Even as venture capital inflows into startups levelled off this year, artificial intelligence (AI) firms emerged as a clear outlier, drawing sharply higher investor interest. Data from Venture Intelligence showed funding into AI-focused startups rose nearly 60% year-on-year to $1.24 billion in 2025, from $773 million in 2024, underscoring the sector’s resilience amid a broader funding slowdown.
Overall, startups raised about $9.94 billion across 905 deals so far this year, compared with $10.1 billion across 980 deals in 2024. The marginal decline reflects continued caution among investors after the funding highs of 2021. However, AI startups continued to command premium cheques, aided by stronger enterprise adoption, measurable productivity gains, and sustained global demand for AI-led solutions.
Series A and B account for large share of funding
Within AI, Series A and Series B rounds accounted for a large share of funding activity as several companies moved beyond seed-stage experimentation to early commercial scale. The largest round of the year was raised by Uniphore, a US-based company incubated at IIT Madras in the late 2000s. It raised $260 million in a Series F round at a valuation of $2.5 billion, with investors including Nvidia, Snowflake, Databricks and March Capital.
Data from Tracxn showed several mid-sized deals as well. Enterprise AI platform UnifyApps raised $50 million, quantum computing startup QpiAI secured $32 million, predictive AI firm Intangles raised $30 million, B2B software startup Atomicwork closed a $26 million round, while agentic AI startup Composio raised $25 million.
Companies building AI infrastructure attract major capital
Industry executives said capital is increasingly concentrating around companies building core AI infrastructure or vertical AI applications aimed at global enterprises, rather than consumer-focused offerings. This shift reflects investor preference for clearer revenue visibility and faster paths to scale.
The trend mirrors global venture capital patterns. According to KPMG’s latest Venture Pulse report, global VC funding exceeded $100 billion in the September quarter, marking the fourth consecutive quarter at that level, with AI accounting for most large deals. Among the biggest raises were Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, which raised $13 billion, and xAI, which raised $10 billion. European AI firm Mistral and New York–based Reflection AI also secured billion-dollar rounds.
While overall deal volumes have softened globally, the steady flow of large cheques into AI highlights a market increasingly driven by conviction-led bets rather than broad-based risk appetite.
