AI startups look set for another record-breaking year, having already raised $32.9 billion (£24.3bn) so far in 2025, and doubling their share of global VC investments.

Fresh analysis from Stocklytics has revealed that AI startups accounted for nearly 58% of global VC investments in Q1 this year, a trend that has continued into Q2 to push total funding over the past five months to levels nearly on par with full-year totals from 2022 and 2023.

That uptick is being driven by increasing investor interest following major deals since the start of the year, including ElevenLabs raising a $180 million Series C round in January (£122.9m), Celestial AI securing $250 million (£184.5M) in March, and SandboxAQ closing a $450 million (£332.2m) round last month.

That’s not to mention AI behemoth Anthorpic raising $3.5 billion (£2.58bn) in a Series E round earlier this year, which saw the barely two-year-old firm hit a $61.5 billion (£45.4bn) post-money valuation.     

According to Stocklytics, these megadeals have sparked investor interest and put more pressure on startups to build real-world AI solutions, leading to the strongest start to a year the AI sector has ever seen.

Kicking off with the second-highest quarterly figures on record, the first months of 2025 saw AI startups raising $22.3 billion (£16.4bn), almost double the amount raised in the same period a year ago.

Since then, investors have poured another $10.6 billion (£7.8bn) into the market, with Stocklytics saying that even if VC investment were to slow down, which it so far shows no signs of doing, 2025 could still be a record-setting year, outperforming 2024 as the best year for AI startup funding so far.

Momentum among AI investors keeps building, promising to top the more than $87 billion (£64.2bn) ploughed into AI last year. 

The latter part of 2024 was especially strong, with Q4 seeing $35.7 billion (£26.3bn) in funding, thanks to multi-billion-dollar deals among the likes of OpenAI, xAI, and Databricks.

That surge has helped push total funding in the AI startup space past $310 billion (£228.9bn), with a staggering 80% of that, $244 billion (£180bn), raised in just the past five years.

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So while the first quarter of 2025 might not have hit quite the same highs as the tail end of last year, it’s still clear that the frenzy around AI shows no sign of abating, and is now putting other tech sectors under considerable pressure. 

In 2025 alone, AI startups have pulled in more than double the funding secured by fintech firms, nearly three times that of biotechs, and 44% more than IT startups. 

Crypto and cybersecurity ventures, meanwhile, have managed to raise a modest $2 billion (£1.4bn) and $4.2 billion (£3.1bn), respectively, so far this year.

Stocklytics’ analysis is further evidence of what’s becoming a concerning trend.

Previous Dealroom research found that VC investment in AI shattered the $100bn ceiling last year for the first time since 2021, but that this had come at the expense of investment in other technologies, which fell by 12% to $227 billion (£183.1bn) in 2024, compared to $258 billion (£208.2bn) a year earlier. 

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