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Digital Savings Startup Vestwell Lands $385M, Doubles Valuation
Vestwell, a digital savings platform, has raised $385 million in a Series E funding round co-led by Blue Owl Capital and Sixth Street Growth. The New York-based startup says its new valuation is $2 billion, double the $1 billion valuation it achieved when raising its $125 million Series D round in December 2023. In total, Vestwell says it has raised $660 million in capital since its 2016 inception. Also participating in the latest round were Neuberger Berman, Silver Lake Waterman, Morgan Stanley, Franklin Templeton, TIAA Ventures and HarbourVest Partners. Aaron Schumm, founder and CEO of Vestwell. (Courtesy photo) Vestwell is growing “profitably,” according to CEO Aaron Schumm, who said the company’s annual recurring revenue is now more than $200 million. The platform has more than 2 million active savers and works with more than 500,000 businesses. In total, Vestwell has over $50 billion in assets administered across workplace, institutional and government channels. The company grew nearly 50% year over year, Schumm said, and is operating with “strong unit economics and improving margins.” Vestwell’s revenue model is dependent on its customers and their preferred structure, according to Schumm. Typically, it’s a monthly fee per employer and/or a monthly fee per employee. The company works with financial institutions, payroll and HR platforms to distribute or integrate its white-labeled savings products to employers and employees nationwide. Those partners include Assure, BambooHR, Deel, Franklin Templeton, Intuit QuickBooks, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Paylocity, Rippling, Square and Toast. Overall funding to wealth management startups totaled $1.9 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase data, roughly the same amount as in 2024. That’s down from about $3.8 billion raised by such startups in the peak funding year of 2021. Connecting the dots Schumm founded Vestwell with the goal of addressing the problem of “fragmented” savings. “[There were] separate systems for retirement, emergency, education, disability and other savings programs. Each had its own rules, vendors and barriers to participation,” he said. “Vestwell solves that problem by connecting these programs into one interoperable platform.” Describing the company as an enterprise fintech platform, he said Vestwell makes it easier for employees and employers “to save, manage and grow their money, no matter the size of the company.” It supports a range of savings vehicles, including retirement: 401(k), 403(b) and IRA savings programs; education such as 529 savings plans; emergency savings accounts; and ABLE accounts for people with disabilities. Its offering is accessible across more than 20 languages. Presently, Vestwell has 500 employees. Expansion plans The company plans to use its new capital to expand its distribution. For example, it is working to embed savings more deeply into payroll, benefits platforms, financial institutions and government-led public programs. It’s also continuing to invest in AI-native capabilities with the goal of having them personalize guidance, automate administration and surface “actionable” insights for users and their employers. Before Vestwell, Schumm co-founded wealth management startup FolioDynamix, which was acquired by Envestnet in 2017 for $195 million. Tim DeGrange, principal at Blue Owl, describes Vestwell as “a standout company.” “Vestwell is taking a holistic approach to savings, making it far more durable than just a recordkeeping platform,” he wrote via email. “It has created the infrastructure layer that connects payroll providers, financial advisors, enterprises and state programs into a unified savings ecosystem.” Related Crunchbase Pro query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman Clarification: This story has changed since its original publication to confirm the company’s current valuation.
Biotech Startup M&A Is Reliably Delivering Some Big Exits
In a world where AI unicorns are securing valuations in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, biotech startups can’t compete for giant rounds. But while the space may be lower-profile, it’s still steadily generating M&A outcomes that look high by other historic standards. Over the past two calendar years, acquirers have agreed to pay more than $38 billion to purchase 1 venture-backed companies in Crunchbase biotech industry categories. So far, 2026 is off to a brisk start as well, with Eli Lilly agreeing this month to pay up to $2.4 billion for Orna Therapeutics, a startup focused on engineering immune cells in vivo. Per Crunchbase data, 2025 and 2024 were two of the strongest years on record for biotech M&A. While we’re still below the 2021 peak, we’re also well past the subsequent low point, as charted below. Largest deals in recent quarters Since last year, at least nine funded U.S. biotech companies have sold in transactions valued at $1 billion or more, including potential milestone payments. Using Crunchbase data, we assembled a list, ranked by deal size. The largest deal was Johnson & Johnson’s purchase of Halda Therapeutics, a developer of targeted oral therapies for solid tumors, for $3.05 billion in cash late last year. The pharma giant expressed particular interest in adding Halda’s clinical stage oral therapy for prostate cancer to its portfolio. The two next-biggest acquisitions were both in the area of in vivo therapeutics, which enable a patient’s own body to generate cell therapies that can treat underlying disease. One was Lilly’s aforementioned purchase of Watertown, Massachusetts-based Orna, which had previously raised over $320 million in venture funding from lead backers including Merck, F2 Ventures and MPM Capital. The other was AbbVie’s mid-2025 acquisition of Capstan Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech developing targeted in vivo RNA technologies, with an initial focus on autoimmune diseases. AbbVie agreed to pay up to $2.1 billion in cash to acquire the San Diego-based startup,which previously raised $340 million in venture funding. Biotech funding share slides, and IPO volume remains weak While some large acquisitions are happening, the overall picture for biotech funding and exit activity looks more muted. Last year, less than 9% of all U.S. startup funding went to companies in Crunchbase biotech categories. That’s the lowest share in years, and largely a function of more capital going to companies in other hot sectors like generative AI. In terms of total finding, biotech looks more stable. In 2025, just over $25 billion went to U.S. startups in the space, roughly flat year over year. IPO activity is lower than usual. Last year, just 21 biotech, pharma or medical device companies went public, per Crunchbase data, the lowest number in years. So far this year, we’ve had four debuts, including most recently the debut this month of Eikon Therapeutics, a developer of cancer therapies recently valued around $900 million. Not a slump, and not a boom Overall, biotech funding and exit data paints a picture of a sector that’s neither booming nor in a protracted slump. That’s not the most exciting place to be, but it can be quite viable for quite a long time. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Only 2 States Saw Their Share Of US Venture Funding Rise Last Year
A rising tide may lift all boats. But lately it lifts California boats the most. In 2025, only two states with a sizable venture scene saw a year-over-year gain in their share of U.S. venture funding: California and Washington. This held true even though several others, including New York and Texas, actually saw a pretty big bump in investment. What gives? Well, last year saw a dramatic upward swing in North American venture investment, with annual startup funding up 46%. Artificial intelligence was the driver, with most investment going to companies in AI-related categories. Not all geographies benefited equally. Across all categories, California drew the largest share of investment, at 64%. The next runners-up were New York, Massachusetts and Texas. Overall, there were six states that captured 2% or more of U.S. venture funding last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a small group, but it’s not too atypical, as a few hubs reliably attract virtually all the capital. To illustrate, we charted how investment share for the top six states breaks down over the past two calendar years. Funding also rose year-over-year for each of the six states, as we chart below. Deals and sectors that drove gains, by state Leading sectors and rounds varied broadly by state. We previously covered the California companies whose huge funding hauls drove gains. Here are leaders in the other top states: New York: For the second-largest funding hub, two of last year’s biggest funding rounds went to predictions marketplaces Polymarket and Kalshi. AI coding startup Reflection AI and food delivery provider Wonder were also investor favorites. Massachusetts: The Boston area is known for its deep-tech prowess, and this showed up in the funding tallies. Fusion energy pioneer Commonwealth Fusion was the biggest funding recipient, followed by BrainCo, a developer of brain-computer interfaces, and Kailera Therapeutics, which is focused on weight loss drugs. Texas: Austin companies topped the list for Texas funding rounds last year. This included Base Power, a provider of residential backup battery systems, and Saronic, a developer of autonomous naval and maritime vessels. Washington: The Pacific Northwest powerhouse has a fairly diversified startup scene, as evidenced by the largest funding recipients.These include nuclear power company TerraPower, and reusable rocket developer Stoke Space. Colorado: There’s very little snow in Colorado this winter, but plenty of capital has accumulated. Lead funding recipients include AI infrastructure company Crusoe, which secured a $1.4 billion Series E in October, and quantum computing startup Quantinuum, which raised a $600 million Series B. Other states OK, so you may have noticed that there are 44 other states we didn’t discuss and which also do attract some startup investment. This includes five that are under 2% of national funding but still pulled in over $2 billion last year: Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia. Seven others — Utah, Tennessee, Maryland, Ohio, Minnesota, Georgia and New Jersey — attracted $1 billion or more in startup funding last year and most saw year-over-year gains. But because venture is so heavily concentrated elsewhere, these 12 states only drew about 11% of all nationwide investment. Catalysts for change? There’s no law, of course, that says venture investment must remain so geographically concentrated. Certainly there are base characteristics that make for a sustainable startup hub, including well-regarded research universities and a concentration of tech and biotech talent and employers. But a number of places meet these baselines, making them potentially fertile ground for greater investment. Of late, however, capital seems to continue to concentrate on bold new ventures in the biggest existing hubs. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Anthropic Leads In A Big Week For Giant Rounds
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. This week featured a lot of funding deals with a lot of zeroes on the end. Generative AI powerhouse Anthropic, of course, boasted the most zeroes with its $30 billion Series G, the second-largest venture funding round of all time. Other big fundraisers included robotics startup Apptronik, fusion innovator Inertia Enterprises, and space tech unicorn Axiom Space. 1. Anthropic, $30B, Generative AI: Anthropic raised $30 billion in a massive Series G funding round that values the San Francisco-based generative AI company at $380 billion post-money. The financing marks the largest venture funding deal of 2026 so far and the second-largest of all time, per Crunchbase data. GIC and Coatue led the raise, which was also “co-led” by D.E. Shaw & Co. Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Founders Fund, Iconiq Capital and MGX, according to the company. 2. Apptronik, $520M, humanoid robots: AI-powered robotics company Apptronik added $520 million in new financing in an extension of its $415 million Series A raise in February 2025, The investment brings the total round to over $935 million for the Austin-based company. 3. Inertia Enterprises, $450M, fusion energy: Livermore, California-based fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises announced that it secured $450 million in Series A funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round for the 2-year-old company, joined by Google Ventures, Threshold and other backers. 4. Axiom Space, $350M, space tech: Axiom Space, a startup that is building a successor to the International Space Station and developing spacesuits for a moon mission, closed on $350 million in new financing. Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority led the round for the Houston-based company. 5. Runway, $315M, AI: Runway, an AI research and technology startup, picked up $315 million in a Series E round. General Atlantic led the financing, which set a $5.3 billion valuation for the New York-based company, up from $3.3 billion last April. 6. Talkiatry, $210M, mental health: Talkiatry, a provider of in-network psychiatry services to health systems and employers, picked up $210 million in Series D funding, led by Perceptive Advisors. The round brings total funding to date for the New York-based company to more than $400 million. 7. Solace Health, $130M, healthcare: Redwood City, California-based Solace Health, a digital platform that connects patients with expert healthcare advocates, raised $130 million in Series C funding. IVP led the financing, which set a valuation of over $1 billion for the 4-year-old company. 8. Garner Health, $118M, healthcare: Garner Health, a digital platform that helps patients find healthcare providers, raised $118 million in Series D financing. Kleiner Perkins led the round for the New York-based company. 9. (tied) Simile, $100M, AI simulation: Palo Alto, California-based Simile, a startup focused on applying AI to create simulated environments and simulation tools with AI agents, raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. 9. (tied) Loyal, $100M, dog longevity: Loyal, a startup focused on drugs to extend healthy lifespans in senior dogs, raised $100 million in Series C funding that it says will provide the capital required to move from late-stage development to market readiness. Venture fund Age1 led the financing for the 7-year-old, San Francisco-based company. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Feb. 7-13. 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
January Delivers Highest New Unicorn Count In More Than 3 Years
A total of 31 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in January, the largest count of companies to join in a single month since June 2022. Collectively, those companies added $9.3 billion in funding and $58.5 billion in value to the board. And underlining the pace at which some startups are now sprinting to billion-dollar-plus valuations, four of the new unicorns are less than a year old. In exit news, 9-year-old fintech unicorn Brex was acquired by Capital One for $5.2 billion. That’s well below its January 2022 valuation of $12.3 billion but still marks a win for earlier investors seeking liquidity. Of the 31 companies that joined the board, 23 are U.S.-based and two hail from Canada. Germany, France, Belgium, Israel, Japan and India each added one new unicorn to the board last month. Among sectors, AI and AI infrastructure contributed the most new unicorns, totaling nine from those two areas. The next-leading sectors, with three new unicorns each, were manufacturing and security propelled by AI. AI was also a major contributor to new unicorns in the semiconductor, defense and autonomous driving sectors. The largest funding last month for a unicorn company was $20 billion to Elon Musk’s xAI at an estimated value of $230 billion. Within a month of that funding, xAI in early February announced a merger with another Musk-led company, rocketmaker SpaceX. 11 exits Brex’s acquisition by Capital One was the largest of the four M&A deals for unicorn-valued companies in January. On the IPO side, seven companies went public, the most high-profile of which were MiniMax and Z.ai, both foundation AI model companies based in China. Here are January’s newly minted unicorns. AI AI infrastructure Manufacturing Security Semiconductor Cryptocurrency Healthcare Defense Fintech Fitness Autonomous Driving Social media Education Compliance Energy Related Crunchbase unicorn lists: Related reading: Methodology The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter. Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board. Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. Illustration: Dom Guzman
Anthropic Raises $30B At $380B Valuation In Second-Largest Venture Funding Deal Of All Time
Generative AI company Anthropic announced Thursday that it raised $30 billion in a massive Series G funding round that values it at $380 billion post-money. The financing marks the largest venture funding deal of 2026 so far and the second-largest of all time, per Crunchbase data, following only rival OpenAI’s $40 billion funding in 2025. GIC and Coatue led the raise, which was also “co-led” by D.E. Shaw & Co. Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Founders Fund, Iconiq Capital and MGX, according to the company. A slew of other backers participated in the round as well, and included previously announced investments from Microsoft and Nvidia. With this round, San Francisco-based Anthropic has now raised nearly $64 billion since its 2021 inception, per Crunchbase. The Claude chatbot developer remains the second-most highly valued generative AI startup behind rival OpenAI, which in October secured financing at a $500 billion valuation. Anthropic is also the fourth-most highly valued private company in the world, per Crunchbase data. It and OpenAI are reportedly both considering IPOs this year. Anthropic’s growth Anthropic says its run-rate revenue is now over $14 billion, a figure it claims grew over 10x annually in each of the past three years since it “earned its first dollar in revenue.” The number of customers spending over $100,000 annually on Claude (as represented by run-rate revenue) has grown 7x in the past year, the company added. Anthropic says the investment will fuel frontier research, product development and infrastructure expansions. “Whether it is entrepreneurs, startups, or the world’s largest enterprises, the message from our customers is the same: Claude is increasingly becoming more critical to how businesses work,” said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, in a statement. “This fundraising reflects the incredible demand we are seeing from these customers, and we will use this investment to continue building the enterprise-grade products and models they have come to depend on.” Chris Emanuel, head of the technology investment group at GIC, said in a statement that his firm believes that “Anthropic’s thoughtful approach to AI development is changing the way enterprises operate.” He added: “Our partnership and continued investment reflects our conviction in their visionary leadership team and technical depth as they expand access to advanced AI tools.” Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Next-Gen Nuclear Funding Looks Livelier Than Ever Following Inertia’s $450M Raise
As global energy demand continues to surge, driven by both rising household consumption and fast-expanding AI infrastructure, startup investors are increasingly turning to nuclear fusion and fission startups to supply our power-hungry era. They’re not afraid to write big checks either. The latest evidence of this was a $450 million Series A that Livermore, California-based fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises announced Wednesday. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round for the 2-year-old company, joined by Google Ventures, Threshold and other backers. Inertia plans to use the funds toward a fusion pilot at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which will involve building the world’s most powerful laser and a production line to mass manufacture fuel targets. The financing is the latest in a string of recent, very large deals around both fusion and nuclear fission. Per Crunchbase data, both funding and deal volume for the space hit a high last year, and 2026 is off to a promising start as well. Headline deals, leading fundraisers It’s mostly funding announcements, but not exclusively. On the fusion front, the highest profile recently proposed deal was Trump Media & Technology Group’s surprising announcement in December that it plans to combine with fusion company TAE Technologies in what TMTG called a stock transaction valued at more than $6 billion. The deal is a long time coming for TAE, which was founded in 1998 and is the oldest operating venture-backed fusion energy company in the Crunchbase dataset. The company has seen at least $1.5 billion in prior known funding to date. Other fusion companies have also been prodigious fundraisers. The leader is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, with $2.86 billion in equity funding, while other standouts include Helion Energy ($1 billion), Pacific Fusion ($900 million) and General Fusion ($357 million). Nuclear fission is another hot area for investment, with over $2.5 billion in funding last year, per Crunchbase. The largest deal was a $700 million Series D in late November for X-energy, a developer of advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology. Activity looks to be accelerating further this year, with more than $270 million in funding, including a $140 million round two weeks ago for Tennessee-based Standard Nuclear, which manufactures advanced nuclear fuel for new reactors. Public markets too Public investors also appear receptive. Oklo, which develops nuclear reactors, went public in 2024 through a merger with a SPAC launched by Sam Altman. It’s down quite a bit from the height scaled late last year, but still had a recent market cap around $10 billion. Other SPAC deals have also popped up, including One Nuclear Energy, which wants to develop energy parks with small modular reactors to meet data center demand, and Hadron Energy, a developer of light-water micro-modular reactors. Meanwhile Terrestrial Energy, a developer of small modular nuclear plants, completed a SPAC merger in October. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
From AI Hype To AI Math: The Market Just Changed The Rules
For a while, AI felt like a cheat code. Mention AI on an earnings call, announce a bigger data center plan, sign a flashy partnership, and the market filled in the rest. Spend meant ambition. Ambition which meant valuation. That world is gone. Over the past few quarters, markets have quietly flipped from “reward any AI headline” to “show me the economics.” Not because AI stopped mattering, but because it started costing real money. Annual AI-related capex is now pushing past $600 billion, and investors are no longer debating whether AI is strategic. They are debating whether companies are overfunding it relative to their ability to turn spend into cash. That shift does not just affect public stocks. It changes how AI companies should be built, financed and exited. The early signs are out Look across Microsoft, Oracle and even the Nvidia–OpenAI relationship, and you see the same pattern repeating. First come massive commitments, huge infrastructure plans to build capacity well ahead of proven demand. Then comes the uncomfortable question: Are we spending because this makes economic sense or because we fear not to? Hyperscaler capex for the “Big Five” — Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft — is projected to reach around $600 billion in 2026, up roughly 36% year on year, with about 75% tied directly to AI infrastructure, which is also heavily funded by debt. That begs the question: Will these investments be converted into durable cash flows? Microsoft’s recent earnings brought this tension into focus. Capital expenditures jumped roughly two-thirds year on year, exceeding $37 billion in a single quarter, while Azure growth slowed and AI capacity constraints limited upside. The stock fell sharply, losing 21% over the past six months, wiping out hundreds of billions in market value. Oracle faces a different version of the same issue. Demand for AI cloud infrastructure is real. Cloud revenue is growing around 50% year on year, and GPU-related revenue is surging. But Oracle plans more than $50 billion in capex for fiscal 2026 and expects to raise $45 billion to $50 billion through new debt and equity on top of an already leveraged balance sheet. Even Nvidia and OpenAI are not immune. The widely publicized idea of a $100 billion Nvidia-backed infrastructure commitment has died down, with Nvidia clarifying that no firm commitment was ever made. At the same time, OpenAI has been actively diversifying suppliers, exploring AMD, Cerebras Systems and others, to reduce over-concentration risk. If the market is questioning AI overfunding at Microsoft, Oracle and the very center of the AI ecosystem, no one else gets a free pass. What founders should take from this For founders building AI companies with exits in mind, the implications are immediate. 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.