Venture activity is picking up again, according to an update from CB Insights. This comes after several years of recalibration, the report noted while pointing out that Q3’25 appears to have marked a “decisive” turning point. This, as both funding and exits notably reached their highest levels in three years.
In a recent blog post, CB Insights has looked at what could be fueling this renewed momentum. There could be several different contributing factors such as the following: From artificial intelligence now capturing more than half of all venture dollars to record-breaking funding rounds for decacorns to a rise in investment in humanoids and hard tech.
Based on these developments, it seems now that the venture landscape is shifting quickly and reshaping what’s potentially next for dealmakers, VCs, and corporate innovators.
In other recent updates from CB Insights, it was noted that early-stage activity points to what’s next in tech, from AI agents reshaping enterprise operations to autonomous labs enabling scientific discovery.
This past month, private companies globally raised 1,400+ early-stage rounds (noting this total will rise as more deals are released retroactively).
More than 25% of startups that raised rounds are now said to be developing AI-enabled products and services.
Somewhat similar to the past month, firms targeting AI agent apps secured more than 50 deals (out of 1,485).
Some of the key trends are as follows:
- “Smart Money” is all in on AI agents: The top 25 VCs identified by CB Insights backed 13 AI agent startups in September. This represents nearly 20% of all of the early-stage activity from these VCs in the month. Focuses include security (Akto, Fabrix Security, Terra Security) and governance, risk, and compliance (Geordie, Zania), indicating enterprise adoption and risk management are key investment priorities.
- Customer service is one of the most established use cases but is still seeing early-stage traction: AI agents handling customer service, support tickets, and user interactions represent one of the largest early-stage agent categories in September (8+ deals). Support operations have clear unit economics, high volume repetitive tasks, and direct cost savings compared to human agents, driving continued activity here. Top companies to watch based on Mosaic scores include Doo (Mosaic: 747) and Rauda AI (Mosaic: 687).
- Emerging voice AI sector: Voice and phone agents are attracting dedicated investment (6 deals, 11% of agent activity) as investors bet on solutions that can tackle the unique technical challenges of voice interactions (i.e., real-time latency requirements, natural speech processing, emotional intelligence, etc.). Confido Health and Prosper, for example, are focused on healthcare applications. Meanwhile, Vida and Vaani Research are building infrastructure to develop voice AI/phone agents. Review the voice AI development platforms market to compare 30+ vendors in the space.