US Startup Funding Overview – November 2025

November 2025 demonstrated exceptional strength in US venture capital with $18.2B invested across 409 companies, showing a 49.2% increase from October 2025’s $12.2B and a robust 56.9% year-over-year increase from November 2024’s $11.6B. The month featured eight mega-rounds exceeding $500M, led by Anysphere’s record-breaking $2.3B late-stage round for its AI coding assistant Cursor.

Artificial Intelligence maintained its dominance with an estimated $11.8B across AI-related companies (65% of total funding). READ MORE

The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Investors Get Back To Writing Large Checks

We took a break from covering the largest U.S. startup investments over Thanksgiving week, which was just as well, given that it was a predictably slow period for big deal announcements. Now, with just a few weeks left in 2025, things are picking up again.

Predictions market Kalshi led the list after confirming its already widely reported $1 billion fresh financing. Other big rounds came from sectors including defense tech, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and biotech. READ MORE

Big money, few deals as crypto venture funding dries up

Venture capital funding in the cryptocurrency sector remained muted in November, continuing a broader slowdown that has persisted through late 2025. Deal activity was once again concentrated in a small number of large raises by established companies.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, the third quarter saw a similar pattern: total funding climbed to $4.65 billion, according to Galaxy Digital, but deal counts lagged as capital flowed primarily to bigger, more mature firms. READ MORE

Where are we in the AI bubble?

I’m currently reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book 1929, which traces the characters at the center of the market crash that ran from 1929 to 1933 before the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 89% from its peak of 381 in September 1929 to 41 in July 1932. In today’s terms, that’s like the Dow dropping back to where it was in 1996.

Sorkin draws subtle parallels to today such as tariffs under Smoot-Hawley, a long bull market, and speculative excess.

But the differences are just as important. READ MORE

How to Build a Brand Without Losing Your Soul

The dominant startup script is simple: raise fast, scale faster, exit fastest. For luxury brands, this often produces hype instead of lasting value.

Lafco, the luxury home fragrance company, took the opposite approach. After 33 years without outside capital, their candles sit alongside premium competitors at Neiman Marcus, core sizes retail around $50 to $115, and the brand has expanded from candles into body care while maintaining its positioning.

Here is what its journey reveals about building brands that actually matter. READ MORE

How Venture Capital And Private Equity Are Fueling An AI-Driven Financial Feedback Loop

The traditional boundaries between venture capital and private equity have begun to dissolve, creating a hybrid investment ecosystem that may be amplifying systemic risks in the technology sector. This convergence, combined with what economists term "circular financing" among major AI companies, has created conditions reminiscent of previous market bubbles - with potentially far-reaching consequences for the broader economy. READ MORE

'We're going to see a lot of carnage': VC investor says AI boom will create giants — and topple overhyped startups

The AI boom is only just beginning — and it may prove the most lucrative cycle in venture-capital history, even as it also leaves behind a wave of startups.

That's according to Mel Williams, cofounder and partner at TrueBridge Capital Partners, a fund-of-funds manager with $8 billion under management that has backed firms such as Founders Fund, Thrive, and Sequoia. READ MORE

Why ‘hold forever’ investors are snapping up venture capital ‘zombies’

Italian company Bending Spoons flew largely under the radar — until last month. In a span of 48 hours, the company announced the acquisition of AOL and a massive $270 million raise, quadrupling its valuation to $11 billion from $2.55 billion set in early 2024.

Bending Spoons has grown rapidly by acquiring stagnating tech brands like Evernote, Meetup, and Vimeo, then turning them profitable through aggressive cost-cutting and price increases. While the company’s approach is similar to private equity, there is one key difference: Bending Spoons has no plans to sell these businesses. READ MORE

‘Product won’t win. Distribution will.’ Tips for startup founders raising cash right now

If you’re building an early-stage startup and trying to raise venture capital dollars to fuel your big ideas — focus on solving a specific problem, make sure you have strong conviction, and think hard about distribution in the age of AI.

Those were some tips shared during a recent Seattle AI Week panel discussion I moderated with Kellan Carter, founding general partner at Bellevue, Wash.-based firm Fuse, and Rohan D’Souza, CEO and co-founder at Seattle-based healthcare benefits startup Avante. READ MORE

How PE And VC Collapsed Into One Battlefield

With IPO markets effectively frozen and AI-driven mega-rounds absorbing virtually all high-quality deal flow, private equity and venture capital have collapsed into the same battlefield, fighting over the same late-stage technology deals once clearly owned by VC. Even family offices are muscling in, writing checks once reserved for growth funds. The result is a barbell-shaped market where top-tier players crowd into a handful of oversubscribed AI and Big Tech opportunities, while second- and third-tier funds face an existential question: in a world where capital is abundant but true opportunities are scarce, what, if anything, do they actually have left to do? READ MORE

Private Equity Turns To Leadership Diligence To Gain A Sharper Edge

Private equity is entering a new phase where success hinges less on capital structure and more on who sits at the table. As firms deploy record dry powder and compete for differentiated value creation, leadership diligence is becoming the ultimate edge. Evan Berta, an associate at Hunt Scanlon Ventures, explores how investors are rethinking the pre-close process, what practical frameworks are emerging to assess leadership risk, and why KKR’s recent investment in ghSMART demonstrates the market’s conviction that talent intelligence is now core to private equity strategy. READ MORE

Here’s What 3 VC Heavyweights Suggest Founders Do to Get Funded Now

Capturing the attention of investors, particularly in the venture capital community, may be harder than ever. Closing a funding round is even more challenging. So how can founders raise VC funding in the current environment? Reid Hoffman, Stacy Brown-Philpot, and Aileen Lee have a few suggestions.

Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn and chairman of venture capital firm Village Global. Philpot is the former CEO of TaskRabbit and founder of Cherryrock Capital. And Lee is founder of seed investment firm Cowboy Ventures — and the person who coined the term “unicorn” for startups. The trio gathered recently at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit to discuss the current funding environment and how companies can stand out when they’re trying to fundraise. READ MORE

Venture Capital LPs Navigate Liquidity Crisis with Secondary Markets and Longer Fund Cycles

In the current reality, limited partners (LPs) in venture capital funds are facing a liquidity crisis: funds are lasting longer than expected, young managers are raising money with greater difficulty, and billions of dollars are stuck in startups that may not live up to the peak valuations of 2021.

A recent StrictlyVC panel in San Francisco brought together five leading LPs representing endowments, fund-of-funds, and secondary-market firms with total assets under management of more than $100 billion, and they painted an unusual picture of the current state of the venture ecosystem while pointing to opportunities amid the chaos. READ MORE

How to Know If Venture Capital Is Right For Your Business

Venture capital is a powerful tool to scale startups, but is it the right tool for your startup? According to major VC investor Kevin Carter, not necessarily. Throughout his career, Carter has invested in more than 1,000 early stage companies, dozens of which have gone on to billion-dollar valuations. He entered early into disruptive companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Snap — and now his firm Night Capital backs high-potential founders in massive markets. Here, he shares how to decide whether venture capital can take your business to the next level, and if so, which investors are worth partnering with. READ MORE

How Generative AI Is Reshaping Venture Capital

The venture capital world has witnessed countless technological disruptions over the decades, but few have arrived with the speed and scope of generative artificial intelligence. In the three years since ChatGPT’s launch, gen AI has fundamentally altered how startups are conceived, pitched, built, and funded. According to a report from Stanford, global private AI investment reached a record high of $252.3 billion in 2024, with generative AI funding soaring to $33.9 billion—more than eight times higher than 2022 levels. READ MORE

‘Our funds are 20 years old’: Limited partners confront VCs’ liquidity crisis

These days, it’s not easy to be a limited partner who invests in venture capital firms. The “LPs” who fund VCs are confronting an asset class in flux: Funds have nearly twice the lifespan they used to, emerging managers face life-or-death fundraising challenges, and billions of dollars sit trapped in startups that may never justify their 2021 valuations.

Indeed, at a recent StrictlyVC panel in San Francisco, above the din of the boisterous crowd gathered to watch it, five prominent LPs, representing endowments, fund-of-funds, and secondaries firms managing over $100 billion combined, painted a surprising picture of venture capital’s current state, even as they see areas of opportunity emerging from the upheaval. READ MORE