North American Startup Funding Soared 46% In 2025, Driven By AI Boom

A boom year for North American startup funding ended on an up note.

Investors poured $280 billion into seed through growth-stage rounds for U.S. and Canadian companies in 2025, per SA国际传媒 data. It was the highest annual total in four years, with funding up a whopping 46% from 2024.

The fourth quarter also delivered a strong finish to 2025 with $67 billion in reported investment, the second-highest quarterly tally for the year. 1 Early-stage dealmaking was particularly robust, hitting the highest level in the past four quarters.

While funding rose, deal counts declined a bit in 2025 and in Q4, as more capital was concentrated in larger rounds. Overall, deal count declined about 16% year-over-year, with just under 10,500 reported rounds.2 Deal count also declined about 14% sequentially in Q4.

Of course, AI was the dominant technology trend for the year, capturing a record sum. Beyond new rounds, investors also logged some gains, as IPOs, M&A and multibillion-dollar deals conceived as acquihires all contributed to ROI.

Below, we look at these trends along with a more granular look at Q4 funding.

Artificial intelligence
Late stage
Early stage
Seed
Exits
Indicators don鈥檛 point to a slowdown
Methodology
Glossary of funding terms

Artificial intelligence

We鈥檒l start with AI, as that鈥檚 where most of the money went.

Around $168 billion 鈥� or roughly 60% of all North American startup funding 鈥� went to companies in AI-related categories, per SA国际传媒. Investment held up in Q4, with around $36 billion, or more than half of total funding, going to AI.

The tally included multiple billion-dollar-plus rounds. For Q4, the largest AI deals were a $2.3 billion Series D for and its Cursor coding automation platform, and a $2 billion Series B for software development AI startup .听

For the full year, meanwhile, the largest AI rounds were 鈥檚 $40 billion -led financing in March and 鈥檚 $13 billion Series F in September.

Late stage

Startup funding was also strong across most stages in both Q4 and all of 2025. This held true for late-stage and technology-growth dealmaking, which drew $191 billion for the full year 鈥斕� up 75% from 2024.听

For Q4, meanwhile, investors put about $41 billion into late- and growth-stage deals, down a smidge from the prior quarter.

For Q4, the largest late-stage deals included a $1.5 billion Series E for , a provider of supercomputers for AI inference, and a $1.4 billion Series E for AI data center developer .

Early stage

Investors were also pretty generous about writing checks to early-stage companies last year.听

Overall, close to $69 billion went to Series A- and Series B-stage companies in 2025, up about 5% year over year. Funding hit a high point in Q4, with $21.6 billion going to early-stage deals.

For Q4, some of the largest deals included a $700 million Series B for identity security provider and a $600 million Series B for AI robotics startup .

Seed

Seed-stage investors were also not slouches in 2025, putting around $20.4 billion into reported rounds for the most nascent startups. However, that鈥檚 a bit of a decline from 2024, which saw about 9% more in known investment.

Deal counts also ticked lower last year, hitting a nadir in Q4, with just over 1,300 reported seed financings. (As always, we expect that total to rise a bit over time as more deals get entered into the dataset.)

The idea of a seed round being synonymous with small, of course, is now an outdated concept. This was evident in Q4, which had multiple jumbo-sized seed deals, including a $475 million financing for , which is focused on energy-efficient AI computing.

Exits

Both 2025 and Q4 were also reasonably active periods for sizable exits of both the IPO and M&A varieties.

IPO: For IPOs, Q4 closed out the year with a few big debuts including electric aircraft maker and corporate travel and expense platform . For the full year, the largest IPOs were AI infrastructure provider and design software platform .

M&A: It was also a happening year for big M&A deals. The largest of these was 鈥檚 planned purchase of for $32 billion, announced in March.

Many of the standout deals came in the fourth quarter. Biggest among these was 鈥檚 December deal to acquire assets of AI inference chip developer in a transaction reportedly at $20 billion.

In addition, announced plans in December to merge with fusion company in a transaction said to be valued at $6 billion. And purchased , a provider of data observability tools, for $3.35 billion.听

Indicators don鈥檛 point to a slowdown

There鈥檚 little in the 2025 and Q4 data that points to a slowdown ahead. In particular, the year closed on an up note for big rounds, especially early-stage, as well as good-sized exits.

Yes, there鈥檚 plenty of talk about an AI bubble. But for now, investors seem quite comfortable backing follow-on rounds for hot companies at ever-higher valuations and exit markets look accommodating. Broadly, the direction is still upward.

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from SA国际传媒, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026.

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. SA国际传媒 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 SA国际传媒 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. SA国际传媒 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. SA国际传媒 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 鈥淪eries [Letter]鈥� 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 鈥渧enture鈥� round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

SA国际传媒