Q1 AI Startup Funding Map: $43 Billion, Where Did 80% Go? | Yunqi Tech π

As of 2025, the AI funding wave shows no signs of cooling.

Data from market research firm Crunchbase shows that in the first quarter just past, global startup funding hit a record high of $113 billion. AI-related deals accounted for roughly 53% of that total, with 24 AI startups raising over $100 million during the period.

Capital flows are, to some degree, a reflection of industry trends. In this edition of "Yunqi Tech π," we round up the AI startups that raised nine-figure rounds in Q1 — and trace where the money betting on AI is actually heading.

By: Cheng Qian | Source: Zhidx (ID: zhidxcom) | Original title: "In 99 Days, Global AI Startups Raised Over $430 Billion. 80% Went to These 24 Companies"

Over $430 billion in funding poured into AI! According to a Zhidx report on April 9, data from global market research firm Crunchbase shows that global startup funding reached a new high in the first quarter of this year, with total AI-related funding hitting $59.6 billion (approximately RMB 435.8 billion).

Total global startup funding in Q1 reached $113 billion (approximately RMB 826.3 billion), up 54% year-over-year, with AI-related funding accounting for 53% of global venture capital activity.

According to Zhidx's incomplete tally, as of April 7, 24 startups in the global AI sector had raised nine-figure rounds in Q1, with total funding reaching $48.5 billion (approximately RMB 354.6 billion). (Note: This appears to be a data inconsistency in the original; the text states 22 startups raised $8.192 billion in Q1, which seems to reference a different metric.)

There were two deals exceeding $10 billion. OpenAI's $40 billion round (approximately RMB 292.5 billion) led the pack by a wide margin, bringing its post-money valuation to $300 billion (approximately RMB 2.2 trillion). Anthropic raised $3.5 billion (approximately RMB 25.4 billion), valuing it at over $60 billion (approximately RMB 438.7 billion).

By geography, the US had the most startups with nine-figure rounds at 16, followed by the UK with 4, and China in third with 2, with Sweden and Canada each having one. Domestically, Zhipu AI raised over RMB 1.8 billion in March, with state-backed investors from Chengdu, Zhuhai, and Hangzhou coming on board; embodied intelligence startup Tashi Zhihang raised $120 million, setting a record for the largest angel round in China's embodied intelligence sector.

Compared to data from Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) AI Index Report 2025, global AI investment reached $252.3 billion in 2024, with US AI investment at $109.1 billion — roughly 12 times mainland China's $9.3 billion (approximately RMB 68.2 billion). By category, startups applying large models to vertical industry applications were the most numerous, with 11 companies spanning healthcare, legal, and marketing, while AI infrastructure accounted for 6.

Among the investors in these deals were tech giants including NVIDIA, OpenAI, Salesforce, Google, Alphabet, and Samsung, as well as prominent VCs like Sequoia Capital and a16z.

Global AI Startups with $100M+ Rounds in Q1:

Beyond announced deals, three startups were reported to be in talks for massive rounds. AI coding tool Cursor parent company Anysphere is negotiating a raise at a nearly $10 billion valuation. OpenAI former CTO Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is targeting $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation. AI search startup Perplexity is in early discussions to raise up to $1 billion. All signs point to AI investment deal sizes continuing their upward climb.

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6 Large Model Startups: US-China Leaders Race for Mega-Rounds

OpenAI leads, Anthropic follows close behind, Zhipu AI gains over RMB 1.8 billion in state backing

Large models remain the hottest track in AI investing, with US and Chinese leaders competing fiercely. OpenAI's $40 billion round led by a wide margin, followed by fellow unicorn Anthropic, while Zhipu AI was the highest-funded domestic company in Q1. The multimodal large model space is equally hot, with video and audio generation startups winning backing from NVIDIA, SoftBank, and Salesforce.

1. US-China large model leaders vacuum up capital: OpenAI nears $300 billion, Zhipu AI gains over RMB 1.8 billion in state investment

On April 1, OpenAI announced a $40 billion (approximately RMB 290.5 billion) funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $300 billion (approximately RMB 2.1787 trillion). Led by SoftBank with Microsoft among participants. Founded in 2015, OpenAI revealed in a blog post that ChatGPT had reached 500 million users, up noticeably from 400 million at the end of February. On the same day as the funding announcement, OpenAI also said it would release an open-weight large language model in the coming months — its first open-source model since GPT-2 in 2019.

In March, domestic large model unicorn Zhipu AI secured consecutive investments totaling over RMB 1.8 billion from state-backed funds in Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Zhuhai. On March 3, Zhipu announced a strategic round of over RMB 1 billion from Hangzhou City Investment Industry Fund. On March 13, Huafa Group, controlled by Zhuhai's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, announced a RMB 500 million strategic investment. On March 19, Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone announced a RMB 300 million strategic investment. Founded in 2019 and spun out of Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Laboratory, Zhipu has seen its "Zhipu Qingyan" product's annual recurring revenue projected to break into the tens of millions since launching paid features in Q3 2024.

On March 3, US large model unicorn Anthropic announced it had raised $3.5 billion, with a post-money valuation of $61.5 billion (approximately RMB 445.4 billion), with Salesforce among participants. Between November last year and January this year, Anthropic had already secured $4 billion (approximately RMB 29 billion) from Amazon and $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.24 billion) from Google. The startup's Claude model family has been integrated into products and business systems at companies including Amazon's Alexa+, coding tool Cursor, and Zoom. According to Bloomberg citing sources, Anthropic's annual recurring revenue was approximately $1 billion at the end of last year.

2. Multimodal large models: Video generation startup raises $300 million with SoftBank, NVIDIA participation

On April 3, US video generation startup Runway raised $308 million (approximately RMB 2.3 billion) in a Series D round, with participants including SoftBank and NVIDIA. Founded in 2018, Runway had just launched its latest video generation model Gen-4, which it claims is its highest-fidelity AI video generation model to date, allowing users to generate 10-second video clips from a single reference image and text prompt.

On January 30, US AI audio generation unicorn ElevenLabs completed a $180 million (approximately RMB 1.3 billion) Series C round, with a post-money valuation exceeding $3 billion (approximately RMB 21.7 billion). Investors included a16z, Sequoia Capital, and Salesforce. Founded in 2022 by former Google machine learning engineer Piotr Dombkowski, ElevenLabs revealed in its blog that its millions of users have generated a cumulative 1,000 years of audio content, with total funding of $281 million (approximately RMB 2 billion).

▲ElevenLabs audio generation platform

3. Code services: Contributing code for large model training, serving 4 million programmers

On March 6, US AI code supplier Turing announced a $111 million (approximately RMB 804 million) Series E round, with a valuation of $2.2 billion (approximately RMB 15.9 billion). Founded in 2018, the company primarily contributes code for building large language models and AI applications for enterprises like OpenAI, with annual recurring revenue of approximately $300 million. The startup has collaborated with roughly 4 million programmers globally, while employing only a few hundred people itself.

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6 AI Infrastructure Startups: Highest raise hits $480 million

Winning favor from NVIDIA, Samsung, AMD, Salesforce

Six AI infrastructure-related startups landed nine-figure rounds, led by AI development cloud platform unicorn Lambda at $480 million. The company's co-founder and CEO Stephen Balaban has revealed that Lambda saw substantial growth in deploying open-source models like DeepSeek.

On March 25, AI infrastructure provider Nexthop AI raised $110 million (approximately RMB 800 million), building custom networking solutions for hyperscalers. Founded in 2024, Nexthop AI provides tailored networking solutions for large-scale cloud computing companies and hyperscale data centers.

On March 11, US optical interconnect startup Celestial AI completed a $250 million (approximately RMB 1.8 billion) C1 round, with a post-money valuation of $2.5 billion (approximately RMB 18.1 billion). Participants included AMD, Porsche, and Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan as an individual investor. Founded in 2020, Celestial AI has now raised over $515 million. The company's photonic fabric helps address one of generative AI's biggest problems — disentangling compute power from memory to improve efficiency.

On March 5, Swedish green data center builder EcoDataCenter (EDC) announced a €450 million (approximately RMB 3.5 billion) funding round, with undisclosed investors. EcoDataCenter opened its first data center in 2019, building environmentally friendly facilities with a major client being US cloud computing newcomer CoreWeave, which has close ties to NVIDIA and Microsoft. EDC has now raised €910 million (approximately RMB 7.2 billion).

On February 20, US AI cloud platform unicorn Together AI announced a $305 million (approximately RMB 2.2 billion) Series B round, with a valuation of $3.3 billion (approximately RMB 23.9 billion). Salesforce, NVIDIA, and others participated. Founded in June 2022 with co-founder Prakash formerly an Apple senior director, the platform currently supports over 200 open-source models from companies including Meta and DeepSeek. Together AI's products serve 450,000 AI developers and companies like Salesforce and Zoom, with annual recurring revenue exceeding $100 million (approximately RMB 720 million).

▲Together AI's major clients

On February 19, US AI development cloud platform unicorn Lambda announced a $480 million (approximately RMB 3.5 billion) Series D round, with a valuation approaching $2.5 billion (approximately RMB 18.1 billion). Participants included NVIDIA and others, AI luminary Andrej Karpathy as an individual investor, and strategic investments from Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, and Wiwynn.

Founded in 2012, Lambda provides infrastructure, cloud services, and software for AI model fine-tuning, training, and inference, with cumulative funding of $863 million (approximately RMB 6.3 billion). Lambda co-founder and CEO Stephen Balaban has revealed that Lambda is well-suited to leverage open-source AI models like DeepSeek-R1, as its cloud platform has over 25,000 GPUs that can be repurposed at any time to host these open-source models.

▲Open-source models on Lambda's cloud platform

On February 13, US AI inference chip startup EnCharge AI announced a $100 million (approximately RMB 720 million) Series B round, without disclosing post-money valuation. Participants included a Samsung fund and HH-CTBC (a joint venture between Foxconn and CTBC Bank). Founded in 2022, EnCharge AI says it has developed a novel in-memory computing architecture for AI inference that delivers 20x better performance-per-watt compared to GPUs. The company expects to launch its first such chips later this year.

03 12 AI Application Startups: Healthcare Leads, Legal, Marketing, and Fraud Detection Startups Surge

Large models are penetrating vertical scenarios and landing in specific business operations. The remaining 12 startups with nine-figure rounds span healthcare, legal, marketing, and fraud detection.

1. Healthcare: 6 startups raise big, products deployed across 100+ health systems

On March 31, Alphabet's AI drug discovery platform Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million (approximately RMB 4.4 billion), led by Thrive Capital with Google Ventures and Alphabet participating. Isomorphic Labs spun out from Google DeepMind in 2021. In January, the startup announced partnerships with pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novartis to apply AI to discover new disease treatments, a deal worth approximately $3 billion in total.

On February 17, US clinical conversational AI platform Abridge announced a $250 million (approximately RMB 1.8 billion) Series D round, with a valuation of $2.75 billion (approximately RMB 19.9 billion), with NVIDIA among participants. Founded in 2018, Abridge's AI platform helps clinicians generate comprehensive, billable clinical notes by recording and summarizing relevant conversations via audio, deployed across 100+ health systems.

▲Abridge product

On January 13, US AI healthcare automation software startup Qventus raised $105 million (approximately RMB 760 million), with a valuation of $400 million (approximately RMB 2.9 billion). Founded in 2012 with total funding exceeding $200 million, its platform uses generative AI to address operational inefficiencies in inpatient and outpatient settings.

On January 12, UK AI healthcare software provider Cera raised $150 million (approximately RMB 1.1 billion). Founded in 2008, Cera's products use capabilities based on Google's Gemini AI platform and OpenAI's ChatGPT to help caregivers quickly document patient symptoms.

On January 9, US healthcare cloud platform Innovaccer announced a $275 million (approximately RMB 1.99 billion) Series F round, with participants including B Capital Group and Banner Health. Founded in 2014, the company provides agents for utilization management, prior authorization, clinical decision support, and clinical documentation. Its clients include 6 of the top 10 US healthcare systems, with 50% year-over-year revenue growth over the past five years and annual recurring revenue potentially reaching $250 million this year.

On January 9, US AI healthcare solutions unicorn Hippocratic AI announced a $141 million (approximately RMB 1.02 billion) Series B round, with a post-money valuation of $1.64 billion (approximately RMB 11.9 billion). a16z, NVIDIA, and others participated. Founded in 2023 with total funding of $278 million (approximately RMB 2 billion), Hippocratic AI's products address healthcare professional shortages by creating agents. As of 2024, it had signed contracts with 23 health systems and insurers.

2. Legal: Fortune 500 companies as clients, annual recurring revenue to exceed $100 million

On February 13, US AI legal startup Eudia announced a $105 million (approximately RMB 760 million) Series A round, led by General Catalyst with Floodgate, Defy Ventures, and Everywhere Ventures participating. Founded in 2023, Eudia builds AI agents for enterprise legal departments, with clients including Fortune 500 chief legal officers and their in-house legal teams.

On February 12, US AI legal tech company Harvey announced a $300 million (approximately RMB 2.2 billion) Series D round, with a valuation of $3 billion (approximately RMB 21.7 billion). Led by Sequoia Capital with Google Ventures, OpenAI Startup Fund, and others participating. Founded in 2022, co-founder and president Gabe Pereyra was formerly a Google DeepMind research scientist. The company uses large models to help law firms analyze contracts and draft documents, with annual recurring revenue exceeding $50 million (approximately RMB 360 million) and projected to surpass $100 million (approximately RMB 720 million) in about 8 months.

▲Harvey product demo

3. Marketing: AI + training, digital humans, total funding exceeds $400 million

On February 10, Canadian AI marketing startup StackAdapt announced a $235 million (approximately RMB 1.7 billion) growth round, led by Teachers' Venture Growth. Founded in 2014, its main product is a multi-channel programmatic advertising platform using AI and automation to enhance features and user experience, with total funding exceeding $500 million.

On January 14, UK AI avatar startup Synthesia announced an $180 million (approximately RMB 1.3 billion) Series D round, with a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion (approximately RMB 15.2 billion). Led by NEA with Google Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, and others participating. Founded in 2017, Synthesia's main product is building highly realistic AI avatars, with approximately 60,000 enterprise clients currently using the technology to create avatar-based videos for sales, training, and more. To date, Synthesia has raised $330 million.

4. Embodied intelligence: Less than 2 months old, lands largest angel round in domestic vertical

On March 26, embodied intelligence startup Tashi Zhihang completed a $120 million (approximately RMB 880 million) angel round, setting a record for the largest angel round in China's embodied intelligence industry. Founded in February this year, Tashi Zhihang possesses capabilities in embodied intelligence large models, hardware R&D, and integrated software-hardware mass production.

5. Fraud detection: Using AI to combat money laundering and fraud, 800-employee startup serves thousands of clients

On March 4, UK AI fraud detection startup Quantexa announced it had raised $175 million (approximately RMB 1.3 billion), with a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion (approximately RMB 18.8 billion), led by Teachers' Venture Growth (TVG). The platform uses AI and data analytics to combat money laundering and fraud. According to PitchBook, the startup has raised nearly $550 million to date. Quantexa's platform has thousands of partners. Last year, the company's license revenue grew 40%, and it now has 16 global offices with approximately 800 employees.

04 Conclusion: AI Funding Wave — Surging Scale, Global Reach, Tech Giant and VC Backing

Q1 2025 saw a robust recovery in global startup funding, underscoring AI's increasingly critical position in the global economic landscape. By geography, startups in the US, UK, and China are gradually gaining capital recognition and favor, demonstrating dominant positions.

Meanwhile, AI application deployment accelerated in 2025, evident in nearly half of relevant companies securing nine-figure rounds, as enterprises deeply integrate large model technology with traditional industries like healthcare, legal, and marketing — driving continued growth in demand for AI infrastructure.

From sharply increased funding scale and mega-round emergence, to broad geographic distribution and diverse company types, to a formidable investor lineup, these factors are injecting powerful vitality and momentum into global AI industry development.

Notably, this is also increasing AI-related late-stage transactions. Crunchbase data shows global Q1 deal value reached $81 billion (approximately RMB 592.3 billion), up 147% year-over-year.

This data clearly shows that startups are capturing an ever-larger share of global investment, with AI-related startups in particular continuously absorbing massive capital and becoming the focus of competitive investor pursuit.

This article was first published on the WeChat public account "Zhidx" (ID: zhidxcom). Zhidx is a leading new media platform for China's intelligent industries — follow us for more.