As the tech race heats up, AI startups secured nearly 60% of global venture capital in Q1 2025 — a striking sign of investors’ growing FOMO amid the explosive rise of artificial intelligence.
According to newly released data from Pitchbook, artificial intelligence (AI) startups attracted the majority of global venture capital in the first quarter of 2025, raising a total of $73 billion — with $40 billion of that going to OpenAI in a massive March funding round.
“The AI FOMO [fear of missing out] is still very real among investors,” Pitchbook stated in its April 17 report, which revealed that 57.9% of global VC dollars in Q1 went into AI and machine learning startups — more than double the 28% recorded in the same period last year.
In North America, this trend was even more pronounced, with 70% of regional venture capital funneled into AI-related companies.
The global AI sector raised $73 billion in Q1 alone — more than half the total AI deal value seen throughout all of 2024. Notably, over half of that came from OpenAI’s $40 billion round led by SoftBank, which closed on March 31.
Another major deal in March was Anthropic’s $3.5 billion Series E funding round.
“The fear of someone else capturing your market has never been higher,” said Maria Palma, general partner at Freestyle Capital. “We haven’t seen a slowdown because the pace of technological change is almost impossible to digest.”
However, Nnamdi Okike, co-founder and managing partner at 645 Ventures, warned of extremes in the market: “And that means there are going to be a lot of losers.” He added, “Many VC firms are acting like this can only go up — and that’s usually a recipe for failure. When that starts happening, you’re losing touch with reality.”
Crypto Venture Capital Warms Up Again
Meanwhile, crypto and blockchain startups raised just $4.8 billion in Q1, according to CryptoRank. Nearly half of that — $2 billion — came from Abu Dhabi’s MGX investing in Binance.
Even so, this figure is over four times higher than Q4 2024’s total of $1.1 billion and marks the strongest quarter for crypto VC since Q3 2022.
Crypto venture funding appears to be reviving as a more favorable regulatory climate emerges in the U.S.
On April 17, reports noted that Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures Fund I is on track to exceed its $150 million fundraising goal and could reach $180 million by the time it closes at the end of June.
