In the first quarter of 2025, we saw investments again in the overvoltage of startups at an advanced stage, while the venture capital spent less money on seed startups and at an early stage in the world.
This continues a clear trend that emerged from the Crunchbase data in the last quarters: large established startups win oversized offers and more money, while the youngest companies are fighting less dollars in investment.
In all, global financing of the company in the first quarter succeeded at $ 113 billion – the strongest quarter since the second quarter of 2022 – but a third party of the total was thanks to a single round: OPENAI“S 40 billion dollars are increasing. The new financing, which marks the most important investment in a private company, has broken down an assessment of $ 300 billion on Openai, which makes it the second most precious private startup in the world, behind only Spacexwhich was founded 13 years earlier.
Without this increase, the global investment of venture capital would have been flat from one year to the next and down the quarter, according to Crunchbase data.
The increase also considerably strengthened the company’s figures in North America, while investment in Asia and Europe has decreased or placed.
Startup mergers and acquisitions rebounded above year in the first quarter, but remained flat compared to the fourth quarter.
And the financing of the AI, of course, continued its trajectory to the sky in the first quarter, with financing agreements of several billion dollars not only for Openai but several of its competitors.
Let’s take a closer look, with 11 graphics that highlight the main starting and VC trends in the first quarter of 2025.
The late stadium increases as the early stage falls
The funding of the global company in the first quarter has totaled $ 113 billion, a quarter of gain of 17% compared to the quarter and up 54% of one year on the other.
The increase was driven by late stadium investment, which earned more than 30% QOQ and 147% in annual shift at 81 billion dollars.
However, the world’s investment at the start of the stadium fell at $ 24 billion – the lowest level in at least five quarters, according to Crunchbase data.
Seed financing also dropped from 14% in annual sliding to $ 7.2 billion. (Keep in mind, however, seed financing totals generally increase over time because many seed cycles are added to the Crunchbase data set after the end of a quarter.)
Artificial inflation?
The AI was the best sector for the financing of the company in the first quarter, with nearly 60 billion dollars invested (of course, two thirds were just for Openai).
All in all, the quarter marked the strongest for the financing of the AI of all time, with an astonishing 53% of the global financing of the Q1 going in the sector.
In North America, dollars climb while transactions fall
Thanks to Openai and other major offers for American companies, funding from North in America has climbed the highest quarterly finance level in three years.
The Openai agreement alone counted almost half of the region’s total quarterly.
North America has also increased its share of dollars in world venture capital to almost 73%, compared to 59% in 2024.
But as it happened worldwide, investment in late stage has increased while the financing of seed and early stage startups fell.
And even if the total of the dollars invested in startups based in North America has climbed a quarter in the quarter in the last quarters, the volume of transactions continued to decrease – stressing to what extent these dollars enter into greater agreements for fewer companies.
M&A Dealmaking makes the return
The Q1 was the most solid quarter for the volume in dollar mergers and startup acquisitions since 2021, totaling $ 71 billion of exit value reported in the world, according to Crunchbase data.
There were 550 mergers and acquisitions agreements involving startups supported by a company in the first quarter of 2025 – an increase of 26% compared to the first quarter of last year, but slightly lower than 563 agreements concluded in the fourth quarter.
The most recent quarter included GooglePurchased from the cybersecurity unicorn ASAn agreement which, if finalized, will mark the largest acquisition for a private company with a price of $ 32 billion.
In total, there were 12 acquisitions over $ 1 billion for startups supported by a company in the first quarter. Beyond Wiz, the most notable includes IT ampèreacquisition by Flexible bank,, Modernize medicinePurchase of Clearlake Capital Group,, Moveworks‘Acquisition by ServeAnd Weight and prejudice‘Purchase by Core.
The charge of startups linked to AI was particularly strong in the first quarter, according to Crunchbase data, with 81 of these mergers and acquisitions – an increase of almost 33% compared to Q1 and Q4 2024.
Asia is displayed at low 2014
Asia has posted its lowest quarter for venture capital investment since 2014, with only $ 13 billion going to Startups supported by VC in the region, according to Crunchbase data. This number represents a spectacular drop of 40% compared to the first quarter last year and a decrease of 25% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.
As in 2024, the decline was largely driven by China, which, as the largest venture capital market in the region, considerably balances the figures. The investment in venture capital for China-based startups has almost halved in Yoy to 6.5 billion dollars at first sorting
Europe’s funding spread out
The financing of the company in Europe reached $ 12.6 billion in the first quarter of 2025 – a flat quarter in a quarter and one year, according to Crunchbase data.
Without the type of financing series on the oversized AI seen in North America in the first quarter, the share of the continent of global financing also fell to 11%, against 16% last year.
Latam plunges despite the strength at the start
Crunchbase data show that start -up investors put just over $ 800 million in seeds thanks to growth stage transactions in Latin America in the first quarter, about 17% more than levels of the previous year, but down 35% compared to the quarter.
Latam’s relative robustness during the quarter was largely thanks to early stage investments, which experienced $ 435 million in funding. More than half of this went to financial services or finch startups.
Fintech stood out as the dominant theme of investment, with more than half of all funding at an early stage going to companies related to financial services, according to Crunchbase data.
What awaits us?
After a first volatile quarter, it is difficult to predict what is in the world of startups for the rest of 2025.
The turbulence of the public market have already blocked highly anticipated stock exchange, and fears of a recession could put an obstacle to venture capital investment – in particular for seed startups and start -ups.
In addition, American prices and the climbing of trade war will pose challenges not only for material startups, but the entire technological ecosystem and the AI sector, which are strongly based on fleas and data centers.
And although the interest in artificial intelligence does not show signs of decrease, the giants of the AI with tens of billions of dollars already in their chests will probably have to show significant growth to continue to obtain massive checks of investors, many of which have seen their own courses of Whipsaw shares in recent months.
All this to say: Fuck for a wild ride.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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