2025 was a landmark year for Artificial Intelligence.

AI startups blew past every previous funding benchmark, raising enormous rounds at sky-high valuations, sometimes within weeks of launching. Carta’s data shows what everyone in the ecosystem already sensed: the era of “AI-first” is here, reshaping investor priorities, founder strategies, and what a “venture-backable company” even means.

Here are the five metrics that prove AI has seized the throne in VC funding and how founders and investors can use these insights to stay ahead.

The Round Sizes Towered Over Every Other Sector.

Throughout 2025, AI startups consistently secured the largest rounds at nearly every fundraising stage. AI seed rounds now command a median deal size of $3 million, while Series A rounds reach $12 million, substantially higher than non-AI counterparts. In the first half of 2025 alone, funding to AI startups totaled $116 billion, surpassing the total investor spend in all of 2024. Globally, AI startups have attracted $89.4 billion in venture capital, representing 34% of all VC investment despite comprising only 18% of funded companies.

Investors were making outsized bets on entrepreneurs who could scale quickly, tap into massive compute, and build defensible technology. The market now sees AI as the category with the highest potential upside, and businesses in this space are being funded to move at breakneck speed.

The Valuations Have Broken Away From Traditional Norms

AI seed rounds hit a median pre-money valuation of $10 million, while Series A rounds reached $45.7 million. At the Series A stage, median pre-money valuations for AI startups are $84 million, with post-money valuations reaching $105 million, commanding substantial premiums over traditional SaaS companies. According to PwC’s analysis, AI startups now boast average valuations 3.2x higher than conventional tech companies. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, AI startups raised $73.1 billion globally, accounting for 57.9% of all venture capital funding.

The investors’ logic behind these lofty valuations is that speed is everything in AI, and they’re willing to value potential future dominance over present-day traction.

AI Companies Are Raising Follow-On Rounds at a Velocity Modern VC Has Never Seen

One of the most astonishing trends in 2025 was how quickly AI companies returned to the market and secured additional funding. Founders are now facing extended fundraising cycles overall, with time between rounds stretching well beyond the historical norm of 18-24 months. However, top AI startups have defied this trend, with more than one-third of global venture capital now going to AI companies.

The concentration is unprecedented, with AI-specific rounds showing a 30-50% premium in both valuation and cash raised compared to non-AI rounds. Despite the rise in funding value, deal volume has dropped to its lowest level since Q4 2016, reflecting increasing investor selectivity with bigger checks to fewer companies. This rapid sequencing reflects how compounding advantages, such as compute access, proprietary data, and distribution partnerships, can rapidly widen moats. Investors want to back this acceleration early, and founders are capitalizing on the momentum before competitors catch up.

AI Has Absorbed the Largest Share of Venture Dollars, Outpacing Every Other Sector by a Wide Gap

AI companies have captured 51% of total venture funding so far in 2025. Nearly half, 46%, of global startup funding in Q3 went to AI companies. Through the first half of 2025, companies on Carta raised $46.9 billion in new venture capital across 2,248 funding events, pacing toward $93.8 billion for the whole year.

Globally, venture funding across industries exceeded $90 billion for the fourth consecutive quarter, reaching $95.6 billion in Q3 2025, with total annual funding climbing to $310 billion through Q3, the highest yearly figure since 2022. The United States continues to lead global AI growth, accounting for 85% of all AI funding and 53% of total deals this year.

It is a clear sign that investors are reallocating capital aggressively, shifting reserves toward AI-driven innovation across developer tools, enterprise automation, healthcare, simulation, and security. The result is a landscape where AI is no longer just a vertical; it has become the gravitational center of the entire venture ecosystem.

The Most Influential Investors in the World Are Prioritizing AI Above Everything Else

Another defining signal of AI’s dominance is the sheer quality and concentration of top-tier investors entering the space. Of the $118 billion raised by AI companies in 2025, eight companies accounted for $73 billion in funding via billion-dollar rounds, representing 62% of total financing. Major investors include SoftBank (which led OpenAI’s $40 billion round at a $300 billion valuation), Meta ($14.3 billion in Scale AI), SpaceX ($5 billion in xAI), and Google ($1 billion in Anthropic).

Leading venture firms also deployed massive capital in AI. Lightspeed led a $3.5 billion round in Anthropic, Andreessen Horowitz led a $2 billion round in Thinking Machines Lab, and Founders Fund led a $2.5 billion round in Anduril. There are now 370+ AI unicorns globally with combined valuations exceeding $1 trillion, representing about 1 in 4 of all unicorns worldwide. AI startups now make up 25-30% of all unicorns globally. The most spectacular valuations include OpenAI at $300 billion, Anthropic at $183 billion (after raising $13 billion), and xAI valued at $50 billion.

Artificial Intelligence is The New Baseline For Venture Capital

2024 rewrote the rules of venture capital. The five metrics above make it clear that AI is the platform on which the next generation of iconic companies will be built.

For founders, this is the moment to lean in. Whether you’re building in AI or alongside it, the bar for innovation has been raised. Speed, clarity of vision, and defensible moats are no longer optional.

For investors, the message is equally unmistakable. Returns in the next decade will flow to those who understand AI’s compounding edge, build conviction early, and develop the technical fluency to separate substance from noise.

The AI wave isn’t coming; it’s already here, and it’s redefining the future of venture capital, one metric at a time.