The AI funding boom is here—but most of the money is flowing to a tiny club
Which AI startups are scoring big funding in 2025, who’s investing in them, and what does it signal for the wider ecosystem?
It’s easy to think the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is lifting all boats. Every week brings another headline about a new startup, a breakthrough model, or a massive funding round. It feels like the early internet all over again, a frontier full of promise, chaos, and the occasional grift.
But if you look closer, the AI gold rush is less about a wide-open scramble and more about a high-stakes game for a very exclusive table.
As of August 2025, AI-related companies have already raised $118 billion this year, surpassing the $108 billion total for all of 2024 (via Crunchbase). That means nearly half of all global venture funding in 2025, 48% to be exact, has flowed into AI, up from about a third (~33%) in 2024.
It sounds impressive until you realize that most of that money isn’t spread across thousands of startups. It’s being hoarded by a tiny group of giants.
The concentration game in the AI sector
Let’s put this into perspective. Out of that $118 billion, just eight companies, including OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, Scale AI, Anduril, and Safe Superintelligence, have collectively raised $73 billion, which is 62% of the total AI funding for 2025. That’s a staggering share for so few players.
Compare this with 2024, when 13 companies raised $47 billion, accounting for 44% of AI funding that year. It was still concentrated, but at least more hands were at the table. So far, this year, the concentration has gone into overdrive.
And it's even more alarming when you find that six of these same companies, OpenAI, xAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Anduril, and Safe Superintelligence, raised billion-dollar rounds in both 2024 and 2025.
The funding disparity is also starker when we look at non-AI sectors. In 2025, billion-dollar rounds made up only 4% of funding outside AI, down slightly from 5% in 2024. In AI funding deals, those mega-rounds have basically become the baseline; if you’re not raising a billion-plus, are you really in the game?
So while the headlines make it look like the boom is universal, it’s really lifting a few yachts, leaving the rest of the fleet to scramble in the wake.
Who’s writing the checks?
So who’s fueling this concentration of power? The answer might surprise you because it’s not just venture capital (VC). A mix of corporates, private equity, and traditional VC firms are elbowing their way into the same handful of deals.
The standout, by far, is SoftBank, which led OpenAI’s $40 billion raise at a $300 billion valuation, the single largest check in the sector.
Big Tech isn’t far behind. Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI at a $29 billion valuation, and even brought Scale AI's founder, Alexandr Wang, on board as Meta's Chief AI Officer. Then we have SpaceX, which led a $5 billion round in xAI, blurring the line between rockets and chatbots. Google, meanwhile, is spreading its bets across Anthropic ($1B), AI21 Labs ($300M), and a stake in AI Labs.
While VCs are still active, the dynamics seem to have shifted. Lightspeed Venture Partners led a $3.5 billion round in Anthropic. Andreessen Horowitz backed Thinking Machines Lab ($2B). Founders Fund invested $2.5 billion in Anduril. Accel bet $500 million on Perplexity, and Khosla Ventures led the Series C for ClickHouse while co-leading Abridge’s Series E.
Zoom out and the pattern becomes clear: corporates and crossover investors aren’t just funding AI, they’re reshaping ownership. If you’re a founder, that means your growth path almost inevitably runs through Big Tech or a deep-pocketed corporate partner.
What this means for the ecosystem
For smaller AI startups, the picture isn’t pretty. Sure, you can raise capital, but without billion-dollar war chests, you’re not competing at the same level. Many will likely be acquired for talent or become infrastructure suppliers for the giants.
Traditional VCs, on the other hand, face a different challenge. Competing with corporate treasuries and SoftBank-sized checks is tough. And with the amount of ready-to-invest capital, what insiders call ‘dry powder,’ in U.S. venture funds reportedly dipping below 2019 levels, many VC firms may need to go back to their investors sooner than expected just to keep playing.
The broader startup ecosystem is also feeling the squeeze. AI now consumes nearly half of all global venture funding, leaving less room for everything else, from fintech to healthtech to climate tech. If you’re building outside AI, you’re already being crowded out.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
The question I keep coming back to is: can this pace last? Mega-rounds are thrilling, but concentrating so much capital in so few hands creates risk. If funding slows, smaller players could face a crunch, and investors may see returns fall short of sky-high valuations.
For now, the power players, OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and their deep-pocketed backers, have secured their war chests. The rest are left watching from the sidelines, hoping the table isn’t too exclusive for everyone else to survive.
