AI investments were responsible for a full 64% of all deal value going into US startups across the first half of the year, a new PitchBook report finds.
It’s part of a huge 75.6% increase for the sector during that period, putting 2025 in line to be the second highest year ever for US startup deals. OpenAI’s recent $40 billion round certainly didn’t hurt.
However, it’s a different story for the VCs trying to raise funds: With $26.6 billion raised across 238 funds, the sector’s funds have declined 33.7% year-over-year, continuing a trend from 2024.
$162.8 Billion for US Startups in 2025
The total deal value has hit $162.8 billion across the first half of the year, second only to the same period in 2021, when Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) era saw rock-bottom rates at banks hoping to stimulate the economy.
This time around, the responsible party is one that hadn’t even entered the public consciousness in 2021: Artificial intelligence. Major AI investments have marked the lion’s share of the growth in 2025 so far.
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Meta shelled out $14.3 billion for a stake in Scale AI during that time period, and Reuters recently rounded up a host of other AI companies involved in deals that passed $1 billion each: Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machine Labs, Anduril, and Grammarly.
Why AI? Companies Are Chasing Fast Growth
Speaking to Reuters, Davis Treybig, partner at VC firm Innovation Endeavors, gave some context for the immense draw that AI has over VC investments right now.
“I think it’s downstream of the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic continue to grow at unbelievable rates. […] If there’s even a chance you could see that sort of progress in other domains, whether it’s robotics, protein folding models, world models or video models, then there’s a lot of people who are going to want to invest a lot of money.”
In contrast, US venture capital firms’ own fundraising attempts haven’t been going as well.
Not only did VC funds just raise $26.6 billion overall so far in 2025, but the typical time to close new vehicles has also been increasing, hitting a median of 15.3 months in the second quarter of the year.
The Venture Capital Fundraising Slump Might Be Ending
It’s not all bad news for VCs, though. IPO interest may be on the rise, particularly with sectors that are meeting the political moment, from national security and defense technology to fintech and crypto… and, of course, AI.
AI’s status as the hottest buzzword is continuing to keep US startups high on the hog.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that you’re always hearing about every piece of software on the planet getting new AI functionality: Right now, maintaining AI hype is all the startup industry has.
