VCs still favour AI startups
Social reports show AI captured roughly 65% of VC deal value in 2025 while seed bars are around $300k–$500k ARR, and Q1 2026 Series A data suggests AI companies are attracting 40–60× revenue multiples compared with 8–12× for non‑AI firms. The commentary described a bifurcated market with high valuation appetites for AI revenue profiles compared with traditional software. Those figures were presented in social‑media summaries of market data. (x.com/Systematic_V/status/2042620531141226607) (x.com/tryraziel/status/2042573472304423316)
Venture capital money is still clustering around artificial intelligence startups, even as the broader startup market remains selective. (nvca.org) PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association said artificial intelligence and machine learning deals captured 65.6% of all United States venture deal value in 2025, or $222 billion out of $339 billion. The same report said that share was 47.2% in 2024 and 10% in 2015. (nvca.org) PitchBook said the recovery in venture was uneven: half of all venture dollars in 2025 went into just 0.05% of deals, driven largely by massive artificial intelligence rounds. The firm also said United States venture fundraising stayed weak, with $66.1 billion in new fund commitments in 2025, the lowest total since 2018. (pitchbook.com) CB Insights reported a similar pattern globally. It said venture funding rose to $469 billion in 2025, but deal count fell 17% to 29,501, while 738 mega-rounds captured $307 billion, or 65% of all funding. (cbinsights.com) CB Insights said artificial intelligence companies raised $226 billion in 2025, or 48% of total venture funding, and that the six largest rounds of the year all went to artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale, xAI, Databricks, and Aligned. That concentration helps explain why founders and investors describe two markets at once: abundant capital for a narrow set of artificial intelligence companies, and tougher fundraising for many other software startups. (cbinsights.com) The bar for early traction has also moved. Andreessen Horowitz said the median enterprise artificial intelligence company in its sample reached more than $2 million in annual recurring revenue in its first year and raised a Series A round nine months after monetization. (a16z.com) Andreessen Horowitz said pre-artificial-intelligence investors often treated $1 million in annual recurring revenue in the first 12 months as a best-in-class benchmark. In its June 6, 2025 analysis, the firm said that pace now sits on the lower end of growth for many artificial intelligence startups it tracks. (a16z.com) Sapphire Ventures said in its 2026 Software x AI report that artificial intelligence is now both the main growth engine and the main disruption risk inside enterprise software. That framing matches what private-market data has shown since 2025: capital is still available, but it is being priced and distributed very differently depending on whether a company looks artificial-intelligence-native or like traditional software. (info.sapphireventures.com) The social-media posts that circulated specific seed revenue bars and Series A revenue multiples point in the same direction, but those figures were presented as summaries rather than full public datasets. The broader published research is clearer on the main point: venture firms are still paying up for artificial intelligence growth, while much of the rest of software is raising in a colder market. (nvca.org)
