Artificial intelligence startups received the lion’s share of venture capital investments across the globe in the first quarter of 2025, according to new data from Pitchbook.
“Investors still have an AI FOMO [fear of missing out] problem,” the research firm said in an April 17 report, which revealed that 57.9% of global venture capital dollars in Q1 went to AI and machine learning startups.
Comparatively, the first quarter of 2024 saw just 28% of VC dollars channeled into AI startups.
Pitchbook said the capital flowing into AI was even more concentrated in North America, with 70% of venture funding in the region going into AI startups in the first quarter.
The global AI sector raised $73 billion in the first quarter, which was more than half of the total value of AI-related deals made last year. However, more than half of that was for OpenAI, which closed a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank on March 31.
Other notable AI funding rounds in March included Anthropic, which raised $3.5 billion in a Series E round.
“The fear of somebody else winning your market has never been higher than it is now,” said Maria Palma, general partner at Freestyle Capital. “You haven’t seen a slowdown because the rate of change on the technology side is almost indigestible,” she added.
Nnamdi Okike, co-founder and managing partner at 645 Ventures, cautioned that there are extremes happening, “and that’s going to mean there’s going to be a lot of losers.”
“A lot of VC funds are just kind of saying, ‘Hey, this can only go up.’ And that’s usually a recipe for failure — when that starts to happen, you’re becoming detached from reality,” he added.
Crypto venture capital creeps up
Comparatively, crypto and blockchain startups raised just $4.8 billion in Q1, according to CryptoRank. Almost half of that, $2 billion, was Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX investing in Binance.
This was still over four times as much as the $1.1 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the biggest quarter for crypto venture capital deal value since the third quarter of 2022.
Related: Crypto VCs ‘excited’ about AI agents but not yet investing
Crypto venture capital appears to be warming again with a friendlier regulatory environment emerging in the US.
On April 17, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures Fund I was reportedly set to exceed its $150 million funding target and could hit $180 million when it closes at the end of June.
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