AI startups captured 41% of the $128 billion in venture dollars raised by companies on Carta last year — the highest annual share on record, according to the report.
That concentration runs deep. Just 10% of startups accounted for half of all funding raised. The firms anchoring that figure — Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI — each raised double-digit billions at valuations that would have seemed implausible three years ago.
The pace has not slowed in 2025. In January, xAI closed a $20 billion Series E. The following month, OpenAI raised $110 billion in one of the largest private rounds ever recorded, pushing the company toward a $1 trillion valuation. Anthropic landed in between with a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion valuation. Together, OpenAI and Anthropic absorbed a significant portion of the $189 billion in global venture capital raised last month alone.
All three have teased IPOs for later this year.
Fewer Bets, Bigger Checks
Peter Walker, head of insights at Carta, describes a market where rounds have become slightly harder to close but the capital per round has grown. “Fewer bets, but more capital,” he said. He attributes the large round sizes not to headcount — AI startups tend to run lean — but to the high cost of running AI models at scale.
The venture industry now looks structurally bifurcated. Capital concentrates in a small number of established firms, which then back a narrow set of companies. The rest of the market occupies a different tier entirely.
Early IRR Looks Strong — With Caveats
Funds raised in 2023 and 2024, after the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, are posting the highest internal rates of return compared with funds from the 2017–2020 vintage, whose IRR has been declining. Carta frames this as a positive signal for funds backing leading AI startups from this period.
Walker offered a note of caution. A fund that backed a company at the seed stage and watched it raise a Series A at a higher valuation will show strong paper returns quickly — not because value has been realized, but because the markup creates the appearance of gains. “This pushes IRR up,” he said. He also noted that more recent funds are likely loaded with AI-native startups in a way that 2020 and 2021 vintage funds simply are not, which skews the comparison.
Whether the paper gains translate into real returns through IPOs or acquisitions remains open. The exits that would confirm the cycle — or expose it — have not yet arrived.
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