North American Startup Funding Held High In Q3

North American startup funding held strong in the third quarter, boosted by investors’ still-voracious appetite for artificial intelligence.

In total, investors put $63.1 billion into reported seed through growth-stage rounds for U.S. and Canadian companies in Q3, per Crunchbase data. That’s up incrementally from the prior quarter. However, it’s far above year-ago levels, with more than $20 billion in additional funding.

The high funding level was the result of bigger rounds, not more of them. For Q3, 2,276 reported rounds got added to the Crunchbase dataset 1, down a bit from the prior quarter and far below year-ago levels.

Round counts were down at all stages except later stage.

In addition to being more highly concentrated, the past quarter’s dealmaking was heavily AI-centric. Per Crunchbase data, roughly 57% of all North American funding went to companies in AI-related categories. This included the quarter’s largest round, a $13 billion Series F for Anthropic, which alone accounted for more than a fifth of total startup investment in the region last quarter.

Of course, headline-grabbing gargantuan rounds weren’t the only trends to watch. We also saw an uptick in funding at early stage, and exit activity was reasonably strong, lifted by Figma’s splashy market debut in late July.

Below, we look at funding for each stage in greater detail, and also take a look at AI-related investment and standout exits.

Table of contents

Late stage and technology growth

Late-stage dealmaking was up sequentially in Q3, so we’ll start there.

Altogether, an estimated $42.9 billion went to late-stage and technology growth financings last quarter. As charted below, it was the third-highest tally in the past five quarters.

The aforementioned Anthropic megaround went a long way to boosting the totals. And while no other deal came close in size, there were also some other big rounds in mix.

Cerebras, a developer of AI processors, closed out the quarter by raising $1.1 billion in Series G funding, later withdrawing plans for an anticipated IPO. Next were humanoid robotics startup Figure and quantum computing company PsiQuantum, both of which secured $1 billion financings.

Early stage

It was also a pretty good quarter for early-stage fundraising.

Companies at Series A and Series B stage pulled in $15.6 billion in Q3 — the highest tally of the past five quarters, as charted below.

The rise in funding resulted from larger average round sizes, however, not more deals. In fact, the number of reported deals actually hit a low point for the year this past quarter.

Moreover, not every round classified as early stage goes to an immature startup. This is the case, for example, for the largest early-stage Q3 round, Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ $863 million Series B2. Although technically an early-stage round, it’s worth noting that the company was founded in 2017 and closed its initial Series B tranche nearly four years ago.

Other standout early-stage rounds for the quarter hailed from sectors such as quantum computing, AI and biotech. This includes quantum computing startup Quantinuum, which raised a $600 million Nvidia-backed Series B, AI robotics platform Field AI, which announced two rounds totaling $405 million, and scientific intelligence platform Lila Sciences, which secured a $235 million Series A.

Seed stage

Unlike early stage, seed investment contracted in the third quarter. However, it should also be observed that Q2 was a hard act to follow, with Thinking Machines Lab scoring $2 billion in what ranks as by far the largest seed round of all time.

Over the course of Q3, by contrast, investors put a total of $4.6 billion into reported North American seed rounds. That’s a decline of 25% from the prior quarter and 14% above year-ago levels.

While seed stage is best known for smaller rounds to nascent companies, Q3 did bring us some rather large deals as well. Periodic Labs, a developer of AI tools for scientific experiments, picked up $300 million in initial funding, while Upscale AI and Tala Health each closed on $100 million.

AI in Q3

Recently, we’ve also been breaking out AI funding in our quarterly reports, to see how this ultra-hot investment theme is impacting our tallies.

For Q3, AI startup investment totaled $35.7 billion, roughly flat with the prior quarter and nearly double the year-ago number. The broad takeaway here is that AI venture dealmaking isn’t taking off compared to a few months ago, but it isn’t slowing down either.

Exits: IPOs and M&A

The just-ended quarter was also a reasonably active period for exits, with some large IPOs garnering particular attention.

The far-and-away most attention-getting debut of the quarter was design software company Figma’s IPO on Nasdaq. Shares more than tripled in initial trading. However, demand has subsided since, leaving the company recently valued around $26 billion. Other good-sized debuts this past quarter came from StubHub, Netskope and Firefly Aerospace.

There was less high-profile M&A activity during the quarter, although we did see some good-sized purchases. Atlassian was among the more prolific dealmakers, announcing plans in Q3 to purchase developer AI platform DX for $1 billion and AI browser developer The Browser Co. for $610 million. OpenAI was also a big spender, agreeing to pay $1.1 billion for product testing startup Stasig.

Not slowing down

The Q3 report is the latest of several quarterly synopses that showcase a robust startup funding scene, with plenty of cash available in particular for compelling AI upstarts.

But it would be remiss to leave the impression that all sectors are seeing a rise. Biotech funding, for example, has been trending lower and accounting for a smaller share of total investment. These are also not bullish times for cleantech.

On balance, however, it’s hard to deny that the general direction of investment has been trending higher. And so far, there’s little indication this part of the cycle is on the way out.

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 6, 2025.

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.)

Illustration: Dom Guzman