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What We Learned This Year From 6 Active AI Investors Backing Startups Across The Stack
Editor’s note: In 2025, Crunchbase News heard from six active startup investors in artificial intelligence. Below, we publish highlights from those interviews or presentations. Read the full stories with Accel, Dell Technologies, Foundation Capital, GV, AI Fund and Sierra Ventures, as well as highlights from interviews in 2023 and 2024. AI investment accelerated in 2025, as startups and investors alike angled for market share in this tech wave. By Q3, nearly half of all startup funding globally went to AI companies, according to Crunchbase data. Global venture funding overall was up 38% year over year in the third quarter, powered largely by megadeals for AI giants. All told, AI startups raised around $100 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, roughly matching 2024’s full-year total. Against that backdrop, six active AI investors shared their insights with us this year and offered a ground-level view of how the playbook is evolving, from compute and data moats to new models for co-founding companies. Here’s what we learned. Accel’s Boterri: How startups can compete against behemothsPhilippe Botteri, partner at Accel The “Super Six” companies — Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta — generate hundreds of billions in operating cash flow, much of which is being poured straight back into AI infrastructure. Accel partner Philippe Botteri and his firm’s 2025 Globalscape report highlighted the new AI power map and how startups can compete. The firm is one of the three most-active investors on the The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, which has surged in value this year amid the AI boom. Accel in particular has backed a wave of native AI startups at both the model and application layer. Those startups include Anthropic, small model developer H Co., publicly traded AI infrastructure provider Nebius Group, and application-layer companies including Cursor-maker Anysphere, Perplexity, Synthesia and security startup Cyera. While the incumbents are capturing enormous share, there’s still room for focused, fast-growing AI-native companies to wedge themselves into new categories or reinvent old ones, according to Boterri. “If you don’t think that GenAI is going to generate a 1%-2% increase in the global GDP, then I’m not sure why we’re doing all this,” he said last month, speaking onstage at Web Summit in Lisbon, where Crunchbase News was also in attendance. Where Foundation see opportunities in physical techSteve Vassallo, general partner at Foundation Capital But AI’s massive acceleration and computing needs also raise an existential question for the industry: Will the physical infrastructure keep up? As many of the investors we spoke with this year noted, AI’s bottlenecks are increasingly physical — power, chips and data centers — and those bottlenecks are spawning some of the most interesting startup opportunities. Botteri’s analysis points to an estimated 117-gigawatt energy shortfall over the next five years needed to serve projected AI demand — roughly equivalent to powering three large European economies combined. It’s a problem that Steve Vassallo, general partner at Foundation Capital, is also coming at from the venture side. The firm incubated AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems back in 2016, well before today’s enthusiasm around AI infrastructure, and has gone on to back more than 100 AI startups. In our interview, Vassallo recalled that betting on semiconductors in the mid-2010s “was a recipe for losing a lot of money” — but the team believed AI workloads were growing so fast that traditional architectures would eventually hit a wall. That thesis now looks prescient as Cerebras has signaled plans to go public, and chip giant Nvidia’s market cap has exploded to above $4 trillion. Vassallo argued that the companies that matter most in this cycle will be those that both harness AI and are mindful of how humans can be “hacked” — in other words, products that respect psychology as much as physics. He pointed in particular to reinforcement learning with human feedback, where people help close the loop on AI behavior and, in the process, become more adept at working alongside the systems they’re training. The firm’s AI investments include seed rounds into Tennr, a company automating authorization healthcare workflows from often convoluted and paper-based processes, and Jasper, an app that assists with writing built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3. It also invested in the Series A for PlayerZero, whose product predicts and debugs software failures in AI-written code before it is deployed. “We love working with founders who are living right at that edge,” Vassallo said. Why Dell’s venture arm invests at the silicon levelDaniel Docter, managing director at Dell Technologies Capital At Dell Technologies Capital, or DTC, managing director Daniel Docter and partner Elana Lian sit at the intersection of infrastructure and enterprise demand. Dell expects $20 billion in AI server shipments by fiscal 2026, and its venture arm has logged six exits since June — one IPO and five acquisitions — even as exits elsewhere in venture have been harder to come by. As we discussed in our interview, Dell’s position as a leading GPU server provider means its venture arms sees nearly every serious enterprise AI buyer and builder up close. Elana Lian, partner at Dell Technologies Capital And like other investors we spoke with, DTC noted that the current pace of investment in hot AI startups feels unprecedented. “We’ll meet with a company on a Tuesday for the first time and sometimes by Thursday, they have a term sheet that they’ve already signed,” Docter said. The firm’s infrastructure-level investments include AI chipmaker Rivos, which Meta plans to acquire for an undisclosed amount. (The deal is pending regulatory approval.) It has also backed SiMa.ai, which makes a chip for embedded edge use cases including in automobile, drone and robot technologies, and Runpod, an AI developer software layer with on-demand access to GPUs. DTC invests at the silicon level because you “can be incredibly disruptive to the ecosystem,” Docter told us. At the application level, DTC’s investments include Maven AGI, which provides customer support for complex and high-compliance enterprise use cases, and Series Entertainment, a GenAI platform for game development that aims to drastically shorten deployment timelines. Sierra Ventures’ layer-cake approachTim Guleri, managing partner, Sierra Ventures If compute is the bottleneck, data is the differentiator. Lian at DTC put it bluntly: “AI is almost a data problem.” For models to keep improving, she argued, you need high-quality, domain-specific data — not just more parameters. At Sierra Ventures, managing partner Tim Guleri is also focused on data. As he explained in our interview, his firm tends to seek out startups that share a pattern: They attack big, painful workflows, promise order-of-magnitude productivity improvements, and sit on top of rich datasets. Sierra’s “layered cake” framework breaks AI investing into five levels: infrastructure; applied infrastructure on top of foundational models; horizontal applications; vertical applications; and entirely novel innovations that wouldn’t exist without AI. The firm isn’t trying to compete in the most capital-intensive infrastructure layer, but is leaning instead into applied infrastructure and applications where proprietary data and clever distribution can create durable moats, Guleri told us. Global GDP is about $110 trillion, he noted, with roughly $6 trillion in agriculture — leaving more than $100 trillion in services and industries where he expects AI-driven efficiency gains to accrue. AI is “the wave that’s lifting everything on top of it,” he said. “There’s going to be a tremendous amount of value creation in the coming decades.” How a Google Brain co-founder builds and backs AI startupsAndrew Ng, managing general partner, AI Fund Google Brain and Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng is taking a more hands-on route to unique data via corporate partnerships at AI Fund, his venture studio launched in 2018. Corporate LPs including AES, HP, Mitsui & Co., Mitsubishi and others bring Ng and his AI Fund into highly specialized sectors — renewable energy, large-scale industrial operations, insurance and more — where internal data is both hard to access and critical to building defensible AI products. Many of AI Fund’s startup ideas, Ng said, come directly from these partners spotting gaps in huge but under-digitized markets. “It turns out a meaningful fraction of our startup ideas come from corporate partners that have spotted a market need, often in some sector of the economy, which is very large, very important but completely foreign to the typical consumer, or completely foreign to the typical AI engineer. I find that it’s been interesting how often we get to play in these spaces,” he said in our interview. “We think it’s wildly exciting, while no one else cares.” Venture firms Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates are also investors in the fund, but Ng said his fund’s strategy is differentiated from the traditional venture approach. “Unlike a traditional VC, our primary business activity is not to compete for deal flow,” he said. “Our primary business activity is to identify promising startup ideas, validate the market need and the customer need. Then we recruit a CEO to work alongside us to build a company.” Ng said he sees continued opportunities in specific verticals such as visual and voice AI: “It feels like AI is not one thing; it is many different things that are creating new opportunities.” GV on being willing to invest at AI’s premium valuationsDave Munichiello, managing partner at GV Then there’s GV, which has quietly become one of the most-active and -flexible corporate investors in AI. With Alphabet as its sole LP but independent on investment decisions, GV (formerly Google Ventures) has no qualms about backing startups that directly compete with Google’s own products — as it once did with Slack and is now doing with AI companies that go head-to-head with Alphabet’s internal initiatives. Tom Hulme, managing partner and head of Europe at GV Managing partners Dave Munichiello and Tom Hulme told us in our interview that they’re writing checks across the stack — from chips and compilers to applications — at both early and late stages. And, they’re willing to accept premium AI valuations when they believe the opportunity warrants it. “When we look at companies that are coming in to raise, the revenue run rate is insane. These companies are growing incredibly fast, faster than ever before,” Munichiello said. “And it’s very hard to spend a lot of time looking at AI applications companies, and then go back to looking at other companies.” Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Sector Snapshot: Real Estate Tech Funding Sees Slight Rebound, But Still Far Lower Than Peak Years
When interest rates were low, the amount of venture capital dollars flowing into the real estate technology space was high. The inverse of that is also proving to be true. As interest rates climbed in recent years, funding to the space plunged. But now in 2025, as rates have started to lower somewhat, venture dollars raised by real estate tech, or proptech, startups are inching upwards slightly compared to recent years. Capital is largely going to companies that either sit inside core workflows around payments, closings and procurement, or deliver explicit ROI via automation and artificial intelligence. But tech-enabled homebuilders are getting a piece of the pie, too. The broad trend: Even before the pandemic-fueled funding peaks, proptech startups received more than double the amount of venture funding in 2019 than they have in more recent years. While investors haven’t given up on proptech, funding to startups in the space is only slightly higher in 2025, and deal count is at a multiyear record low. Notably, private equity firms have been involved in three of the five largest deals in 2025. The numbers: So far in 2025, global real estate-related startups have pulled in about $10.2 billion in seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase data — down 57% from 2019, the second-highest year on record after the 2021 venture funding spike. Deal count is down 58.3% in 2025 compared to the high of 2,722 in 2021, the peak of the funding craze. The lower deal count signals both potentially decreased investor interest in the space, as well as larger round sizes. Noteworthy recent rounds Several large megadeals have taken place in 2025, many of them in the second half of the year. Unsurprisingly, AI surfaces in more than one deal. Just this month, Santa Clara, California-based tech-enabled homebuilder Homebound raised $400 million in new financing — $300 million in real estate capital (for the purchase of lots) and $100 million for its operating company. CEO and co-founder Nikki Pechet told Fortune that the company’s goal is to be “the Amazon of homes.” In its core markets, Homebound claims it is now building homes about 40% faster than its direct competitors, with build costs around 25% lower. It uses a proprietary AI platform that manages millions of data points across more than 1,000 distinct tasks required to deliver a home, from lot acquisition through move-in. The company says it has grown its topline by more than 4x since 2021, and margin dollars by more than 6x, and is on track to be profitable in 2026. The startup has raised nearly $530 million in capital since its 2018 inception. Investors include Thrive Capital, Gaingels, Khosla Ventures, Craft Ventures, Forerunner and Goldman Sachs, among others. In July, New York-based Bilt Rewards, whose platform aims to allow consumers to earn rewards on rent and daily neighborhood spend, raised $250 million at a $13 billion valuation in a round co-led by General Catalyst and real estate company GID. Impressively, that’s up from a valuation of $3.1 billion in January 2024. The company has raised over $800 million since it was founded in 2021, per Crunchbase data. Other backers include Eldridge Industries, Fifth Wall, Wells Fargo and Camber Creek. And in August, EliseAI netted a $250 million Series E financing at a $2.25 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz led that round, which also included participation from Sapphire Ventures, Navitas Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. ElisaAI is focused on automating healthcare and housing systems. The New York-based company has raised nearly $392 million since its 2017 inception, per Crunchbase data. Its products include AI-guided tours, lease audits and a maintenance App designed to lower costs and improve tenant experiences, according to a report by Pymnts. Adam Wiener, former Redfin executive and current president of digital home finance startup Lower, told Crunchbase News that he believes proptech is “on the precipice of a massive transformation in the next year or two.” “The benefits of that transformation will accrue to the consumer,” he added. “AI applications will re-make the way we discover, buy, finance, and manage our homes, and there’s suddenly a new opportunity for a next generation of leaders to rise to the top of the proptech industry.” Other notable raises There were also a number of other interesting raises in the space over the course of the year that didn’t fall under the megadeal category. Many of their business models revolved on automating tasks as well as giving investors and homebuyers more options when it comes to purchasing or investing in homes. While there was a small rebound in 2025, it’s difficult to get too excited yet about the real estate technology funding outlook. Many of the biggest rounds were a mix of private equity and later-stage financings. Unless interest rates get meaningfully lower, we should probably expect more of the same in 2026. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Are We Repeating The Mistakes Of The Last Bubble?
In December 2021, I highlighted the dangers of tech startups raising capital at inflated revenue multiples between 40x and 70x. At the time, it was clear that valuations were being driven more by hype than by financial fundamentals. The warning signs were there. Now, years later, the consequences are materializing. Many of those companies raised at sky-high valuations without ever achieving profitability. As cash reserves dry up, they are facing a harsh reality. Market multiples have contracted significantly, and those inflated valuations from 2021 are now a liability. The consequences of inflated valuations The AI wave is showing the same patterns What worries me is that we are seeing the same dynamic play out today in the AI sector. Early-stage companies are raising at valuations that assume future dominance, long before product-market fit or revenue. The technology is exciting and the potential is real, but history tells us that not all companies will emerge winners. When the hype settles, those with sound business models and disciplined financials will remain standing. Others will be left dealing with down rounds, layoffs or worse. What founders should focus on now Itay Sagie is a strategic adviser to tech companies and investors, specializing in strategy, growth and M&A, a guest contributor to Crunchbase News, and a seasoned lecturer. Learn more about his advisory services, lectures and courses at SagieCapital.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn for further insights and discussions. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Crunchbase Predicts: IPOs Picked Up In 2025 And The Outlook For 2026 Is Even More Optimistic
The IPO market for new technology listings picked up in 2025. So far this year, at least 23 U.S.-based companies have listed above $1 billion in value, compared to nine in 2024, per an analysis of Crunchbase data. Total valuations at the IPO price for these billion-dollar listings have reached $125 billion so far — more than doubling year over year. “Coming into 2025, folks were optimistic about the IPO market,” said Aman Singh, a corporate partner at legal advisory firm Fenwick & West who worked on the CoreWeave and Figma IPOs on the issuer side and on Navan as counsel for the underwriters. There were a number of high-profile IPOs in 2025 before the government shutdown chilled the market, said Singh, who expects Q1 to be busier due to the hold up. If interest rates continue to come down, he predicts a pretty good IPO market in 2026. “It is a fairly conducive macroeconomic environment,” Singh said. In this market, “a profitable company — particularly one that either is an AI play or has a good story of how AI will be a tailwind for their business — are good candidates for a 2026 IPO,” he said. 2025 listings Among the larger and most high-profile companies to list this year were New Jersey-based AI data center CoreWeave, San Francisco-based design platform Figma, San Francisco-based digital bank Chime, and Sweden-based buy now, pay later fintech giant Klarna. Among these four leading companies, CoreWeave was the best performing stock as of Dec. 16, 2025, having gained over 60% from its listing price. Crypto valuations up Leading sectors for the 23 U.S.-based billion-dollar listings were biotech and healthcare with six companies, blockchain and crypto with four companies, fintech with three companies, and insurance and aerospace each with two companies. The sectors overall that performed well were cryptocurrency and blockchain companies with New York-based stablecoin provider Circle, San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, and San Francisco-based blockchain lending firm Figure all up from their listing prices, while New York-based crypto exchange platform Gemini lagged behind. These 23 companies’ listing prices totaled $125 billion. That was well above the past three years, but below values seen in 2019 and 2020 before the IPO market took off in 2021. Singh predicts in the back half of 2026 we will see some bigger listings. While there is this trend of staying private for longer, “you can’t match public market liquidity.” “There’s still some uncertainty on valuations. As we see more of the tech IPOs go out, I think the valuations will stabilize, people will get a better sense of investor demand, and so hopefully we’ll see a more certain valuation environment,” he said. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Security And Energy Deals Top The List
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here. With the winter holiday season nearly upon us, this was likely the last busy week of 2025 for big funding announcements. And as weeks go, it was certainly an active one. Perennial megaround raiser Databricks was the top funding recipient by far, securing a fresh $4 billion in Series L funding (yes, that is a thing) at a $134 billion valuation. Next on the list were data security platform Cyera and nuclear microreactor company Radiant, followed by startups in healthcare, biotech, fintech and AI. 1. Databricks, $4B, data and AI: Databricks announced that it is raising over $4 billion in a Series L financing at a $134 billion valuation, led by Insight Partners, Fidelity and J.P. Morgan Asset Management. The 12-year-old, San Francisco-headquartered company also said it crossed the $4.8 billion revenue run-rate in its third quarter, growing over 55% year over year. 2. Cyera, $400M, cybersecurity: New York-based Cyera, provider of an AI-enabled data security platform, reportedly secured $400 million in a funding round led by Blackstone Group at a $9 billion valuation. The financing brings total funding to date for the 4-year-old company to $1.7 billion. 3. Radiant, $300M, nuclear power: Radiant, a maker of portable nuclear microreactors, says it closed on over $300 million in Series D funding led by Draper Associates and Boost VC. The El Segundo, California-based company said it plans to break ground early next year on a factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 4. Tebra, $250M, healthcare software: Tebra, a provider of patient record software for healthcare private practices, says it raised $250 million in equity and debt financing to invest in AI and automation. Hildred Capital Management led the equity financing, which constituted most of the round, while JP Morgan provided the debt funding for the Corona del Mar, California-based company. 5. (tied) Imprint, $150M, fintech: New York-based Imprint, a provider of credit cards affiliated with consumer brands, raised $150 million in Series D funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. Khosla Ventures led the round, with participation from Thrive Capital, Ribbit Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Hedosophia and Timeless. 5. (tied) HawkEye 360, $150M, satellite intelligence: HawkEye 360, a provider of technology to detect, geolocate and characterize radio-frequency emissions, says it landed $150 million in Series E equity and debt financing. NightDragon and Center15 Capital co-led the equity funding, while Silicon Valley Bank provided the debt. The Herndon, Virginia company says it also completed its acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis. 7. Chai Discovery, $130M, biotech and AI: Chai Discovery, a startup that uses AI to predict and reprogram interactions between biochemical molecules, landed $130 million in a Series B round. Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst led the financing, which set a $1.3 billion valuation for the San Francisco-based company. 8. (tied) Ambros Therapeutics, $125M, biotech: Irvine, California-based Ambros Therapeutics launched publicly with a $125 million Series A financing co-led by RA Capital Management and Patient Square Capital‘s strategic health care investment arm Enavate Sciences. The company licensed the rights to neridronate, which is used to treat Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. 8. (tied) Mythic, $125M, microprocessors: Mythic, an Austin-based startup developing semiconductor architecture to make AI computing more energy efficient, raised $125 million in a funding round led by DCVC and joined by a long list of venture investors. 10. Atavistik Bio, $120M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Atavistik Bio, a developer of allosteric small molecule therapeutics, raised $120 million in Series B funding led by The Column Group and Nextech Invest. Founded in 2021, Atavistik has raised $220 million in known funding to date, per Crunchbase data. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Dec. 13-19. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week. Illustration: Dom Guzman
These Startups Went From Zero To Unicorn In Under 3 Years
Every year, some young startups manage to secure ultra-high valuations. Still others quickly raise multiple big funding rounds. And a few manage to do both. It looks like this year was a boom period for the latter category. Forty-six companies founded in the past three years both held or obtained unicorn status in 2025 and raised fresh funding, per Crunchbase data. (See full list here.) Collectively, they pulled in nearly $39 billion in new investment this year. Predictably, it’s an AI-centric group. The three most highly valued among recently funded unicorns 1 founded in the past three years — xAI, Mistral AI and Safe Superintelligence — are all generative AI companies. Overall, a whopping 36 out of the 46 companies on the list are in AI industry categories. The heady sums the most sought-after startups are raising these days can lead one to forget just how young many of these businesses really are. But really, even by startup standards, these are fresh-faced newbies. Take xAI. Founder Elon Musk made the first public announcement about it in July 2023 — less than two-and-half years ago. Since then it’s raised more than $12 billion in venture funding as well as billions more in combined debt and equity financings. Or consider Mistral, founded in April 2023. In that short time, the Paris-based generative AI unicorn has raised over $3 billion and secured a $14 billion valuation. Safe Superintelligence, the startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is an even faster climber. Founded just 18 months ago, it’s already raised at least $3 billion in known funding. On a similar note, Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by onetime OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, launched just 10 months ago and has already picked up $2 billion. Young companies raised record sums in megarounds this year The numbers illustrate a rising trend in the AI startup era: An increasing share of venture funding is going to young companies raising megarounds. To quantify this, we used Crunchbase data to tally the number and total value of rounds of $100 million or more to companies less than three years old at the time. The results, charted below, show that 2025 is a record-setting year for total funding to this category. Strikingly, more than $115 billion has gone to these megarounds for younger companies this year — exceeding the prior high mark during the 2021 market peak. The largesse is being spread across fewer rounds, however, with concentration among the hottest AI upstarts. Not just GenAI (although that is where the most funding is going) Still, it would be inaccurate to walk away with the impression that giant rounds for nascent startups are solely a GenAI thing. In sectors including robotics, energy tech and storage, we’re seeing capital pile up. Robotics was a particularly active area, with Skild AI, Physical Intelligence and Field AI all scoring large rounds. Base Power — provider of residential battery backup systems — is another fast-scaling newcomer. And cloud backup provider Eon, founded less than two years ago, has already raised $300 million. Pick early, invest generously Young startups securing more giant rounds signals that venture investors are looking to bet early and big. Having identified who they perceive as the most promising founders and what they see as the leading areas for scalable innovation, they’re not waiting around or taking incremental steps. Of course, it’s to be expected that not all these wagers will work out. But it’s also likely that at least a few will grow into something remarkable, if they haven’t already. Related Crunchbase list: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: AI Insurance Startup Nirvana Nearly Doubles Valuation To $1.5B with $100M Series D
Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round at a $1.5 billion valuation, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The raise comes just over nine months after the startup raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding at an $830 million valuation. Valor Equity Partners led the latest financing, which the company described as “preemptive.” Previous lead backers Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst also doubled down “significantly.” Put simply, Nirvana’s goal is to build “the world’s first AI-powered operating system for insurance.” The startup uses real-time driving telematics and 30 billion miles of truck-driving data to build and manage insurance policies for truckers. CEO Rushil Goel started Nirvana in 2021 after spending years running product at Samsara, an AI-powered fleet management and safety platform. There, he said, he saw firsthand how heavily safe and responsible trucking fleets “were penalized by the rising costs of one-size-fits-all insurance rates based on old industry data.” “It was survival stakes,” he recalled. “Expensive policies literally drove some fleets out of business.” His goal with Nirvana is to use the telematics data those fleets already generate “to build a more fair and transparent model.” Nirvana has trained its models on more than 30 billion driving miles and vehicles’ telematics that show details such as speed, selected routes and driver behavior. “This allows us to reward safe fleets with more accurate and often lower premiums, helping them save money and making roads safe,” Goel told Crunchbase News. He also claims the company is able to underwrite “with speed and precision” and “price risk in real time.” On top of providing insurance, Nirvana claims it gives fleets the tools to reduce accidents before they happen. The raise comes at a time when insurtech funding overall is down, and deal counts are at a multiyear record low. So far in 2025, global insurance-related startups have pulled in about $4 billion in seed-through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase data — less than one-fourth of the 2021 peak dollars raised — with deal counts also on the decline. VCs bet Nirvana can transform ‘trillion-dollar industry stuck in the past’ Nirvana raised its $3.2 million seed round in January 2021, co-led by General Catalyst and Lightspeed. In total, it has raised more than $260 million in funding. While Goel declined to reveal hard revenue figures, he said that Nirvana has doubled its year-over-year premium growth. It has also doubled its staff to around 200 compared to a year ago. Nirvana says it serves “thousands” of motor carriers. Its customers range from single-owner and -operator carriers to fleets with more than 500 trucks. The startup’s revenue model is to charge an annual insurance term with upfront discounts based on the historical telematics data it analyzes with its proprietary models. Interestingly, Nirvana is not Goel’s first startup venture. Besides serving as the VP/GM of fleet at Samsara, he also co-founded AirCare, a digital health startup. Vivek Pattipati, partner at Valor Equity Partners, said in a release that this round isn’t just about reinforcing Nirvana’s approach to proprietary telematics data, deep machine learning expertise, and execution in underwriting and claims. “It’s an opportunity for us to stake a claim in redefining an industry and exploring how Nirvana will apply its “N of 1” AI capabilities to benefit customers beyond market-leading insurance products,” he said. Lightspeed partner Raviraj Jain believes that Nirvana has “executed flawlessly” since the firm first invested in its seed round. He said: “Commercial insurance is a trillion-dollar industry stuck in the past, and it’s been incredible to see how quickly Nirvana’s AI models have been able to deliver material benefits to customers.” Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Cleantech’s Rough Year Ends On An Up Note
By many measures, both positive and negative, this looks like the kind of investment climate that would favor cleantech startups. For starters, global investment in clean technologies is running high. Spending on the category, which includes renewables, grids, low-emissions power sources, and energy efficiency, is on course to hit $2.2 trillion this year, per The International Energy Agency. That’s twice what is invested in fossil fuels. Venture capital is pretty flush as well. Global venture funding in the first three quarters of the year topped $300 billion, the highest level in years. Moreover, a record share of this funding is going to companies focused on AI, a technology whose immense power demands will require massive new energy infrastructure. The environmental case for cleantech is also only getting more urgent. Concentrations of greenhouse gases and ocean heat content both reached record levels this year, per the World Meteorological Organization, with the past three years being the warmest on record. All this is to say that the macro picture, a bullish one for cleantech investment, contrasts sharply with the actual numbers, which show this was an unusually weak year for the space. Lowest funding in years How weak? This year, investors put just over $24 billion across all stages into startups in Crunchbase’s cleantech-, electric vehicle- and sustainability-related categories. That’s by far the lowest annual total in five years. Quarter over quarter, the picture looks sunnier. Cleantech investment actually hit a low in Q1 and has since been moving higher. One interpretation is that U.S. investors paused on some dealmaking around Q1. With the incoming Trump administration taking a hostile stance to the Biden administration’s cleantech- and climate-friendly subsidies and policies, startups and their backers needed to recalibrate strategy for an altered political environment. Once that happened, the pace picked up some. Some of the year’s largest rounds, meanwhile, are for companies in sectors with fairly broad support across the political spectrum. In this category is nuclear — both fusion and fission 1 — which was a particularly popular investment theme. We also saw good-sized deals around geothermal power, energy storage and electric aircraft. Largest rounds For a broader sense of where big-ticket investment was going, we put together a list of 12 of the largest cleantech-, EV- and sustainability-related funding rounds of 2025. Clearly, investors were still enthused about backing jumbo-sized rounds in some cases. Case in point: The leading funding recipient this year was Austin’s Base Power, which provides battery backup power for residential properties. The 3-year-old company landed $1.2 billion across two rounds this year, with Addition as a repeat lead backer. The next three biggest rounds, notably, were all for startups focused on nuclear power. Among them, the standout for funding was Commonwealth Fusion, which raised $863 million in an August Series B2 round. The Devens, Massachusetts-based company also said it is moving closer to being the first in the world to commercialize fusion power. Nuclear fission is also a popular category for venture investors of late. In this cohort, X-energy, which develops small modular nuclear reactors and nuclear fuels, was another power fundraiser. The Rockville, Maryland, company secured a $700 million Series D in late November led by Jane Street Capital. And nuclear startup TerraPower also landed a huge follow-on financing this summer, picking up $650 million, with Nvidia’s NVentures as a backer. Battery investment, on the other hand, has been less robust. Investors braced for a heavy loss last year when Swedish EV battery maker Northvolt, one of the most heavily funded companies in the space, initially filed for bankruptcy. Still, deals were getting done. Besides Base Power, there were three other battery-related companies on our top rounds list for 2025. These were Dutch battery storage startup Return, Woodinville, Washington-based silicon battery material producer Group14 Technologies, and battery recycling company Redwood Materials. Perking up at year’s end Probably the most encouraging signal for cleantech investment is it closed 2025 in a much stronger position than when it began the year. Given that drivers of demand are only strengthening, it looks reasonable to be optimistic about a continued rise. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman