In May, U.S. venture capital concentrated into fewer but much larger rounds, with Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst each leading six deals and Lightspeed leading five. Massive fundraises — Anthropic’s $50 billion Series H, Anduril’s $5 billion round and Cognition’s $1 billion Series D — pushed near‑record fundraising and concentrated venture funding into AI-focused startups, signaling stronger adoption and capital flow for established investors.

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These days, U.S. startup investors are putting more money to work than ever, but they’re concentrating capital into a smaller number of deals.

That trend is reflected in the May tallies for most active investors. Crunchbase data showed top dealmakers weren’t setting any records for deal count. However, they wrote some enormous checks for those they did back.

Familiar names dominated the most active investor ranks, including regulars on our list like Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst and Y Combinator. The highest spending investors, meanwhile, included lead backers in Anthropic’s massive Series H last week.

For a more granular view, we broke out ranks below by category, including active lead backers, highest spending investors, and most prolific venture dealmakers.

Busiest lead investors

General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz were the most active lead investors in May, leading or co-leading six rounds each. This included some exceptionally large deals, such as Anduril’s $5 billion Series H, co-led by Andreessen, and Cognition’s $1 billion Series D, co-led by General Catalyst.

Lightspeed Venture Partners was the next-busiest lead investor, with five deals, followed by Upfront Ventures and Index Ventures, with four rounds each. For a broader perspective, below we chart out the 10 most active lead investors by deal count:

Highest spending lead investors

Of course, the most prolific dealmakers aren’t always those leading the largest rounds. For May, investors who led deals with the highest aggregate value were all co-lead backers in Anthropic’s massive $50 billion Series H. This included Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, and Greenoaks, along with Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, Iconiq Capital and XN which co-led the investment.

Next on the list were Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, which co-led Anduril’s $5 billion fundraise. To complete the picture, below we rank the 17 investors who led or co-led May rounds with the highest aggregate value.

Most active venture dealmakers

When we stop focusing exclusively on lead investors, the list of most active dealmakers changes up some, but not dramatically.

The most active investors in rounds of $5 million or more for May include Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst. Y Combinator typically ranks high on this list, as it commonly co-invests as a non-lead investor in follow-on rounds for startups it incubated.

For a broader picture of most active venture backers, below we ranked the top 10 for May.

Same dealmakers, bigger rounds

Overall, May’s active investor tallies painted a picture of a startup funding scene still dominated by familiar names.

Given the huge funds raised in recent years by big-name venture and growth investors, it’s no surprise to see them putting capital to work. Increasingly, they’re doing that in the form of larger rounds, with capital flowing in particular flowing to consensus picks in AI.