By Adam Levine
New data from Crunchbase reveals that artificial-intelligence start-ups have dominated fundraising rounds in 2025. Close to 50% of the roughly $405 billion in private funding so far this year has gone to AI, bringing total AI funding to about $316 billion since the start of 2024.
Almost $70 billion of 2024 and 2025 AI funding has gone to just two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic.
The last two years saw corporate and private-equity investments beginning to displace venture-capital firms as the primary source of funding. Nvidia has led the charge among corporations, with about $50 billion in private investments spread across 63 companies, according to FactSet.
CEO Jensen Huang appears to be using the company's substantial cash flows from the AI boom -- of which Nvidia is a primary beneficiary -- to make broad investments across the AI landscape.
Funding rounds are also getting larger, inflating valuations. In 2025, 58% of AI funding rounds were for $500 million or more compared with 33% in 2023.
This rush of private capital is set against the backdrop of still-slow uptake of AI tools in the enterprise. Venture-capital firm Menlo Ventures estimated that enterprise budgets for AI applications totaled just $19 billion in 2025, though that figure is about three times the level in 2024.
Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 17, 2025 12:13 ET (17:13 GMT)
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