6 Charts That Show The Big AI Funding Trends Of 2025

AI was the leading sector for startup funding globally from 2023 through 2025. In each year, funding amounts to this sector have gone up dramatically and proportions have increased.

At the close of 2025, OpenAI is the most valuable private company of all time, valued at $500 billion. Not far down the list is rival Anthropic, the fourth-most valuable at $183 billion. Together, those two companies alone make up close to 10% of the value on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board.

As AI reshapes the venture industry, here are six charts to visualize the transformation via Crunchbase data.

AI funding surges in 2025

AI captured close to 50% of all global funding in 2025, up from 34% in 2024, Crunchbase data shows. A total of $202.3 billion has been invested in the AI sector in 2025 so far, which includes the whole stack — AI infrastructure, foundation labs and applications.

All told, funding to AI increased more than 75% year over year from the $114 billion invested in 2024.

Foundation labs raise a greater share

The foundation model companies have raised $80 billion in 2025 to date, representing 40% of global AI funding, per Crunchbase data. Model company funding this year has more than doubled from $31 billion in 2024, when that investment totaled about 27% of all AI funding.

The two largest foundation companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, alone captured 14% of global venture investment this year.

One trend to watch in 2026: Will the leading model developers continue to raise tens of billions through equity investment to address their voracious appetite for compute in 2026, or will partnerships meet that gap?

The hyperscalers have committed an estimated $300 billion-plus to capex in 2025 and have increased that investment commitment for 2026.

US sets a high bar

The U.S. has dominated AI funding. A total of $159 billion — or 79% of funding — to the sector has gone to U.S-based companies in 2025. The San Francisco Bay Area alone raised $122 billion of that, or more than three quarters of AI funding in the U.S.

For sole lead investors, PE dominated

A list of corporate investors — Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Intercontinental Exchange, ASML, The Walt Disney Co. and Google — have led billion-dollar rounds into AI companies this year, Crunchbase data shows.

Meta notably led a $14.3 billion investment into Scale AI, with around 10 key team members leaving the startup to join Meta, including CEO Alexandr Wang.

However, despite leading the largest number of billion-dollar AI funding deals this year, it was not that class of corporate investors that led the largest amounts in AI-related companies in 2025.

Rather, private equity and alternative investors dominated, with SoftBank leading the biggest deal in 2025 with its $40 billion investment into OpenAI. PE-led deals with a single lead investor in rounds of $1 million or more in 2025 totaled $63 billion across around 300 rounds.

By contrast, venture capital firms led rounds totaling $38 billion in deals with a sole lead investor across 1,600 fundings of $1 million or more. While VC led fewer billion-dollar rounds, it was the most active, the driver of this asset class, leading 75% of the deals analyzed.

The three venture firms to lead billion dollar deals in AI in 2025 were Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.

Large rounds concentrate at the top

The bulk of larger startup funding rounds in 2025 were invested in AI-related companies. In AI, 58% of funding was in megarounds of $500 million or more.

According to Menlo Ventures‘ recently published generative AI report, enterprise AI revenue reached $37 billion in 2025, up more than 3x year over year with $19 billion in user-facing products and $18 billion in AI infrastructure.

Global venture capital grew in 2025 after a slower funding year in 2024 and 2023. Our data illustrates the extent to which AI dominated the venture capital landscape in 2025, with capital concentrating into the biggest startups.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman