Founders - planning to raise VC money every 18 months is planning to fail.
Although if you're an AI-native company, maybe it's a little more realistic.
Every quarter we track the time between venture rounds. In order to strip away noise, we remove all extensions / bridges / other "creative" financings. So the data below only looks at primary rounds for software companies in the US.
And we did a lot of digging on which companies are AI and which are not. The definition seems to always be changing, pls don't throw tomatoes if ours doesn't match yours completely.
𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀
Time between rounds has gotten considerably longer in the past two years.
The median time from Seed to Series A in 2025 is 2.2 years. For AI companies that drops to 1.9 years.
The median time from Series A to Series B in 2025 is 2.7 years. For AI companies that drops to 2.2 years.
Lots and lots of companies are raising bridge capital. Is this a good thing? ...😬
Our current VC hype cycle around AI impacts all sorts of round dynamics. AI companies tend to raise more capital, at faster rates, and higher valuations then non-AI software companies.
In fact, I'd bet that in 2 years or so we stop making this distinction and assume if you're building software you're using AI.
BTW seeing the time between rounds rise is not 𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗹𝘆 a bad thing. Many companies are probably being more judicious about approaching VCs and are building well with the capital they have. Of course many are still desperate for cash and feeling anxious about the next capital infusion.
Good luck out there
#startups #founders #VC #Seed #SeriesA
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