Top 50 Investors Funding AI Startups in 2025

In 2025, AI continued to dominate headlines. AI startups didn’t just raise money in 2025 — they pulled in billions at a pace that redefined what a “hot sector” looks like. In January alone, AI companies attracted more than $5.7 billion in funding — roughly 22% of all venture capital for the month. By year’s end, the numbers were staggering.

Major investors — from tech giants to family offices — chased everything from generative models to AI-powered biotech, pushing valuations to new highs and driving fierce competition for deal flow. Big names like SoftBank doubled down with multi-billion-dollar bets, while new players like Abu Dhabi’s MGX joined the mix, shaking up the global capital stack.

The Top Investors Fueling Billion-Dollar AI Companies in 2025

This list highlights 50 investors who put real capital behind the hype. It includes venture firms, angels, syndicates, and micro-funds — all ranked by how much they committed to AI startup companies in 2025. Each profile includes estimated funding totals, standout portfolio companies, typical stage focus, location, and a breakdown of what made their strategy stand out this year.

1. SoftBank Group (Tokyo, Japan)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $15–25 billion
Key AI Startups Funded: OpenAI (lead investor in proposed $40B round), Skild AI (early-stage AI networking startup)
Stage Focus: Primarily late-stage deals — Series C and beyond, with a heavy emphasis on growth equity and strategic influence
Funding Insight: SoftBank came back swinging in 2025, staking its claim as one of AI’s biggest financial backers. Through a mix of Vision Fund deployments and direct investments, the company moved aggressively — positioning itself to become OpenAI’s largest investor with a potential $15–25 billion commitment, far outpacing its previous high-profile bets. Its strategy? Pour serious money into a small number of companies shaping the future. Backing OpenAI’s infrastructure project “Stargate” was a clear signal: SoftBank isn’t just watching the generative AI boom — it’s trying to shape it. Masayoshi Son’s influence, which had faded in recent years, snapped back into focus with a high-conviction, high-dollar approach targeting market leaders.

2. Thrive Capital (New York, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks (co-led $10B Series J)
Stage Focus: Mega-late stage growth rounds
Funding Insight: Thrive Capital made one of the boldest AI bets of the year by co-leading Databricks’ $10B Series J — one of the largest private AI rounds ever raised. Known for backing breakout growth-stage winners, Thrive leaned on hard-to-scale infrastructure and enterprise-focused AI. This move reinforced its position as a quiet power player behind AI’s most commercially viable platforms.

3. Andreessen Horowitz (Menlo Park, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10B+ (combined rounds)
Key AI Startups Funded: Databricks, ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: Late-stage and expansion
Funding Insight: a16z maintained its presence across the AI spectrum by co-leading ElevenLabs’ $180M Series C and participating in Databricks’ monster round. The firm’s continued focus on platform plays and infrastructure investments shows it’s betting on core capabilities that underpin enterprise and creative AI alike. With multiple late-stage placements, it kept its reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s most aggressive growth investors.

4. DST Global (Hong Kong)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10B+
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks
Stage Focus: Late-stage growth
Funding Insight: DST Global stayed true to its large-scale growth thesis by participating in Databricks’ massive raise. Though relatively quiet in public, DST’s allocations speak loudly. Its bet on Databricks aligns with its pattern of targeting dominant infrastructure players that serve as picks-and-shovels in emerging industries.

5. GIC (Singapore)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10B+
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks
Stage Focus: Growth and strategic partnerships
Funding Insight: Singapore’s GIC joined the high-profile Databricks round, backing the company’s expansion deeper into AI workloads. As a sovereign wealth fund, GIC tends to move only on conviction deals — and its involvement here shows just how far AI has moved into the core of national economic strategies. GIC is also signaling that it’s willing to align capital with global tech platforms powering next-gen data pipelines.

6. Insight Partners (New York, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10B+
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks
Stage Focus: Late-stage and IPO-track companies
Funding Insight: Insight doubled down on scale by joining Databricks’ historic raise. Known for its operator-first approach and SaaS focus, Insight’s AI investment strategy centers on established teams with strong enterprise traction. Databricks fits that profile — and the firm’s participation suggests it’s looking to back the infrastructure giants most likely to dominate over the next decade.

7. WCM Investment Management (California, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $10B+
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks
Stage Focus: Growth-stage infrastructure plays
Funding Insight: WCM Investment Management joined the Databricks Series J round as part of the institutional wave backing core AI platforms. While not a household VC name, WCM’s involvement added weight to the round’s credibility. It marked a quiet but confident move into AI, aligning their portfolio with the foundational tech layer of modern data systems.

8. Lightspeed Venture Partners (Menlo Park, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $3.5 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: Anthropic (lead investor in Series E)
Stage Focus: Late-stage frontier AI
Funding Insight: Lightspeed stepped up in a major way this year by leading Anthropic’s $3.5B Series E round. That move wasn’t just about capital — it was a signal to the market that Lightspeed sees safety-focused foundational models as a defining part of the AI story. With this bet, the firm moved from generalist to high-conviction leader in next-gen AI alignment and infrastructure.

9. Amazon (Seattle, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Up to $4 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: Anthropic
Stage Focus: Strategic and infrastructure-aligned partnerships
Funding Insight: Amazon committed up to $4B to Anthropic, continuing a multi-year trend of major cloud players embedding themselves deeper into AI labs. This investment wasn’t just a check — it came with tighter cloud service agreements and broader integration across AWS. Amazon’s strategy is clear: back the brains behind frontier models while keeping cloud revenue close.

10. Durable Capital Partners (Bethesda, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $537 million
Key AI Startup Funded: KoBold Metals (co-led Series C)
Stage Focus: Climate tech + AI crossover
Funding Insight: Durable made a strong move into AI-adjacent innovation by co-leading KoBold Metals’ $537M round. The company uses machine learning to explore new mineral deposits — and Durable’s support reflects a growing interest in AI’s real-world industrial applications. It’s a pick that blends climate impact, deep tech, and long-term resource strategy.

11. T. Rowe Price (Baltimore, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $537 million
Key AI Startup Funded: KoBold Metals
Stage Focus: Growth equity

Funding Insight: T. Rowe Price joined Durable in the KoBold deal, pushing institutional capital into AI-powered resource exploration. The move shows how traditional asset managers are warming up to sector-specific AI startups, especially those positioned to benefit from energy and climate tailwinds. It wasn’t a flashy pick — but it was a smart one.

12. Prosperity7 Ventures (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $305 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Together AI (Series B)
Stage Focus: Mid-to-late stage, frontier tech
Funding Insight: Prosperity7 backed Together AI’s $305M Series B, making one of its most notable AI moves to date. The fund, part of Saudi Aramco, is increasingly placing bets on deep tech with long-term global potential. This deal marked its interest in infrastructure-level AI and reflected a growing trend of Gulf capital targeting transformative software platforms.

13. General Catalyst (Cambridge, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Over $3.8 billion
Key AI Startups Funded: Anthropic, Together AI
Stage Focus: Growth and mission-driven AI
Funding Insight: General Catalyst took a mission-aligned approach to AI in 2025, backing both Anthropic and Together AI. These aren’t just headline grabs — they’re part of a broader thesis on AI that’s safe, scalable and value-aligned. Their bets were spread across multiple late-stage rounds but tied together by a strong belief in responsible innovation.

14. SGW Global (USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda (co-led Series D)
Stage Focus: Deep infrastructure and compute
Funding Insight: Scott Hassan’s family office, SGW Global, made waves by co-leading Lambda’s $480M round — a massive move into AI infrastructure. Known for being selective and engineering-led, SGW’s backing gave the round significant technical credibility. It also showed that the serious money is moving beyond LLMs and into the chips, clusters, and stacks that support them.

15. Andra Capital (San Francisco, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda
Stage Focus: High-growth infrastructure plays
Funding Insight: Andra joined SGW Global in Lambda’s Series D — doubling down on GPU-native cloud platforms. While Andra isn’t as splashy as Sand Hill giants, this investment proved it’s keeping up with the infrastructure momentum behind generative AI and model training. Lambda’s growth gave Andra the kind of runway it looks for in late-stage bets.

16. Tiger Global (New York, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $100 million
Key AI Startup Funded: EnCharge AI (Series B)
Stage Focus: Hardware and edge AI
Funding Insight: Tiger Global backed EnCharge AI’s $100M Series B, a bet on accelerating inference at the edge. While Tiger dialed down its public presence this year, it quietly re-entered the AI race through strategic bets like this one. The EnCharge deal was about owning the efficiency layer — an increasingly important part of the model deployment stack.

22. Bessemer Venture Partners (San Francisco, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $250 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Abridge
Stage Focus: Practical AI in mature industries
Funding Insight: Bessemer backed Abridge alongside IVP and Elad Gil, adding their stamp to one of the most grounded AI healthtech startups of the year. Known for their focus on durable SaaS companies, Bessemer saw Abridge as a product-first team solving a very real, very expensive problem for hospitals — documentation overload.

23. CapitalG (Mountain View, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $250 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Abridge
Stage Focus: Enterprise AI with operational impact
Funding Insight: Alphabet’s growth fund, CapitalG, joined the Abridge syndicate — aligning with its thesis of backing real-world use cases with strong market pull. Abridge fit the mold: B2B, highly repeatable, and scalable across enterprise healthcare. CapitalG’s involvement also signaled Alphabet’s desire to support AI applications outside the lab and inside regulated environments.

24. CVS Health Ventures (USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $250 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Abridge
Stage Focus: Strategic health AI
Funding Insight: CVS didn’t just watch from the sidelines — they jumped into Abridge’s $250M round as a strategic investor. For a traditional healthcare company, that’s a big move. Their participation points to a shift in how legacy players are starting to back — and rely on — AI startups to streamline core services.

25. ARK Invest (St. Petersburg, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda
Stage Focus: AI infrastructure and long-term frontier bets
Funding Insight: ARK Invest backed Lambda’s $480M round, adding generative AI infrastructure to its innovation-driven portfolio. This was one of ARK’s most high-conviction moves in the AI space. With Cathie Wood’s eye on exponential growth categories, Lambda offered a way to gain exposure to the GPU-heavy backbone of the AI race.

26. Nvidia (Santa Clara, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda
Stage Focus: Hardware-aligned AI cloud
Funding Insight: Nvidia didn’t just sell GPUs this year — it also joined Lambda’s round to stay close to the infrastructure layer it helped create. The move blurred the lines between customer, supplier, and investor. With demand for AI compute surging, investing in Lambda gave Nvidia another way to capitalize on the boom.

27. G Squared (Chicago, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda
Stage Focus: Late-stage tech infrastructure
Funding Insight: G Squared jumped into Lambda’s massive Series D, betting on the infrastructure behind the AI gold rush. Known for backing tech that scales globally, G Squared saw Lambda’s GPU-native cloud as a key piece of the puzzle — the kind of tool serious AI companies can’t function without.

28. Super Micro (San Jose, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $480 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Lambda
Stage Focus: Strategic infrastructure plays
Funding Insight: Super Micro, best known for building the machines powering AI workloads, took a different route this year — writing a check into Lambda. It was a rare move for a hardware company, but a smart one. Backing Lambda gave Super Micro a deeper foothold in the growing market for AI-native cloud compute.

29. ICONIQ Growth (San Francisco, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs (co-led Series C)
Stage Focus: Audio AI and next-gen content
Funding Insight: ICONIQ co-led ElevenLabs’ $180M Series C, betting big on voice generation as a mainstream creative tool. The firm’s support helped legitimize AI-generated audio as more than a novelty — it’s now a category. ICONIQ’s brand gave the round both capital and credibility.

30. NEA (Menlo Park, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: Growth-stage applied AI
Funding Insight: NEA joined the ElevenLabs round with its usual mix of long-term thinking and growth-stage discipline. Their thesis: AI tools that help people create — and consume — faster are going to win. ElevenLabs’ traction across content creators, educators, and media firms made it a solid fit for NEA’s scale-focused model.

31. World Innovation Lab (WiL) (USA/Japan)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: Cross-border applied AI
Funding Insight: WiL’s participation in ElevenLabs showed its strategy in action: back high-leverage software that can scale across continents. The fund, with roots in Silicon Valley and Japan, liked the multilingual angle of ElevenLabs’ product — a key driver of its global upside.

32. Valor Equity Partners (Chicago, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: AI in content and creator tools
Funding Insight: Valor joined the ElevenLabs round, continuing its push into applied AI that touches real users. Known for backing Tesla and SpaceX early, Valor’s move here was a bet that synthetic voice won’t just live in sci-fi — it’ll be everywhere from TikTok to the boardroom.

33. Endeavor Catalyst (USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: Emerging market tech and creator economy
Funding Insight: Endeavor Catalyst brought a global lens to the ElevenLabs syndicate. Their investment strategy often centers around breakout tech with international pull — and ElevenLabs’ multilingual voice tech matched that vision. This wasn’t just about AI—it was about distribution at scale.

34. Lunate (Abu Dhabi, UAE)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $180 million
Key AI Startup Funded: ElevenLabs
Stage Focus: Strategic Gulf-backed frontier AI
Funding Insight: Lunate’s entry into ElevenLabs marked a growing trend: Gulf investors quietly becoming serious AI players. With deep capital and long time horizons, Lunate’s backing hinted at more than just return-seeking — it was a positioning play in global AI infrastructure.

35. Sequoia Capital (Menlo Park, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $300 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Harvey (led Series D)
Stage Focus: Legaltech and professional services AI
Funding Insight: Sequoia led Harvey’s $300M Series D — a move that placed legal AI front and center. While AI-generated contracts might raise eyebrows, Sequoia saw a huge opportunity in automating billable hours. It wasn’t hype-chasing; it was about owning the rails for the next-gen professional services stack.

36. Coatue (New York, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $300 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Harvey
Stage Focus: Foundation model applications
Funding Insight: Coatue backed Harvey alongside Sequoia, bringing its usual data-first approach to the legal AI space. The firm saw a strong market pull for AI tools that serve law firms, not replace them. Their bet was simple: anything that can shrink lawyer time without shrinking margins is going to be a winner.

37. OpenAI Startup Fund (San Francisco, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $300 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Harvey
Stage Focus: AI-native software built on OpenAI’s ecosystem
Funding Insight: The OpenAI Startup Fund backed Harvey to help build real-world applications on top of its own models. The investment wasn’t just financial — it came with access to tooling, infrastructure, and early model features. OpenAI is playing the long game here, nurturing startups that deepen its own platform’s stickiness.

38. GV (Mountain View, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $300 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Harvey
Stage Focus: Enterprise SaaS and applied AI
Funding Insight: GV (formerly Google Ventures) joined the Harvey round, reinforcing its strategy of backing AI that solves painful, expensive problems. In a sea of flashy demos, Harvey stood out for building something lawyers actually wanted — and GV moved fast to lock in its spot.

39. Meta (Menlo Park, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of the $10B round
Key AI Startup Funded: Databricks
Stage Focus: Strategic AI alignment
Funding Insight: Meta quietly joined Databricks’ mega-round, signaling its intent to stay close to the AI infrastructure it increasingly depends on. Rather than chase model supremacy, Meta’s move suggested a different strategy — build the pipes, and partner for the rest.

40. Breakthrough Energy Ventures (USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $537 million
Key AI Startup Funded: KoBold Metals
Stage Focus: Climate-focused AI
Funding Insight: Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures backed KoBold Metals again, doubling down on AI for clean energy exploration. KoBold’s work in identifying rare earth elements using machine learning plays directly into the clean energy transition. This wasn’t a software play — it was about the materials that power the future.

41. Hangzhou City Investment Fund (China)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $138 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Zhipu AI
Stage Focus: Domestic large language models
Funding Insight: Hangzhou’s investment in Zhipu AI highlighted China’s strategy of building national champions in AI. While global headlines focus on U.S.-based models, China is quietly channeling local capital into its own LLM efforts — and this fund is a key part of that push.

42. Zhuhai Huafa Group (China)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $69 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Zhipu AI
Stage Focus: Strategic regional AI development
Funding Insight: Zhuhai Huafa Group joined the Zhipu AI funding effort with a $69M commitment — a move that aligns with China’s regional investment approach to AI independence. Local funds are doubling down on homegrown LLMs, and Huafa’s investment signals confidence in Zhipu’s ability to compete with global players on its own turf.

43. Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment Group (China)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $42 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Zhipu AI
Stage Focus: Public-private innovation partnerships
Funding Insight: Chengdu Hi-Tech’s $42M investment in Zhipu rounded out a trio of Chinese institutions funding the company’s scale-up. As a state-linked investment vehicle, Chengdu’s support suggests more than commercial interest — it’s part of a broader national goal to control the next wave of AI development internally.

44. Fidelity (Boston, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of $6 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: Late-stage mega-rounds
Funding Insight: Fidelity participated in Elon Musk’s $6B raise for xAI — a company aiming to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The move echoed Fidelity’s strategy of anchoring large, late-stage rounds in high-upside tech bets. Even with minimal product traction, xAI’s name power was enough to pull in legacy institutions.

45. BlackRock (New York, USA)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of $6 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: Strategic exposure to foundational AI
Funding Insight: BlackRock joined Fidelity and others in the xAI raise, giving the deal blue-chip credibility. This wasn’t just a bet on Musk — it was a hedge against being left out of the foundational model wars. BlackRock’s backing gave xAI access to long-term capital and opened the door to public market pathways later.

46. Kingdom Holding Company (Saudi Arabia)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $400 million+
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: High-profile strategic investments
Funding Insight: Kingdom Holding put more than $400M into xAI — one of the biggest single commitments to the company outside the U.S. The move shows how Saudi capital is increasingly flowing into AI, not just infrastructure and energy. This wasn’t just a financial play — it was a geopolitical positioning move, too.

47. Qatar Investment Authority (Qatar)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of $6 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: Sovereign strategic tech investments
Funding Insight: QIA joined the syndicate backing xAI, continuing its long-term strategy of aligning with high-visibility tech platforms. With sovereign funds expanding beyond infrastructure and real estate, QIA’s move into core AI suggests growing interest in technologies that can shape future influence — not just future profits.

48. Premji Invest (India)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: $141 million
Key AI Startup Funded: Hippocratic AI
Stage Focus: Healthcare-focused applied AI
Funding Insight: Premji Invest backed Hippocratic AI’s $141M Series B, adding a global dimension to the healthcare AI narrative. As one of India’s most prominent family offices, its participation reflects growing global alignment on responsible AI use in critical sectors like health and medicine.

49. Oman Investment Authority (Oman)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of $6 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: Diversification into AI infrastructure
Funding Insight: Oman’s sovereign wealth fund joined the xAI round as part of its strategy to diversify away from oil and into future-defining technologies. With a relatively modest track record in venture, this investment marked a notable shift — one that put Oman on the global AI investor map.

50. Vy Capital (Dubai, UAE)

Estimated 2025 AI Investments: Part of $6 billion
Key AI Startup Funded: xAI
Stage Focus: High-growth global tech
Funding Insight: Vy Capital rounded out the xAI syndicate, strengthening its ties with Elon Musk and the emerging stack of alternative AI labs. Known for backing bold founders and fast-moving tech, Vy’s move here was part conviction, part access — and fully on brand.

This list reflects real capital committed in 2025. These investors aren’t just buzzword-hunting — they’re placing serious bets on what AI becomes next.

Table: Summary of Top 50 AI Investors in 2025 (by Investment Amount)

Each investor is ranked by their 2025 AI investment amount. The table lists the AI startups they funded in 2025, the estimated amounts invested (in USD), their HQ country, and the date (or year) of those investments. (Investments in late 2024 that led into or continued in 2025 are marked with Dec 2024 (cont. 2025).) All figures are estimates based on funding round disclosures or reports for 2025.