2025 was a year of startups building in the physical world.
2026 will supercharge it.
Here are benchmarks for deep tech company fundraising in 2025.
Smaller SAFE rounds (from $1M-$5M) at the lower end all the way up to Series C.
Data: over 900 rounds raised in 2025 by US startups on Carta. The core deep tech categories included are Energy, Hardware, Semiconductor, and Biotech, but there are many smaller sub-categories as well.
Rounds completed on SAFEs in the blue tint, rounds completed on priced equity in the orange.
As much as possible, we eliminated the bridge financings to focus on core primary rounds.
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1. Deep tech companies took in 36% of total funding this year to Carta companies. That's up from only 17% a decade ago. Deep tech is riding a wave.
2. There has been a resurgence of interest into specific deep tech categories lately (American Dynamism, defense+aerospace, etc). Maybe some of that is the idea that moats in software are declining in the age of AI.
3. Not every deep tech category had a good year. Medical Device funding continued to struggle in 2025 and IoT was flat.
4. While deep tech is not quite as SF-centric as software startups tend to be, this data still reflects more rounds in the Bay Area than anywhere else.
5. Deep tech companies, particularly Biotech, used to favor convertible notes over SAFEs. That has flipped in recent years, with every deep tech sector now solidly seeing more volume at early stages on SAFEs.
6. AI is in this data but not to the same extent as in software-only companies.
7. Deep tech startup fundraising is usually more dilutive at the early stages than software-only fundraising (meaning a founder will have to sell more of the company for a similar amount of money).
8. Interestingly, the total amount of capital needed for a deep tech startup to make it all the way to IPO is not usually much more than the total capital needed for a software startup. So more dilutive upfront, but not always more capital-intensive.
9. Regulatory concerns play a bigger role in many deep tech sectors than in pure software, but interaction with the government on state and federal levels is getting fractionally easier for some over time.
All in all β I think it's a fantastic time to build a company based on atoms, not bits. Or perhaps mixing atoms and bits in new and exciting ways.
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