Led By A16Z, Active Investors Upped Their Game In 2024

Thanks to venture capitalists’ appetite for artificial intelligence deals, startups saw a measurable pickup in funding last year. But not all investors participated equally in the gains.

A handful of mostly cross-stage firms led both the largest number of rounds and the most valuable ones, Crunchbase data shows. For those who follow startup funding, they are mostly familiar names.

Topping or nearly topping the list by multiple metrics was Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. The Silicon Valley firm, a U.S.-centric investor, has long been known for both the high number of deals it backs and the large sums it spends.

It appears 2024 was no exception. Andreessen ranked as the most-active global post-seed investor, participating in 100 reported rounds. Y Combinator 1, General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners filled out the next three spots with 97, 84, and 79 rounds, respectively.

For a bigger-picture view, we charted out the 13 most-active post-seed investors below.

Notably, all but two of the most-active investors listed above took part in more deals in 2024 than in 2023. Several picked up the pace considerably, including Sequoia Capital, Accel and Index Ventures.

Most-active and highest-spending lead investors

In addition to tallying who participated in the most rounds, we also took at the most-active lead or co-lead investors. This gives us a sense of which investors were also taking a large stake in the rounds in which they participated.

By this metric, General Catalyst took a narrow lead, serving as lead or co-lead investor in 41 post-seed financings last year, well above 2023 levels. A16z and Alumni Ventures filled out the No. 2 and No. 3 slots, respectively.

Below, we charted out the 14 most-active lead and co-lead investors of the year. As you can see, all but one were more active in 2024 than in 2023.

Of course, it’s not just how many rounds a firm leads that’s significant. It also matters how much an investor puts into those deals.

Unfortunately, there’s no exact way to rank who spent the most. This is because rounds with multiple investors rarely come with a disclosed breakdown of each backer’s share.

Nonetheless, we can get a general sense of who put the largest sums of capital to work by looking at the aggregate size of rounds that a particular investor led or co-led.

By this benchmark, the frontrunner is Thrive Capital, largely due to its role as lead backer in two massive Q4 financings: a $10 billion late-stage round for Databricks and a $6.6 billion investment in OpenAI.

A16z came in second, boosted by its role as co-lead backer for the Databricks round as well as a $1 billion financing for cybersecurity provider Wiz (which Thrive also co-led). Insight Partners ranked third, also largely due to its role as co-lead investor in the Databricks round.

For a fuller representation, below we ranked the 16 investors who led- or co-led rounds with the highest aggregate value in 2024.

Seed super-investors

Global seed investment declined a bit year-over-year in 2024, based on data reported to date. Given that, it’s not entirely surprising to see that roughly half of our most-active seed investors also had fewer reported deals last year, as charted below.

Nonetheless, it’s not as if activity cratered. Regular front-runner Y Combinator alone, for instance, made nearly 700 seed investments. Runners up Antler and Techstars had more than 300 and nearly 200, respectively.

Heavy fluctuation in reported deal counts also isn’t uncommon for seed investors, who often report investments in batches. We also expect the numbers to rise a bit in coming weeks and months as more seed deals are added late to the dataset.

Onward to 2025

Broadly, there’s no obvious indicator in the most-active investor rankings that points to a slowdown in coming months. Funding by dollar volume actually picked up markedly in the fourth quarter, driven by the closing of enormous rounds for companies including Databricks and OpenAI.

That said, some of the recent momentum is driven by investor optimism that exits, and IPOs in particular, will see a revival this year. If that does not come to pass, expect investors to rein in some of their current enthusiasm.

Related reading:

Illustration: Dom Guzman