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State of AI 2022 Report

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Global AI funding fell by 34% in 2022 but rebounded on a quarterly basis in Q4’22 — breaking a streak of 4 quarters of decline.

Global AI funding fell to $45.8B in 2022 — down 34% from 2021’s record tally but still significantly above pre-2021 levels. Annual deals held up better, sliding 10% to hit 2,956.

This annual funding drop aligned with broader VC funding activity, but AI’s quarterly performance bucked the overall trend in Q4’22. While AI funding increased 15% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) to reach $9.3B in Q4’22, venture funding as a whole saw a 19% fall over the same period.

Other 2022 highlights across the AI ecosystem include:

  • In 2022, the total AI unicorn herd reached 166 with 34 new unicorn births. This is just less than half the number born in 2021. In Q4’22, 5 AI unicorns emerged — quickening the pace QoQ but at a slower rate than in 2021. Additions in Q4’22 included Stability AI, a generative AI company that raised a $101M seed round.
  • The number of mega-rounds in 2022 plummeted from 2021’s record high to just 115, a 39% drop. These deals represented $21.8B in funding, down 47% year-over-year (YoY). The top AI round was a $1.5B Series E to defense tech startup Anduril.
  • AI exits fell across the board in 2022, with the number of M&A deals, IPOs, and SPACs all tumbling. M&A exits held up best, only falling by 17% YoY to 259 deals. IPOs nosedived by 57% to 19. SPACs plunged by 50% to 8.
  • Europe bucked the broader trend for AI investment activity. In 2022, AI deals increased by 6% to 616 — a record level for the region. Funding also held up relatively well, falling by 9% to $6.2B. The UK drove a great deal of this activity, accounting for 48% of Europe’s AI funding and 32% of its deals in 2022.

Download the full State of AI 2022 Report to dig into all these trends and more.

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Funding & Business

The great AI agent acceleration: Why enterprise adoption is happening faster than anyone predicted

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Enterprise AI agent adoption is accelerating faster than predicted. Get the 4 key takeaways from VB Transform 2025 on how leaders from Intuit, Capital One, and more are deploying agents in production and reshaping their teams for a new era of AI.Read More



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Fintech Attracts Biggest Rounds While AI Holds Strong

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Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board.

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

This week was a productive period for fintech funding, with two companies in the space — iCapital and Bilt Rewards — pulling in the largest rounds. In addition, we also saw sizable financings for companies in a range of other industries, including micromobility, drug discovery and green steel.

1. iCapital, $820M, fintech:  iCapital, a fintech platform for alternative investments and investors, raised more than $820 million in a funding round that took its valuation to over $7.5 billion. SurgoCap Partners and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price co-led the financing for the New York-based company.

2. Bilt Rewards, $250M, fintech: Bilt Rewards, a rewards program for home renters to use with local merchants, raised $250 million in a venture round led by General Catalyst and GID. The financing sets a $10.75 billion valuation for the New York-based company.

3. Also, $200M, micromobility: Also, a micromobility startup spun out of Rivian, raised a reported $200 million in a new financing led by Greenoaks at a $1 billion valuation. The Palo Alto, California-based company is developing small EVs, with an initial product launch anticipated next year.

3. Varda, $187M, spacetech and drug discovery: El Segundo, California-based Varda, a self-described “microgravity-enabled life sciences company,” raised $187 million in a Series C led by Natural Capital and Shrug Capital. The company bases its research on the finding that materials including active pharmaceutical ingredients crystallize differently in space, enabling novel drug formulations.

4. MaintainX, $150M, equipment maintenance: MaintainX, which operates an equipment maintenance and asset management platform, raised $150 million in a Series D backed by a long list of investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. The financing boosted the San Francisco-based startup’s valuation to $2.5 billion.

5. Harmonic, $100M, AI: Harmonic, a developer of AI mathematical reasoning models, announced a $100 million Series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins. The round brings total funding to date for the 2-year-old, Palo Alto, California-based company to $175 million, per Crunchbase data.

6. Neuros Medical, $56M, neurostimulation: Neuros Medical, developer of an electrical nerve stimulation system used to treat chronic post-amputation pain, raised $56 million in a Series D round. EQT Life Sciences led the financing for the Aliso Viejo, California-based company.

7. ServiceUp, $55M, vehicle repair: Los Gatos, California-based ServiceUp, developer of a platform for fleet operators to manage repairs and maintenance, raised $55 million in a Series B round led by PeakSpan Capital.

8. Renasant Bio, $54.5M, biopharma: Renasant Bio launched with $54.5 million in seed funding to develop treatments for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. 5AM Ventures led the financing for the Berkeley, California-based startup.

9. (tied) Boston Metal, $51M, green steel: Green steel maker Boston Metal announced that it raised $51 million in a convertible note investment from existing investors including BHP Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Piva Capital and SiteGround. The funds will be used in part for a metals plant in Brazil, slated to come online next year.

9.(tied) Spacelift, $51M, enterprise software: Redwood City, California-based Spacelift, developer of an infrastructure orchestration platform for enterprises, raised $51 million in Series C funding led by Five Elms Capital with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and Inovo.vc.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of July 4-11. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration: Dom Guzman


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Accel, General Catalyst Topped Increasingly Busy Active Investor Ranks In Q2

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The most active global startup investors largely got busier in the second quarter of 2025, backing and leading more rounds and putting larger sums of capital into deals.

Overall, nine of the 10 most active venture investors did more deals in Q2 than in Q1, per Crunchbase data. Ditto for 80% of the top 10 lead investors by deal count, as well as the vast majority of the spendiest investors in Q2.

However, while many big-name firms upped their investment activity, we did see one Q1 record-setter step back. SoftBank, which backed OpenAI’s unprecedented $40 billion financing in late March, did not place in any of our most-active or highest-spending investor rankings for Q2.

Below, we drill into the active investor rankings in more detail, looking at top venture investors, biggest spenders and busiest seed backers.

Lead venture investors

We’ll start with lead investors, as this provides a snapshot of busy dealmakers who also put a lot of capital to work in each round.

For Q2, Accel and General Catalyst  stood out as the most active by this metric, with 20 and 16 lead rounds, respectively.

Many of those deals were jumbo-sized investments as well. Accel, for example, led five rounds of $100 million more, including a $500 million financing for generative AI unicorn Perplexity and a $260 million Series C for spacetech startup True Anomaly.

General Catalyst also kept busy, leading eight deals of $100 million and up. Its biggest investment was a $1 billion financing for AI writing and productivity assistant Grammarly.

The rest of the top five — Insight Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners — weren’t too far behind. Below, we ranked them in a list of the 21 most-active lead investors for the quarter.

Spendiest investors

While Accel and General Catalyst may have led the most deals, they didn’t spend the most money in Q2.

That title goes to Meta for a single deal: Its $14.3 billion investment for Scale AI as part of a strategic and financial deal that also had founder Alexandr Wang join the social media giant.

After Meta, the next-heaviest spenders were Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. For Founders, the ranking was mostly due to the $2.5 billion round it led for defense tech unicorn Anduril. For Andreessen, the biggest round was the $2 billion seed financing it led for Thinking Machines Lab.

After them came Greenoaks, which led Safe Superintelligence’s $2 billion round in April.

Busiest venture dealmakers

While some venture investors concentrate their bets on a few rounds, others spread their money across a high number of deals.

In this latter group, a perennial standout is Y Combinator. Though best known as a seed accelerator, it also participates in later rounds for companies it incubated, usually as a non-lead investor.

That translates into a lot of deals. For Q2, Y Combinator participated in 45 post-seed financings, the most of any investor. The lineup included large rounds for high-profile companies including HR platform Rippling and AI robotics startup Gecko Robotics.

After Y Combinator, the second-most-active by deal count was General Catalyst, which participated in 38 deals as a lead or non-lead investor in Q2. In third place was Accel, with 31 deals, followed by Khosla Ventures, with 30.

Below, we ranked the 22 most-active post-seed investors of the quarter by deal count.

Seed investors

Seed-stage investors also kept busy in Q2, with familiar names leading the way.

Y Combinator landed the top slot, with 50 reported seed investments. Next was Antler, with 33 seed deals.

For a broader perspective, below we ranked the 18 most-active global seed dealmakers, based on reported rounds.

It should be noted that seed investment reporting differs from other stages and this can affect deal counts. For one, accelerators commonly report investments in batches, causing high deal-count fluctuation from quarter to quarter. Additionally, seed-stage companies and backers are often stealthy and are known to delay reporting new financings.

Overall: Busy times, big checks

As we review our rankings of the most-active and highest-spending investors for the quarter, the broad takeaway looks pretty clear. Overall, these are bullish times for startup backers, evidenced by high deal counts as well as big-ticket individual rounds.

Looking ahead, we’ll be curious to see if a pickup in IPO activity translates into more deals and large pre-IPO rounds from growth investors. Given that the active investor list is dominated by U.S.-focused firms, it’ll also be interesting to see more international representation in the ranks.

Related reading:

Illustration: Dom Guzman


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