over year. Funding hit a high point in Q4, with $21.6 billion going to early-stage deals.
For Q4, some of the largest deals included a $700 million Series B for identity security provider Saviynt and a $600 million Series B for AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence.
Seed
Seed-stage investors were also not slouches in 2025, putting around $20.4 billion into reported rounds for the most nascent startups. However, that’s a bit of a decline from 2024, which saw about 9% more in known investment.
Deal counts also ticked lower last year, hitting a nadir in Q4, with just over 1,300 reported seed financings. (As always, we expect that total to rise a bit over time as more deals get entered into the dataset.)
The idea of a seed round being synonymous with small, of course, is now an outdated concept. This was evident in Q4, which had multiple jumbo-sized seed deals, including a $475 million financing for Unconventional AI, which is focused on energy-efficient AI computing.
Exits
Both 2025 and Q4 were also reasonably active periods for sizable exits of both the IPO and M&A varieties
IPO: For IPOs, Q4 closed out the year with a few big debuts including electric aircraft maker Beta Technologies and corporate travel and expense platform Navan. For the full year, the largest IPOs were AI infrastructure provider Coreweave and design software platform Figma.
M&A: It was also a happening year for big M&A deals. The largest of these was Google’s planned purchase of Wiz for $32 billion, announced in March.
Many of the standout deals came in the fourth quarter. Biggest among these was Nvidia’s December deal to acquire assets of AI inference chip developer Groq in a transaction reportedly valued at $20 billion.
In addition, Trump Media and Technology announced plans in December to merge with fusion company TAE Technologies in a transaction said to be valued at $6 billion. And Palo Alto Networks purchased Chronosphere, a provider of data observability tools, for $3.35 billion.
Indicators don’t point to a slowdown
There’s little in the 2025 and Q4 data that points to a slowdown ahead. In particular, the year closed on an up note for both big rounds, especially early-stage, as well as good-sized exits.
Yes, there’s plenty of talk about an AI bubble. But for now, investors seem quite comfortable backing follow-on rounds for hot companies at ever-higher valuations and exit markets look accommodating. Broadly, the direction is still upward.
Related reading:
- Global Venture Funding In 2025 Surged As Startup Deals And Valuations Set All-Time Records
- Crunchbase Predicts: Why Top VCs Expect More Venture Dollars, Bigger Rounds And Fewer Winners In 2026
- These Were The Largest Funding Rounds Of 2025
- Crunchbase Predicts: Why The Race For Talent And Tech Could Accelerate Startup M&A In 2026
- Crunchbase Predicts: IPOs Picked Up In 2025 And The Outlook For 2026 Is Even More Optimistic
- What We Learned From 6 Active AI Investors Backing Startups Across The Stack
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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North American Startup Funding Soared 46% In 2025, Driven By AI Boom
Share:
A boom year for North American startup funding ended on an up note.
Investors poured $280 billion into seed through growth-stage rounds for U.S. and Canadian companies in 2025, per Crunchbase data. It was the highest annual total in four years, with funding up a whopping 46% from 2024.
The fourth quarter also delivered a strong finish to 2025 with $67 billion in reported investment, the second-highest quarterly tally for the year. 1 Early-stage dealmaking was particularly robust, hitting the highest level in the past four quarters.
While funding rose, deal counts declined a bit in 2025 and in Q4, as more capital was concentrated in larger rounds. Overall, deal count declined about 16% year-over-year, with just under 10,500 reported rounds.2 Deal count also declined about 14% sequentially in Q4.
Of course, AI was the dominant technology trend for the year, capturing a record sum. Beyond new rounds, investors also logged some gains, as IPOs, M&A and multibillion-dollar deals conceived as acquihires all contributed to ROI.
Below, we look at these trends along with a more granular look at Q4 funding.
Artificial intelligence
We’ll start with AI, as that’s where most of the money went.
Around $168 billion — or roughly 60% of all North American startup funding — went to companies in AI-related categories, per Crunchbase. Investment held up in Q4, with around $36 billion, or more than half of total funding, going to AI.
The tally included multiple billion-dollar-plus rounds. For Q4, the largest AI deals were a $2.3 billion Series D for Anysphere and its Cursor coding automation platform and a $2 billion Series B for software development AI startup Reflection AI.
For the full year, meanwhile, the largest AI rounds were OpenAI’s $40 billion SoftBank-led financing in March and Anthropic’s $13 billion Series F in September.
Late stage
Startup funding was also strong across most stages in both Q4 and all of 2025. This held true for late-stage and technology-growth dealmaking, which drew $191 billion for the full year — up 75% from 2024.
For Q4, meanwhile, investors put about $41 billion into late- and growth-stage deals, down a smidge from the prior quarter.
For Q4, the largest late-stage deals included a $1.5 billion Series E for Lambda, a provider of supercomputers for AI inference, and a $1.4 billion Series E for AI data center developer Crusoe.
Early stage
Investors were also pretty generous about writing checks to early-stage companies last year.
Overall, close to $69 billion went to Series A and Series B-stage companies in 2025, up about 5% year over year. Funding hit a high point in Q4, with $21.6 billion going to early-stage deals.
For Q4, some of the largest deals included a $700 million Series B for identity security provider Saviynt and a $600 million Series B for AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence.
Seed
Seed-stage investors were also not slouches in 2025, putting around $20.4 billion into reported rounds for the most nascent startups. However, that’s a bit of a decline from 2024, which saw about 9% more in known investment.
Deal counts also ticked lower last year, hitting a nadir in Q4, with just over 1,300 reported seed financings. (As always, we expect that total to rise a bit over time as more deals get entered into the dataset.)
The idea of a seed round being synonymous with small, of course, is now an outdated concept. This was evident in Q4, which had multiple jumbo-sized seed deals, including a $475 million financing for Unconventional AI, which is focused on energy-efficient AI computing.
Exits
Both 2025 and Q4 were also reasonably active periods for sizable exits of both the IPO and M&A varieties
IPO: For IPOs, Q4 closed out the year with a few big debuts including electric aircraft maker Beta Technologies and corporate travel and expense platform Navan. For the full year, the largest IPOs were AI infrastructure provider Coreweave and design software platform Figma.
M&A: It was also a happening year for big M&A deals. The largest of these was Google’s planned purchase of Wiz for $32 billion, announced in March.
Many of the standout deals came in the fourth quarter. Biggest among these was Nvidia’s December deal to acquire assets of AI inference chip developer Groq in a transaction reportedly valued at $20 billion.
In addition, Trump Media and Technology announced plans in December to merge with fusion company TAE Technologies in a transaction said to be valued at $6 billion. And Palo Alto Networks purchased Chronosphere, a provider of data observability tools, for $3.35 billion.
Indicators don’t point to a slowdown
There’s little in the 2025 and Q4 data that points to a slowdown ahead. In particular, the year closed on an up note for both big rounds, especially early-stage, as well as good-sized exits.
Yes, there’s plenty of talk about an AI bubble. But for now, investors seem quite comfortable backing follow-on rounds for hot companies at ever-higher valuations and exit markets look accommodating. Broadly, the direction is still upward.
Related reading:
- Global Venture Funding In 2025 Surged As Startup Deals And Valuations Set All-Time Records
- Crunchbase Predicts: Why Top VCs Expect More Venture Dollars, Bigger Rounds And Fewer Winners In 2026
- These Were The Largest Funding Rounds Of 2025
- Crunchbase Predicts: Why The Race For Talent And Tech Could Accelerate Startup M&A In 2026
- Crunchbase Predicts: IPOs Picked Up In 2025 And The Outlook For 2026 Is Even More Optimistic
- What We Learned From 6 Active AI Investors Backing Startups Across The Stack
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Read More
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