The ranks of most-active U.S. startup investors featured familiar names in October, as leading players continued to back an AI-dominated assortment of large rounds.
Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel, Nvidia and Y Combinator were standouts for the month across metrics including deal count, lead rounds and size of lead rounds. Overall, activity remained close to September’s busy levels, even as some big names scaled back a bit.
Below, we look at October’s active investor rankings in closer detail across four metrics: active venture investors, lead backers, high spenders and seed dealmakers.
Most-active venture investors
Among venture investors, Andreessen Horowitz ranked as the most-active dealmaker, backing at least 14 rounds valued at $5 million or more during the course of the month.
Sequoia Capital and General Catalyst tied for second place, with 13 deals each, followed by Accel, with nine.
Lead investors
As for lead investors, Andreessen once again led the pack on this count. The Silicon Valley firm led seven known U.S. post-seed rounds in October, well ahead of any other investor.
Meanwhile, three other firms led four deals apiece: Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and Accel.
Highest-spending lead investors
In addition to tracking who backed the most deals, we also try to gauge who put the most capital to work. This isn’t an exact measure, as rounds with multiple investors rarely break out individual contributions.
However, we can get a sense by looking at who led or co-led rounds with the highest aggregate dollar value.
By this measure, Nvidia was far and away the spendiest lead investor in October, mostly due to leading a $2 billion Series B for Reflection.AI.
Next on the list is Mubadala Capital, which co-led a $1.38 billion financing for Crusoe Energy Systems, a developer of AI data centers and infrastructure.
Seed investors
Among active seed investors, meanwhile, Y Combinator held on to its customary spot in first place. The storied accelerator had more than 3x the reported seed investments of anyone else on the list. Even so, its investment pace slowed considerably month over month.
Below are the other most-active seed investors
An active month overall
Overall, active investors kept busy in the course of the month, although several did tamp down the dealmaking pace. As we come closer to year-end, it’s likely we’ll see some pickup in coming weeks, followed by the usual winter holiday season slowdown.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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