New PitchBook data shows that 2025 marks a historic turning point in venture capital, with AI startups receiving over half of all global investment—$192.7 billion so far—leaving non-AI companies struggling to raise funds in an increasingly polarized market. (Source: Image by RR)

Global Startup Funding Reaches $366.8 Billion, with AI Grabbing the Lion’s Share

Artificial intelligence continues to reshape the startup investment landscape, with new data from PitchBook showing that 2025 is on track to become the first year AI startups account for more than half of all global venture capital funding. According to Bloomberg, investors have already poured $192.7 billion into AI companies this year — out of $366.8 billion in total VC investment. In the most recent quarter, AI represented 62.7% of U.S. venture spending and 53.2% globally, signaling that nearly every major deal now revolves around artificial intelligence.

The bulk of this funding, as reported in techcrunch.com, has gone to major players like Anthropic, which raised $13 billion in its Series F round in September, as investors bet heavily on established names in generative AI, infrastructure, and model training. Meanwhile, the overall number of funded startups has plummeted, with only 823 venture funds raised globally in 2025, compared to 4,430 in 2022, underscoring a chilling environment for non-AI ventures.

PitchBook’s director of research, Kyle Sanford, described the current market as starkly “bifurcated” — divided between startups building AI and those that aren’t. “You’re in AI, or you’re not,” Sanford told Bloomberg. “You’re a big firm, or you’re no one.” The data highlights an increasingly winner-take-all dynamic, where the largest AI companies capture most of the capital while other sectors struggle to attract investment attention.

For non-AI startups, the message from 2025’s VC landscape is clear: adapt, pivot, or perish. Investors are laser-focused on AI’s promise to redefine industries from software and biotech to logistics and finance, leaving many founders outside the AI boom scrambling to survive in a market that seems to have lost interest in everything else.

read more at techcrunch.com