Five charts showing how AI is dominating the venture fundraising market

In the two-and-a-half years since OpenAI first unleashed ChatGPT onto an unsuspecting public, investors and tech behemoths have been busy pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a worldwide race to achieve AI supremacy. 

In some cases, this takes the form of buying chips or building data centers to help support the massive technological needs of cutting-edge AI. In others, it involves investing in startups that are trying to move that cutting edge further forward.

By 2024, AI had emerged as a dominant force—perhaps the most dominant force—in the world of venture capital. Companies in the AI space stunned the market by raising huge rounds at lofty valuations from some of the most prestigious investors in the world. They’re doing it very quickly, in some cases raising headline-grabbing rounds mere weeks after launch. And they’re doing it with smaller teams that, aided by their own AI technology, are able to make huge technological gains with previously unimagined efficiency.

Here are five charts demonstrating the impact that AI had on the VC scene in 2024: 

1. AI startups raised a third of all capital 

From the seed stage on, startups on Carta combined to raise about $81.2 billion in total venture funding in 2024. Startups categorized as AI companies combined to bring in $26.9 billion, about 33% of the overall total. 

Investment in AI was dispersed relatively evenly among different stages of the fundraising lifecycle. At the low end, seed-stage AI startups on Carta combined to raise $1.8 billion last year; at the high end, Series B startups in AI brought in $5.8 billion.

These figures show that the AI surge is not isolated to speculative early-stage startups or to late-stage companies nearing the exits. AI companies at all phases of startup life are finding fundraising success. 

>> Read the State of Private Markets Q1 2025 report for a full breakdown of fundraising trends.

2. Nearly half of all late-stage capital raised went to AI

While investment in AI was significant at every fundraising stage in 2024, the percentage of all capital that went to AI startups grew larger at later stages.

At seed, for instance, AI companies accounted for about 24% of all cash raised on Carta last year. At Series C, that figure rose to 33%, and by Series E and beyond, it was 48%. At the latest stages, in other words, AI startups raised almost as much capital last year as all other startups combined. 

This sort of VC fundraising concentration within a single industry or investment theme is historically rare. But the potential pervasiveness of AI is part of what makes the technology so appealing to investors. Companies from across many different traditional sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, finance, education, and SaaS, might also today be described as AI startups. 

3. Seed valuations were 42% higher for AI startups

In 2024, the median pre-money valuation on seed rounds raised by AI startups was $17.9 million. That’s 42% higher than the median pre-money valuation among non-AI companies. 

Across all sectors, valuations at the seed stage have been on the rise in recent years. In 2024, the median pre-money valuation at seed as a whole was $14.9 million, up from $14.2 million in 2022, a 5% uplift.

We can see in the above chart that this ongoing increase is largely due to AI. Among AI startups, the median pre-money seed valuation increased by 15% between 2022 and 2024. Among all non-AI startups, the median valuation instead declined by 5% over the same span. 

4. The median Series A valuation in AI tops $50M

The median pre-money valuation at Series A for AI startups has mostly held steady for the past three years, inching up from $50.5 million to $51.9 million over that period. Last year, the median Series A valuation was 30% higher among AI startups than non-AI startups. 

At both Series A and at seed, median round sizes in 2024 were about 20% larger among AI companies than they were for non-AI companies. Even though one of the promises of AI is that it can allow lean startup teams to accomplish more with fewer resources, AI startups are still raising more cash than their peers.  

5. The AI valuation gap grows wider at Series B

In terms of fundraising statistics, the difference between AI startups and non-AI startups is even more pronounced at Series B than at Series A and seed. 

In 2024, the median Series B round size was $25.6 million for AI startups, 28% higher than the rest of the population. And the median pre-money valuation for AI startups at Series B was $143 million, 50% higher than the median for non-AI. 

Among both AI startups and non-AI startups, however, median Series B round sizes and valuations both declined between 2022 and 2024. For AI companies specifically, the median Series B valuation dipped by 10% over that span, while median Series B size fell by 26%. 

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