As Funding To AI Startups Increases And Concentrates, Which Investors Have Led?

As funding to AI companies has grown this year and concentrated into fewer companies, Crunchbase data shows that a mix of private equity and alternative investors, Big Tech companies and venture capital firms have led the way.

AI-related companies have raised $118 billion as of Aug. 15, up from $108 billion for all of 2024. Funding to the sector has more than doubled in the same timeframe.

Proportions are also up: 48% of global venture funding year to date has been invested in AI-related companies, up from a third in 2024.

Capital concentrates

A select few companies raised a greater proportion of funding in this sector.

Of that $118 billion, eight companies have collectively raised $73 billion via billion-dollar rounds, representing 62% of funding to AI-related companies. That includes a $40 billion raise by OpenAI.

Contrast that with 2024 when 13 AI-related companies raised $47 billion, representing 44% of AI funding that year.

Across both 2024 and 2025, six of these companies raised billion-dollar rounds in both years. They include, in order of total funding since 2024, OpenAI, xAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Anduril Industries and Safe Superintelligence.

Meanwhile, billion-dollar round proportions in non-AI companies amounted to 4% of funding in 2025 and 5% in 2024.

Leading the biggest commitments

Investors include a varied mix.

SoftBank has led — by a wide margin — with the $40 billion round it led in OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation.

Greenoaks led the $2 billion funding to Safe Superintelligence, and Thrive Capital led both a $900 million funding round in Anysphere and $600 million in Isomorphic Labs.

On the corporate side, Meta, SpaceX and Google have committed the most so far this year. Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI at a value of $29 billion, which included its founder Alexandr Wang joining Meta. SpaceX led the $5 billion funding in xAI. Google invested in AI Labs,  $1 billion in Anthropic, and $300 million funding in AI21 labs.

On the venture front, the largest rounds were led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which led a $3.5 billion subsequent round in Anthropic, Andreessen Horowitz led the $2 billion round in Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, Founders Fund led a $2.5 billion round in Anduril, Accel led a half-billion-dollar round in Perplexity, and Khosla Ventures led the Series C for ClickHouse, as well as co-led Abridge’s Series E. Other investors that co-led big rounds in the space are Kleiner Perkins’ investment in Applied Intuition, and Alumni Ventures’ participation in Lambda’s Series D, to name a few.

With the large dollar commitment and the frenzied dealmaking in AI companies, dry powder in the U.S. venture industry could sink to below 2019 levels per data tracked by Jon Sakoda of Decibel Partners, as reported by The Information.

As AI companies demonstrate stellar growth,  investors will continue to compete to invest in large rounds at huge valuations. As fundraising has slowed in the past few years, venture firms might need to go back to their limited partners for funds.

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data reported is as of Aug. 15, 2025.

AI includes all startups tagged with the industries in our artificial intelligence industry group. These include AI infrastructure, AI labs and AI applications that are native or when AI is central to its business operations.

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.)

Related reading:

Illustration: Dom Guzman