February was the biggest month in venture history, thanks only to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo

OpenAI’s $110 billion raise, the largest venture round ever raised by a private company, anchored the month. Anthropic added $30 billion in what ranks as the third-largest venture deal on record, while Waymo closed $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion. The rest of the global startup ecosystem was left to split the remaining $33 billion.​

February’s $189 billion haul amounts to roughly 45% of all global venture funding in 2025—a pace that, if even partially sustained, would reset annual records.

The spectacle unfolded against a jarring backdrop: the same week those mega-rounds were announced, AI anxiety triggered a massive selloff in public markets, wiping out roughly $1 to $2 trillion in software and tech market value in a matter of days. Software and services names were at the epicenter, while Big Tech leaders including Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, and Oracle collectively lost more than $1 trillion in market cap as investors questioned whether massive AI capex would ever earn its keep. 

Nevertheless, year-over-year comparisons look staggering on paper—with February funding up nearly 780% from the $21.5 billion raised the year prior—without the three mega-rounds, venture activity looks far more ordinary. Seed-stage funding actually fell about 11% year over year in February, to $2.6 billion, even as mega-rounds pushed overall venture to a record month

The divergence of blockbuster totals at the top, contraction at the bottom has become the continuous tension in venture for the better part of three years, according to past Crunchbase reports.​ After the 2021 boom sent deal counts and dollar volumes to records across all stages, the market began contracting sharply in 2022 and has redistributed capital upward ever since. Median and average round sizes at seed, Series A, and Series B have risen each year since 2024, even as deal volumes have struggled to recover.​

AI has become the majority of the venture market. AI-related startups accounted for $171 billion—or 90%—of all global venture funding in February. U.S.-based companies took in 174 billion, 92% of the total, versus roughly 59% a year earlier. This concentration highlights how AI capital has clustered in a small set of U.S. hubs with a handful of exceptions like Germany-based Black Forest Labs.​