Global venture funding gained significantly in Q3 2025, closing up 38% year over year, Crunchbase data shows, as massive funding deals, particularly for giants in the AI sector, continued to lead.
All told, Q3 venture investment reached $97 billion, up from $70 billion in Q3 2024, per Crunchbase data. Quarter-over-quarter, funding was up slightly from $92 billion in Q2.
In each of the last four quarters, global startup funding has been above $90 billion — quarterly amounts not seen since Q3 2022 — Crunchbase data shows.
Startup investment has also now posted a year-over-year increase for the past four quarters, driven by megarounds of $500 million or more, largely to AI-related companies.
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Capital concentration
As funding has increased this year, so has capital concentration.
Over the last four quarters, venture investment has concentrated into rounds of $500 million or more, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows, with more than 30% of funding each quarter going toward such megarounds.
The three largest venture rounds in Q3 2025 were raised by foundation model companies Anthropic ($13 billion), xAI ($5.3 billion) and Mistral AI ($2 billion). Billion-dollar-plus funding deals also went to Princeton Digital Group, Nscale, Cerebras Systems, Figure, Databricks and PsiQuantum.
All in all, a third of all venture investment in Q3 went to just 18 companies that raised funding rounds of $500 million or more each. That is well above historical proportions before Q4 2024. Megaround funding also gained steam as the quarter progressed, with 11 of the 18 companies raising funding in September.
AI leads
In another blockbuster quarter for AI funding, $45 billion — or around 46% of global venture funding — went to the sector, with 29% invested in a single company, Anthropic.
Hardware was the second-largest sector, with large rounds raised by robotic, semiconductor, quantum and data infrastructure companies in the third quarter totaling $16.2 billion, per Crunchbase data.
The healthcare and biotech sector raised $15.8 billion in venture funding in Q3, making it the third-largest sector for the quarter.
Financial services, the fourth-largest sector, raised $12 billion in total.
Along with a greater concentration of capital in larger companies, the U.S. predominated, with $60 billion — or just under two-thirds of global venture capital — going to U.S.-based companies in Q3.
Late stage funding up YoY
Most of the third quarter’s year over year gains were in late-stage funding. Late-stage investment in Q3 totaled $58 billion, up more than 66% year over year, and slightly higher quarter over quarter, Crunchbase data shows.
(The peak quarter for late-stage funding in 2025 was Q1, with the $40 billion round for OpenAI significantly boosting the numbers).
Early stage slightly up
Early-stage funding totaled nearly $30 billion for more than 1,700 companies in Q3, Crunchbase data shows. That’s up just over 10% quarter over quarter and year over year.
Larger Series A and B rounds were raised by companies working on AI data workloads, energy, quantum, robotics, biotech and AI applications.
Seed increases
Seed funding reached $9 billion in Q3 across more than 3,500 companies. Seed funding was up slightly from $8.5 billion invested a year ago. (Seed funding totals also typically increase over time, as many seed rounds are added to the Crunchbase dataset after the close of a quarter.)
Strong exit activity in Q3 2025
For the second quarter in a row, IPO activity increased year over year. The largest venture-backed IPOs in Q3 by value were Chery Automobile, Figma, Klarna and Netskope.
On a global basis, 16 venture-backed companies went public above $1 billion in Q3, collectively valued north of $90 billion at their IPO prices. That compares to 18 companies in Q2 with a collective $60 billion in value. Both quarters were up significantly from 2024.
In Q3 2025, M&A dollar volume reached $27.5 billion in reported exit value for venture-backed companies, Crunchbase data shows. That’s down from $43.6 billion in Q2.
Nine companies were acquired for more than $1 billion each in Q3, Crunchbase data shows. Four of the companies were in healthcare and biotech. The remainder were in sectors including cybersecurity, AI, financial services, product development and sports betting. Notable among these was OpenAI’s acquisition of Statsig and Workday’s acquisition of Sana.
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 2, 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
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