Size increase

Median seed round sizes have been climbing since 2023, Crunchbase data shows, with the median U.S. seed round last year now standing at around $3 million. That’s 3x larger than it was in 2018.

The upper quartile median last year was around $5.6 million — more than double what it was in 2018�� — and the lowest quartile was $1 million. (Although, underlying those medians is a much wider range of deal sizes.)

At seed, “What we see is everything from the inception stage, which is typically $3 million to $5 million, unless it’s a truly unique and obvious founder, all the way through to $8 million to $10 million-plus rounds,” said , managing partner at , one of the earliest institutional Bay Area seed funds founded in 2004.

McLoughlin noted that the typical check size his firm writes for a seed round has almost doubled from 18 months ago. “We’re still trying to buy at least 10% ownership, ideally more, and our average check has grown from $2.5 million or less, to $4.5 million,” he said.

The speed at which those round sizes have accelerated is mind-bending, he said. “If you’d asked me 18 months ago, would the $8 million to $10 million-plus seed round become de facto, I would have said you were crazy”

Series A rounds have also grown in size, per Crunchbase data. Last year, the median U.S. Series A deal was $15 million, with the upper quartile at $25 million and the lower quartile at $7 million. That trend has continued into 2026, with median Series A rounds moving still higher.

Longer time frame to Series A

But while companies that are funded at the seed stage are typically raising larger checks, they’re also taking longer to move on to Series A and face lower odds of graduating to that phase at all, Crunchbase data shows.

Since 2023, U.S. startups have been taking longer to raise a Series A round following an initial seed round of $1 million and over, per Crunchbase data, with that time frame now stretching to more than two years.

That continues a general upward trend since 2018 of startups taking longer to raise a Series A round after seed, with notable exceptions in the previous peak funding years of 2021 and 2022, when the timeline shrunk by six months.

The threshold for raising a successful Series A is no longer $1 million in annual recurring revenue, said McLoughlin. In the AI era, startups are expected to show $2 million to $3 million — even $4 million — in ARR as proof that the business has the momentum to scale, he said.

“When you’re fundraising for your [Series] A, you’re not in competition with the startups you deem to be competitors,” said McLoughlin. Rather, he noted, you’re in competition with every other deal floating around in the venture ecosystem — not just the partner you’re talking to and their ability to do the deal, but what the entire team is doing, how far along they are, how far ahead of pace they are on their investment cycle, and whether they’re being pushed to only do things that truly look like breakouts.

Fewer graduates

Since 2021, drastically fewer companies that raised an initial seed round of $1 million or more have progressed to a later-stage funding or exited, Crunchbase data shows.

Through 2020, companies that raised a seed round of $1 million-plus had a typical graduate rate of 55% or higher.

Since then, graduation rates appear to be falling dramatically. Of the companies that raised a $1 million-plus seed round in 2023, only 24% have progressed further, Crunchbase data shows. For the 2024 cohort of seed-funded companies, that’s even lower: just 16%.

While these cohorts are staying at the seed stage longer, still McLoughlin predicts, “we’re going to see the mortality rate from seed to A will be much, much higher.”

As the dynamics of seed funding change, investors are being forced to rethink their portfolio strategies — adjusting to the right number of bets, reserving enough capital for follow-on rounds, and deciding whether to invest earlier or in larger seed rounds with potentially less ownership.

“We’ve also got to be comfortable with this notion that there will probably be more early outcomes or failures in the portfolio, but if we do our job well, the big outcomes will be bigger than they’ve ever been before,” said McLoughlin.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Data: The Seed Funding Boom Is Concentrating Capital In The San Francisco Bay Area
• Seed Funding Is Bigger Than Ever — And Harder To Get

Clarification: The rates of graduation from seed stage in 2023 and 2024 have been updated.

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AI and software continue to draw the biggest share of startup investment, but most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month were working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen.��

They include a defense-tech startup that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the frontlines, a company working to recycle valuable raw materials from defunct solar panels at industrial scale, and a startup that wants to produce cell-based milk for the dairy supply chain. Let’s take a look.

$82M to build near the battlefield

A decade ago, defense tech was considered a niche and sometimes controversial corner of venture capital, with few startup investors daring to place bets on companies working with the military.��

How times have changed. Already this year, $13.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase’s military, national security and law enforcement categories — more than 1.5x last year’s annual total.��

is one of the latest defense startups to get some of that funding, with an approach that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the battlefield. The San Diego-based startup last month announced an $82 million Series B led by .��

Firestorm builds expeditionary manufacturing systems and modular drones for military use. Its containerized “xCell” manufacturing platforms are designed to produce drones, replacement parts and other systems closer to the battlefield, a concept gaining traction as militaries rethink supply chains and logistics in contested regions such as the Indo-Pacific.

Existing and new investors including, , , , and others also joined its latest funding round, which brings Firestorm’s total funding to nearly $150 million, .

“The ability to produce, adapt, and sustain systems at speed and scale will define outcomes in future conflict,” , founder and chief investment officer at Washington Harbour Partners, said in a statement. “We’re excited to lead Firestorm’s Series B and back a company building a new model for manufacturing that replaces centralized supply chains with deployable, containerized units that can operate at the edge.”

The raise lands amid a broader surge in investor appetite for military tech, not just from defense-industry investors but also some of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture names. Sector heavyweight recently raised another $5 billion at a staggering $61 billion valuation in an – and -led round, underscoring just how mainstream venture-backed defense startups have become.

Related Crunchbase query:

$60M for a legal tech operating system

Legal tech has been one of the fastest-growing startup sectors in recent years, at least when measured by funding to the area, with venture investors pouring a record $4 billion-plus into the industry last year. That growth, of course, has been driven by AI’s rapid automation of many aspects of the notoriously paperwork-heavy industry.

Adding to this year’s tally is , a startup that says it’s building the operating system and brand for AI-native law firms. The startup said last month that it raised $60 million in Series A funding at a $750 million valuation from big-name investors. led the round and , and participated.

Manifest OS says it takes a different tack than most legal tech startups. Rather than sell software to traditional law firms that operate under a billable hour model, the company only caters to AI-native firms that charge clients based on outcomes.

“Companies want fee transparency, predictability, and speed,” , a Manifest investor and former general counsel for ��1, and , said in a statement. “Lawyers want to focus on delivering results, not justifying billable hours. Manifest OS’s model and use of advanced technology align those interests in a way the traditional system simply doesn’t.”

Along with AI software that helps attorneys with tasks like client communications, legal research, document drafting and billing, Manifest OS also offers a centralized back office to handle client intake, business development, paralegal work and other administrative tasks. That, according to the firm, frees attorneys up to focus on more complex legal work.

One important caveat: All firms that use its platform operate under the Manifest Law name. According to the startup, that results in a consistent brand presence, pricing, response time and service quality to clients. Its is a business immigration law firm.

The startup says it has already served 150-plus corporate clients, including large tech companies, since launching 18 months earlier. It has hired more than 100 attorneys to date, it said, less than 1% of those that applied.

Related Crunchbase query:

$23M for industrial solar panel recycling

French cleantech startup said last month that it has secured €20 million (about $23 million) in Series B and grant funding to tackle a growing problem: industrial-scale solar panel recycling.��

By 2050, tens of millions of tons of solar panels are expected to become defunct, according to ROSI. The company’s technology recovers high-purity raw materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminum and glass from those panels so that they can be recycled into new products.��

ROSI said the new funding will be used to build its first large-scale recycling plant in Spain. The site will be able to process 10,000 tonnes per year.��

The funding was led by , , and Spanish family office . Zurich-based corporate advisory firm , which specializes in deep tech, acted as strategic financial adviser and investor. Other investors included unnamed Swiss and Polish family offices.

“Our ambition is to build a European-scale industrial platform for circular management and the production of strategic raw materials, transforming end-of-life solar panels into a reliable source of high-purity materials for the European industries of tomorrow,” ROSI President and co-founder said in a statement.

The investment comes as cleantech funding has seen tepid investor enthusiasm in recent years. Overall funding to startups in Crunchbase’s cleantech-, electric vehicle- and sustainability-related categories fell to a five-year low in 2025. Still, some areas — including solar and recycling — have continued to see larger rounds.

Related Crunchbase query:

$2.3M for a cell-based milk supplier��

Venture investment in food and beverage startups has fallen precipitously in recent years, from more than $22 billion in the peak year of 2021 to . Companies working on cell-based alternatives to traditional sources of protein such as meat and dairy products, in particular, have largely fallen out of favor with startup investors, Crunchbase data shows.

That makes Montreal-based ’s recent $3.2 million CAD (roughly $2.3 million) seed round all the more interesting. The company, previously named BetterMilk, says it produces “complete milk” — with proteins, fats and sugars — from mammary cells in a bioreactor, without employing any cows.

Its recent round was led by , with participation from , , and existing investors including , and .

Rather than make a direct-to-consumer play, as many food and beverage startups have done, Opalia is positioning itself as a supplier in the food industry. The company recently inked a two-year deal with dairy supplier and a paid pilot with an unnamed “Canadian division of a leading global dairy group.”

“We see Opalia as a foundational player in the next era of dairy,” , managing partner at Nadarra Venture, said in a statement. “What sets them apart is a combination of highly credible, differentiated science and a clear, executable path to scale within existing dairy infrastructure, addressing the economics required to compete globally. Today, global demand for dairy is outpacing supply, and the traditional system is under increasing pressure from climate and resource constraints, making innovation no longer optional.”

Opalia plans to make its commercial debut in 2028 and said it’s currently working through the regulatory process in North America.

Related Crunchbase query:

$16M to automate the factory playbook

Mountain View, California-based last month announced a $16 million seed funding round��to speed up what it calls one of manufacturing’s most stubborn bottlenecks: turning digital product designs into actual production plans.

The startup’s platform, dubbed AutoAssembler, plugs into existing CAD and PLM systems and uses AI to automate process planning, the painstaking engineering work required to determine how parts fit together, in what order they should be assembled, and how products can realistically be built at scale. C-Infinity says workflows that once took weeks can now be completed in minutes.

Its seed round was led by with participation from and

C-Infinity’s pitch taps into a broader trend gaining traction across industrial tech: software that doesn’t just analyze operations, but actively participates in physical production decisions. That kind of investment in physical AI — real-world applications of artificial intelligence, including in factories and on construction sites — has taken off this year.��All told, startups working on physical AI have already hauled in more than $37 billion in venture funding globally in 2026, , shattering the full-year records of $21 billion set in both 2025 and 2021.

Related Crunchbase query: ��

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The result is a funding scene that is drawing sustained high activity from top-name venture firms�� as well as big checks from relative newcomers and megacap strategic investors. That’s reflected in April’s tally of most active U.S. startup investors, with rankings topped by well-established VCs such as and , tech giants like and , and a few names that don’t commonly show up in the lists.

To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to aggregate most active investor rankings across multiple metrics, including venture deal count, lead rounds, and highest value lead rounds.

Most active venture investors

We’ll start with most active venture investors, looking at those who participated in the largest number of startup funding rounds for $5 million or more at any stage.

By this metric, came out on top, with 11 rounds. The famed accelerator commonly tops this ranking as it participates as a non-lead investor in follow-on rounds for startups it incubated.

Khosla Ventures and tied for second, with nine rounds each, followed by and with seven rounds each. Below we rank the top X most active venture investors for the month:

Neo’s inclusion is noteworthy as it’s a newcomer to the top of the ranks. The San Francisco incubator has an investment model that shares similarities with Y Combinator, providing mentorship and seed funding to upstarts and securing participation rights for follow-on rounds.

Another standout high in the rankings with six deals was , an investor focused on diverse and inclusive teams that has strong ties to the LGBTQ+ community. Gaingels has long been a prolific seed investor and participant in follow-on rounds. But as average deal sizes overall rise, Gaingels’ follow-on rounds have been getting bigger too.

Most active and highest spending lead investors

Among lead investors, Khosla Ventures took the top slot, with a lead- or co-lead role in seven April rounds exceeding $5 million. Andreessen Horowitz was the next-busiest lead investor, with five deals.

For a bigger-picture view, below we list the top X most active lead investors for April:

When we turn to highest-spending lead investors, the ranks shift some. This list looks at investors who led or co-led rounds with the highest aggregate value in April.��

It’s not an exact tally of who put the most capital to work, given that syndicate rounds don’t break out each lead investors’ share. However, it does provide a general idea of the heaviest spenders.

For April, Google was the single largest lead investor, thanks to its reported $10 billion investment in , a deal that includes terms for another potential $30 billion to come. Amazon was next on the list, with a $5 billion Anthropic investment of its own, and up to $20 billion to come, as part of a for compute power.

Next on the list were two that don’t typically top our ranks: and . The two firms co-led a $1 billion April Series F for AI data and computing platform at a $30 billion valuation.

Overall, a bit slower

While the April active investor data doesn’t scream “slowdown,” the month was nonetheless somewhat less busy than March in terms of deal counts by top dealmakers. Given that AI enthusiasm has not dissipated and massive deals continue to get done, it’s not clear that is an indicator of changing investor appetites.��

For now, we’ll avoid reading too much into month-to-month fluctuations and wait to see whether further tallies point to a broader change in the investment climate.

Related reading:

• Get To Know The Latest Class Of Ultra-Fast Fundraising Unicorns��
• Frontier Labs And Robotics Companies Again Top List Of New Unicorns In April
• Most Active And Highest-Spending Startup Investors Diverged In Q1��

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As Ayoub describes it, while the medical profession was sold to him as a lucrative and stable career, the reality of modern healthcare hit home during a gap between his fellowship and his full-time role at . Living in New York City and unable to afford rent, he attempted to pick up extra shifts at a local urgent care. Despite a clear workforce shortage and his own need for income, he was told he couldn’t start for 90 to 120 days.

The culprit? A fragmented, manual credentialing process that acts as the industry’s primary bottleneck.

“The bottleneck is not the number of doctors, but the fragmented infrastructure connecting them to where they are needed,” said Ayoub, who also serves as an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Donald & Barbara Zucker School of Medicine. “Most people assume the issue in healthcare staffing is a lack of doctors, but what we’ve seen is something different.��

There’s a large, underutilized workforce that simply can’t move between systems efficiently,

So in early 2025, Ayoub and began pondering a solution. Their initial ideas eventually turned into , a startup with an AI-powered platform designed to serve as an “automated Dropbox” for physicians.��

Today, the New York City-based startup is announcing it has raised $2.2 million in a pre-seed round led by , Crunchbase News reports exclusively. also participated in the round.

AI-driven healthcare takes off

AI-related healthcare has seen a significant rise in venture funding globally, Crunchbase shows. Investors put an estimated $14.9 billion into seed- through growth-stage funding to companies in AI-powered health tech categories in 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s up significantly compared to the $8.6 billion raised in all of 2024.

Many of the recently funded healthcare startups are AI-centric, and, like Saile, are focused on streamlining dated processes.��

In the current system, every time a doctor wants to work at a new facility — whether it be a hospital, a surgery center, or a telemedicine platform – he or she must manually resubmit a CV, licenses, and board certifications via email. In applying to an urgent care facility, Ayoub realized that while staffing agencies act as gatekeepers, the underlying infrastructure was broken.��

There was no centralized way for a doctor to maintain a compliant status and share it instantly across different job verticals.

Saile aims to solve that problem by storing and tracking all a doctor’s credentials in one place and providing alerts before documents expire so that a physician can always be compliant. It goes one step further by providing access to a shift marketplace. In a nutshell, the startup serves as a portable credential passport for physicians to be identified and assigned patients at various hospitals.��

The company’s five modular AI agents automate what currently takes months of manual coordination across recruiting, onboarding, credentialing, staffing and compliance.��

By combining credentialing and staffing into a single infrastructure layer, Ayoub says Saile has shortened the onboarding timeline by roughly 45 days, from about 90 to 120 days, and reduced administrative tasks for healthcare facilities by an estimated 40%.

“Other solutions either focus on one piece of the problem or offer staffing tied to a single job type,” Ayoub said in an interview. “Saile owns the entire journey…And facilities get direct access to a pre-vetted pool of local and regional physicians without juggling multiple vendors or paying for the friction in between.”

Investing in the ‘infrastructure layer’

What began as a bootstrapped project fueled by word-of-mouth in a tight-knit clinician community has quickly gained momentum. The app has grown to nearly 5,000 active user physicians nationwide. Operating with a lean core team of four, the company plans to use its new capital to expand its AI agent infrastructure, grow its marketplace capabilities, and deepen integrations with facility credentialing systems.

Saile has four core revenue streams, with a primary focus on a per-seat SaaS model for facilities. The approach is to offer facilities access to the pool of physicians, and then charge on a per-seat usage basis for the workflow and credentialing infrastructure that supports it.

, founder and partner at Matchstick Ventures, said his firm was drawn to the founder market fit it saw in Saile.

“Marc had felt the pain of this problem and actually had built this more or less for himself out the gate,” Brosher said in an interview with Crunchbase News. “We love those combos where founders aren’t just randomly seeking out a solution to make a buck. This was very much a personal thing for him in the problem that he was solving.”

The firm also saw a “big” market opportunity in offering an “all-in-one” solution for doctors looking to pick up side jobs.

“People have tried to go after this a few different ways. They’ve either gone after credentialing, or they are a staffing agency,” Brosher added. “And when we look at this market, we feel like there needs to be disruption here…Ultimately, Saile is building the infrastructure layer beneath staffing. We feel like having that all-in-one infrastructure layer is actually where the real value is to be had.”

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Crunchbase Sector Snapshot: Funding To AI-Related Healthcare Startups Is Robust This Year

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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 deal roundup here.

Large U.S. venture deals this week were led by a massive defense tech raise for space security startup . That theme continued with another two aerospace- and defense-related companies also getting major investor backing. We also saw sizable deals for startups applying AI to fintech, marketing, customer service, healthcare and developer tools. Let’s take a closer look.

1. , $600M, aerospace and defense: Centennial, Colorado-based True Anomaly raised a massive $600 million Series D led by and , with participation from a long list of other backers including , , , , and . True Anomaly develops space security and in-orbit defense systems, an area drawing increasing venture investor attention amid rising geopolitical tensions. The new round brings its total funding up to $1.1 billion, .

2. , $160M, AI and fintech: New York-based Rogo secured $160 million in Series D funding led by and joined by other investors including , , , , and . Rogo builds AI-powered tools to automate financial research and workflows. The latest financing brings its total funding raised to date to $314 million, . The deal is also the latest example of investor enthusiasm for startups targeting high-value knowledge work such as law and accounting.

3. , $150M, AI and marketing: San Francisco-based Hightouch raised $150 million in a Series D co-led by and . , , , and other investors joined. The company focuses on agentic AI-driven marketing and customer data activation. The round brings Hightouch’s total funding to date to and comes amid rising demand for AI tools embedded directly into enterprise marketing stacks.

4. , $125M, AI and customer service: New York-based Avoca brought in $125 million in a Series B led by and, with participation from other investors including , , and . Avoca develops AI agents for customer communication workflows. The new raise brings its total funding to $125.5 million, .

5. , $110M, AI and customer service: San Mateo, California-based Netomi raised $110 million in a Series C led by , with participation from and others, including individual investors , , and . The company offers AI-powered customer experience automation across channels. The new funding brings its total raised to date to $217 million, .

6. (tied) , $100M, developer tools: Palo Alto, California-based Parallel secured $100 million in a Series B led by , with additional backing from other big-name investors , and . The startup is building a suite of AI agents and developer tools to automate workflows. It has raised $260 million to date, .

6. (tied) , $100M, aerospace and defense: Sunnyvale, California-based Scout AI raised a sizable $100 million Series A led by and . A long list of other investors joined, including , and . The startup develops AI systems for aerospace and defense applications. Its large early-stage round underscores continued investor appetite for dual-use and defense-focused startups, which globally raised a record $7.7 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase data.

8. , $82M, aerospace and defense: San Diego-based Firestorm closed an $82 million Series B led by . also participated in this round, as did , , , and others. Firestone builds modular, mission-adaptable drone systems. It has raised nearly $150 million total, .

9. , $77M, health diagnostics: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Iterative Health raised $77 million in a Series C led by and, with additional backing from , and . The company develops AI-powered diagnostic and clinical workflow tools, particularly in gastroenterology. It has raised more than $268 million since inception, according to .

10. , $75M, foundational AI: Investors continue to back next-generation foundation model startups. One of the latest is San Francisco-based AI research startup Standard Intelligence, which raised a $75 million Series A led by and . The raise comes at a $425 million pre-money valuation. Other investors in the deal include , and AI researcher . Standard AI is developing “computer-use” models designed to interact directly with software. Its approach — training on large-scale video data rather than manually annotated screenshots — aims to significantly reduce costs and improve performance.

Large non-US deals

We also saw several sizable deals for startups based outside the U.S.:

, $1.1B, foundational AI: London-based frontier lab Ineffable Intelligence raised a $1.1 billion seed round, the largest for a European startup on record. (The previous record was set just a couple of months ago, when Paris-based frontier lab raised a $1.03 billion seed round.) and led Ineffable’s seed funding.

, $300M, aerospace: China-based Volant Aerotech raised a $300 million Series C led by . The company is developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, designed to be used as taxis.

, $200M, robotics: China-based humanoid robot developer Robot Era raised a $200 million round led by , with participation from a long list of investors including and . The company is developing robots designed for industrial and service work, and follows a string of other large fundings for China-based robotics startups.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of April 25-May 1. 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.

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In 2025, the Bay Area expanded its dominance of U.S. seed funding — capturing a growing share of both deals and dollars — even as most startups remained geographically dispersed, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows.

The result is a more bifurcated landscape: a handful of major hubs, led by San Francisco and New York, pulling in a larger share of capital, while the rest of the country saw its slice shrink.

The Greater Los Angeles area and the Greater Boston area are the next-largest hubs for seed investment after the Bay Area and New York, but their share of funding at this stage, as measured by dollars, has dipped 1 or 2 percentage points each since 2024.

Where seed funding is clustering

The Bay Area and New York remain the two central hubs for U.S. startup activity. The New York area has largely held steady as a seed funding center, while the Bay Area is pulling ahead, led by heavy investment in AI startups headquartered there.

On a dollar basis, the Bay Area captured 45% of U.S. seed funding in 2025 — up sharply from 33% in 2024 and 28% in 2023, Crunchbase data shows.

New York retained its typical share at around 17%, while Greater Los Angeles and Greater Boston each accounted for about 5% of total funding.

That growth is in contrast to the rest of the country. Startups outside the top four metro areas represented just 28% of U.S. seed funding in 2025, the lowest share on record and well below the 40% average seen from 2018 through 2024.

Startup distribution remains diverse

Still, geography tells a more nuanced story when looking beyond dollars. Two-thirds of U.S. seed-stage startups in 2025 were based outside the Bay Area, underscoring how distributed startup formation remains even as capital concentrates.

And beyond the top hubs, a long tail of smaller ecosystems — including Austin, Seattle, Miami, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Denver and San Diego — continues to produce a steady stream of new companies.

Another caveat: Strip out the largest seed rounds of $10 million or more, and the capital concentration looks less extreme. Without those outliers, the top four markets account for about 61% of seed funding amounts, within 2 to 3 percentage points, closer to historical norms.

Seed deal counts are also concentrating

While total seed funding has climbed, deal activity tells a slightly different story: Fewer rounds are getting done overall and a larger share of them are happening in the top hubs.

The Bay Area alone accounted for roughly one-third of all U.S. seed rounds in 2025, up 5 percentage points from the prior year, per Crunchbase data. New York has remained relatively steady at around 16% of deals since 2018.

Meanwhile, Greater Los Angeles and Greater Boston have each seen modest declines, falling to about 5% and 4% of seed deal share, respectively.

Taken together, the four leading metro areas made up 57% of U.S. seed deals in 2025, per Crunchbase data. The rest of the country accounted for 43%, a drop of about 5 percentage points from prior years.

Bay Area deal sizes shrink

Even as the Bay Area dominates in total capital and deal volume, it looks different on a per-deal basis. Median seed round sizes in 2025 were actually higher in other major hubs — including New York, Boston and Los Angeles — than in the Bay Area, which has seen typical deal sizes shrink since the market peak.

Overall, a more complex picture of the U.S. seed market has emerged in the past five years. Capital is concentrating geographically but not uniformly. The Bay Area is capturing more of the biggest rounds and overall dollars, but two-thirds of funded startups are still created outside of the region. And as a larger ecosystem, the Bay Area’s median seed round sizes were below the other leading hubs with fewer deals, but comparatively larger medians.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Seed Funding Is Bigger Than Ever — And Harder To Get
• The Largest Recent Seed Rounds Are All For AI Companies
• Seed Funding Hasn’t Stalled, But It’s Skewing Larger And Is More Competitive Than Ever, Crunchbase Data Shows

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This phenomenon has been on the rise over the past couple years, driven by voracious investor appetite for AI early movers. Since 2024, an estimated 207 AI-focused companies have joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board. That’s roughly half of all companies that first hit valuations of $1 billion or more during this period.

Of those, more than a third first secured 10-figure valuations at seed or early stage. That includes some of the most well-known newish unicorns in sectors like foundational AI, robotics and vertical AI.

Many newish unicorns are worth a lot more than $1 billion

While a $1 billion valuation is the threshold for claiming unicorn status, many newer entrants to the group are now worth much more than that.

Per Crunchbase data, at least 45 companies that became unicorns in the past 28 months are now valued at $5 billion or more. That’s just over 10% of the total cohort.

So who’s at the top? To answer that question, we put together a sample list of 18 high-profile, newish unicorns with a most recent post-money valuation of $5 billion or more.

Notably, many of these are very young companies. U.K.-based AI infrastructure startup , for instance, launched from stealth just a year ago as a spin-out of crypto mining firm . It recently secured a $14.6 billion post-money valuation.

, a developer of AI-enabled software to control robots, has also scaled up quickly since its inception in 2024. This year, the San Francisco company is reportedly to raise fresh funding at a valuation exceeding $11 billion.

Foundational AI startup , meanwhile, has raised around $3 billion in less than two years since its founding. A round last spring set a $32 billion valuation for the Palo Alto, California-based company.

Newer unicorns are also fundraising at a fast clip

In addition to their youth and ultra-high valuations, many newer unicorns also stand out for the speed and magnitude of their fundraising.

San Francisco-based AI legal tech platform , for instance, has gone from Series A to Series G in about three years and raised close to $1.2 billion along the way.

Predictions marketplaces and are remarkably fast fundraisers as well. New York’s Kalshi has gone from Series C to Series E in the past year, pulling in over $2.4 billion. And Polymarket, another New York-based company�� has scooped up close to $2.9 billion in the past two years.

Foundational AI is also scaling superfast. Medical AI company went from Series A to Series D in less than a year, with the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company picking up over $700 million from early 2025 to early 2026. , the developer of AI coding tool Cursor, went from Series A to Series D in under a year, securing over $3.2 billion in that time frame. The San Francisco-based company most recently entered an agreement with , giving the latter Cursor for $60 billion.

Move fast and build things

These are of course remarkable times for mega fundraising rounds, particularly around AI. Cynics might question valuations and check sizes, while optimists might quickly point out that we are in the early days of building foundational technologies of the modern era.

I suppose both have a point. For now, we’re less inclined to pick winners and more engaged in simply keeping score. One thing is clear: It’s a very well-capitalized playing field.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• This Is A Momentous Year For Early-Stage Unicorns
• The Largest Recent Seed Rounds Are All For AI Companies
• Investors Are Once Again Rapidly Minting Early-Stage Startups As Unicorns

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While more funding is going into startups at this stage, seed funding saw a marked shift in 2025: More than half of seed dollars last year went into deals of $10 million or above.

At the same time, deal counts for seed-stage startups have fallen since the 2021-2022 peak, as has funding going into rounds below $10 million, Crunchbase data shows.

The data points to a growing dichotomy: For your typical young startup, it’s an increasingly challenging funding landscape, despite more seed investors writing bigger checks.

“Seed today is basically what Series A was seven years ago,” said , previously a partner at and now partner at .

The majority of these larger rounds came from about 350 deals in the $10 million to $50 million range, with another 20-plus deals at $50 million or above, Crunchbase data show.

The bulk of these larger seed rounds — though not all — are to companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, which gained a more dramatic lead in the overall startup funding landscape last year.

“One of the biggest determinants of how much you should raise is based on your access to capital,” said Bent. “You have greater access to capital if you are more experienced and tenured in your career, if you worked at a hotter company [in an area] that’s considered a hot spot, or if you have a network.”

Sizing up

In the AI era, in which seed rounds smaller than $10 million have declined, the two leading hubs for seed investment — the Bay Area and New York metropolitan area — have maintained or grown their share of U.S. seed funding, Crunchbase data shows.

The expansion in the seed market has been in rounds of $10 million or more, with some companies — though still fewer than 10% in 2025 — raising tens of millions of dollars within one to two years of founding.

A third of deals

The Bay Area, which includes the AI hotspot of San Francisco as well as nearby Silicon Valley — where many of the biggest tech companies in the world are headquartered — captured a third of seed funding deals in 2025, Crunchbase data shows.

In the region, deals below $3 million are generally considered pre-seed rounds, according to Bent. A seed round is generally from $3 million to $8 million, sometimes up to $10 million. And seed valuations are between $20 million and $50 million post-money, she said.

In this era, “the size of the outcomes and the prize are larger, and so that’s where they can afford to put in bigger check sizes if the potential return is bigger,” said Bent.

Related Crunchbase queries:

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AI infrastructure also added four new unicorn companies focused on data center technology and provisioning. Fintech, including startups in wealth management, payment and digital assets, added four companies, while developer tools and defense each added three.

Twenty of March’s new unicorns are U.S.-based, including 11 from the San Francisco Bay Area. China added six companies in sectors ranging from robotics to AI and quantum computing.

From Europe, four new March unicorns are U.K.-based, while France, the Netherlands and Belgium each minted one. The UAE, Seychelles, India and Australia also each added one new unicorn to the board.

The most valuable unicorn newcomer last month was Seychelles-based crypto exchange , valued at $25 billion. The largest funding was a $1 billion round raised by AI pioneer ’s new frontier lab startup, Paris-based .

The board also saw a sizable cohort of very young companies earning their unicorn horns: 18 of the companies that joined the board last month were less than 3 years old. Five were not even a year old.

March’s new unicorns

AI-centric sectors by far led unicorn creation in March, with 14 of the 36 newcomers hailing from the robotics, foundational AI or AI infrastructure industries:

Robotics

• , a robotics for manufacturing company spun out by , raised a $500 million Series A led by and . The 1-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $2 billion.
• Shenzhen-based , an intelligent sensor technology for robotics, raised a $145 million Series B led by , and . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Beijing-based , a humanoid robotics company, raised $145 million in funding. The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• , a humanoid robotics company for household tasks, raised a $165 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old Mountain View, California-based company was valued at $1.2 billion. The company plans to deploy robots to homes this year.
• Pudong, China-based , an intelligent layer for robotics in manufacturing, raised an $87 million Series D round. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• , a provider of simulated data for robotic intelligence, raised a $146 million Series A. The 3-year-old Santa Clara, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Foundational AI

• Paris-based raised a $1 billion seed round led by , ,, and . The less than 1-year-old company was founded by LeCun, ’s former AI lead, and is working to develop models for physical AI. It was valued at $4.5 billion in the round, which is Europe’s largest seed round on record.
• , a robot foundation model developer trained on internet scale video, raised a $450 million Series A led by . The 2-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.7 billion.
• , a math foundation model developer for verified AI useful for coding and other applications, raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 1-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.
• Beijing-based , a text-to-video startup with its own AI model, raised a $300 million Series C led by . The 2-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

AI infrastructure

• , a provider of networking hardware and software for data centers, raised a $500 million Series B led by and . The 2-year-old Santa Clara, California-based company was valued at $4.2 billion.
• , a chip cooling technology, raised a $143 million Series D led by . The 8-year-old San Jose, California-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.
• , which offers GPU rentals for startups, raised a Series A funding led by . The 2-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Redmond, Washington-based , a company building data centers in space, raised a $170 million Series A led by and . The 2-year-old company�� was valued at $1.1 billion.�� It launched its first satellite with a H100 in November 2025.

Financial services

• London-based , an AI-native platform for debt providers including banks, asset managers and advisory firms, raised a $170 million Series C led by . The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• Mumbai-based , a wealth asset advisory firm for high-net-worth individuals and family offices, raised a $53 million private equity funding led by . The 4-year old, venture-backed asset manager was valued at $1.1 billion.
• Brussels-based , an investment group for digital assets, raised a Series C led by . The 8-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.
• Abu Dhabi-based , a payments infrastructure provider for regulated gaming markets, raised a $250 million funding led by . The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Developer tools

• , which promises to make your app enterprise ready with authentication and other features, raised a $100 million Series C led by and. The 8-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $2 billion.
• , an observability platform for agentic AI, raised a $110 million Series B led by . The 3-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a software developer for hardware testing and development, raised an $80 million Series B led by . The 3-year-old Austin-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Defense

• , a drone technology company built for defense, raised a $110 million Series B led by . The 7-year-old Huntsville, Alabama-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• Sydney-based , provider of advanced navigation beyond GPS for military and industrial capabilities, raised a $112 million Series C led by . The 13-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• London-based , a builder of unmanned systems used in the Ukrainian war, raised a $50 million seed�� funding led by and . The 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Biotechnology

• Austin-based , a biological AI research company spun out of�� , raised a $10 million seed extension. The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• , a neurotech company focused on brain computer interfaces, raised a $230 million Series C led by and�� Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 5-year-old Alameda, California-based company, whose primary product, an implant to restore vision for those who suffer retinal disease, was valued at $1.5 billion.

Sales and marketing

• Amsterdam-based , a builder of agents for companies to deploy in customer service and business operations, raised a $150 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• , an agentic layer that monitors customers and researches prospects, raised a Series B led by . The 2-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Security

• , native AI security with its own human triage for customers, raised a $250 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old Sarasota, Florida-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , which uses AI for offensive security, raised a $120 million Series C led by and . The 2-year-old Seattle-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Cryptocurrency

• Seychelles-based , a global cryptocurrency exchange platform, raised a $200 million corporate round led by , the parent company of the . The 12-year-old company was valued at $25 billion.

Telehealth

• Miami-based , ‘s telehealth provider for GLP-1 medications through employers, raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 5-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.

Professional services

• London-based , an AI notetaking startup, raised a $125 million Series C led by . The 3-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Consumer goods

• , a company with a mattress, thermal blanket and pillow designed to monitor and improve sleep, raised a $50 million Series D led by . The 11-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Accelerator

• London-based , an accelerator that sources founders from top schools, raised a $200 million Series D. The 11-year-old company, which hosts its latest cohorts in Silicon Valley, was valued at $1.3 billion.

Quantum computing

• Sichuan, China-based , a quantum computer and chip-production company, raised a $145 million Series B. The 5-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Autonomous driving

• Hangzhou-based , an intelligent driving platform, raised a Series A led by , and . The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:

• (1,739)
• (609)
• (101)
• (188)
• (117)
• (102)
• (896)
• (510)
• (236)
• (38)
• (472)

Related reading:

• This Is A Momentous Year For Early-Stage Unicorns
• The Rising Investors Behind The New Unicorn Class
• While OpenAI Shattered Records, Robotics and Semiconductor Startups Quietly Added The Most New Unicorns In February

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

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.

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Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12 billion across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per Crunchbase . In terms of dollars invested, that’s up 5% year over year, but that money went into almost a third fewer deals.

As has been the case in previous quarters, startup accelerator Y Combinator was the most active investor in the space in Q1 by far, participating in 27 deals involving fintech startups. However, it’s interesting to note that YC’s deal volume in Q1 marked a multiquarter low, down 38.6% from the 44 fintech deals it took part in during the first quarter of 2025.

The next most active investor in the first quarter was , with 11 investments. , and all tied for third place, with nine deals each.

YC also topped the list of the most active fintech investors in rounds of $5 million or above, participating in 14 such transactions. That’s up 16.7% from the 12 deals involving fintech startups in which it participated in the first quarter of 2025.

Lightspeed and Coinbase Ventures came in next on the list of most active investors in rounds of $5 million or more — each writing checks into nine fintech startup investments during the 2026 first quarter.

When it came to leading rounds of $5 million or more, six venture firms tied with five investments each: , , and .

Top lead investors at $100M or more

For megarounds — those deals of $100 million or more — we saw more private equity enter the mix of lead or co-lead investors. , , and topped the list, according to Crunchbase data.

The largest rounds were raised by a diverse bunch of fintech startups.

• Predictions marketplace was the fintech sector’s largest recipient of capital in the first quarter. In March, the company doubled its valuation to $22 billion in just three months with a $1 billion raise led by Coatue. The New York-based startup had just raised $1 billion in Series E funding at an $11 billion valuation in December.
• In February, , a digital savings platform, raised $385 million in a Series E funding round co-led by Blue Owl Capital and Sixth Street Growth. The New York-based startup said its new valuation was $2 billion, double it achieved when raising its $125 million Series D round in December 2023.
• In late January, insurtech announced it had closed $366 million in equity funding led by The Space Between.
• And also in January, , which is building infrastructure for payments with stablecoins, raised $250 million in a Series C funding round led by . Its post-money valuation was $1.95 billion, up 17x from last March.

Top fintech investors at seed

When it comes to investing in seed rounds, unsurprisingly, Y Combinator again topped the list — by far, with 16 fintech deals. Next up was Coinbase Ventures with six investments at the seed stage, and then , with five.

The investor base shifted when we took a look at who led or co-led post-seed rounds in the first quarter. and topped that list, with five deals each. Peak XV Partners, Lightspeed and Accel came in next with four fintech investments each at the post-seed stage.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Fintech Startups Globally Raise More Money In Far Fewer Deals In Q1 2026
• Y Combinator Was By Far The Most-Active Fintech Investor in 2025, Data Shows

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