Venture Capital Has Never Been This Obsessed With AI, New Data Shows

U.S. venture capital is becoming increasingly focused on a select cohort of investment prospects, with artificial intelligence the industry’s clear priority, data released today by the research firm PitchBook shows. The first quarter of 2025 saw $91.5 billion in U.S. venture capital activity spread out across an estimated 3,990 deals, PitchBook’s new data indicates. That’s a massive increase in allocated capital compared with Q1 of 2024—up by more than double from $42.4 billion—despite a (very slightly) smaller number of deals, down from 3,995 year-over-year. Notably, a big chunk of the Q1 2025 money came through in a single massive outlier deal: the $40 billion, SoftBank-led funding round that OpenAI just closed. It’s a world of haves and have nots, says Kyle Stanford, PitchBook’s director of American venture research. “The U.S. market has become very bifurcated between a handful of companies able to raise an endless amount of money and the rest of the market, which continues to struggle through a capital shortage,” Stanford says. The primary culprit? Artificial intelligence, says Stanford—a sector that remains beloved by VCs. “Seventy-one percent of total deal value in the U.S. went to AI investments,” Stanford says. “That amount is highly biased with OpenAI’s $40 billion round. Though excluding that deal, AI still captured 48.5 percent of the total invested during the quarter on one-third of completed deals.” No quarter since at least 2015 has seen AI so totally dominate venture capitalists’ checkbooks. This isn’t a new phenomenon, as 2024 saw a rise in VC deal values and deal volume compared with 2023, with much of that venture activity coming from AI deals. Several of those investments included established AI powerhouses such as OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic. The gold rush of AI deals provided “a false sense of growth,” PitchBook warned at the time—a trend which does not appear to have waned in the subsequent three months. Meanwhile, the exit environment is also still well below its Covid-era highs, meaning investors have less liquidity to pump back into new investments. “Exit activity showed signs of excitement in Q1 with the high-profile IPO of CoreWeave, the announcement of a $32 billion acquisition of Wiz (yet to be completed), and several other well-known brand IPO filings,” says Stanford. “However, outside of those few transactions, the liquidity market remained subdued. Just 12 companies completed public listings, and liquidity worries abound within the market.” BY BRIAN CONTRERAS @_B_CONTRERAS_