Artificial intelligence funding this year is said to be on track to double 2024’s record total ($108.0B). This, according to an update from CB Insights. Although deals fell in Q3’25, billion-dollar rounds to AI infrastructure providers continued to fuel the ongoing funding surge. However, the activity is not actually limited to the largest players: investors are reportedly issuing larger checks across each stage, seemingly signaling conviction in AI’s potential and the relatively high costs of AI development.
Among various emerging opportunities, AI agents are a said to be key focus for VCs and enterprises, with agent markets now reportedly leading deal and M&A activity in the quarter.
The CB Insights report added that AI deal activity has recently softened, but massive rounds support continued funding boom. The report further noted that deals to private AI firms globally declined 22% quarter-over-quarter in Q3’25, but funding stayed above $45B for the fourth straight quarter.
Collectively, these trends indicate how “top-heavy” the AI focused venture funding ecosystem has now become.
The CB Insights report further revealed that the average deal size in 2025 YTD is $49.3M — up considerably 86% from the past year. and in the last 4 quarters, mega-rounds ($100M+ deals) have accounted for about 75%+ funding. The average since 2021 (up to Q3’24) now stands at 53%.
Meanwhile, the overall check sizes are trending bigger at the median across every stage in 2025. For instance, the median early-stage deal is $3.4M in 2025 YTD, up considerably from $2.5M in 2024.
The report also mentioned that investors are now funneling capital into fewer, larger bets on “perceived AI winners, driven by the infrastructure costs and dynamics of foundation model development.”
In Q3’25, there were 6 $1B+ rounds. The top 3 deals went “to LLM developers — Anthropic ($13B, Series F), OpenAI ($8.3B, PE), and Mistral AI ($1.5B, Series C) — reflecting the high cost of frontier model development.”
While OpenAI hit $12B in annualized revenue in July 2025, it’s “projecting roughly $8B in cash burn this year per reports.”
Other infrastructure providers such as Nscale (AI data centers, $1.1B Series B) and Groq (AI inference processors, $750M, Series E) were also in the top 10.
The raises are suggestive of the growth and attention technologies enabling AI are receiving, with “earnings call mentions of data centers hitting record levels in Q3’25 and AI training & inference chips on track for record equity deal & funding activity this year.”
As stated in the latest CB Insights update, the AI market is a hotbed for M&A activity.
Q3’25 marks the “second-highest” quarter on record for AI startup M&A (172 deals), following Q2’25 (181 deals). The US still continues to gain share, with startups based in the country accounting for “59% of total exits, the highest share since Q2’21.”
Three of the leading 5 exits in the quarter are related to AI agents:
- Workday acquired Sana Labs, a company focused on enterprise workflows, for $1.1B.
- NiCE acquired customer support startup Cognigy for $955M.
- Atlassian acquired The Browser Company, the maker of the Arc and Dia AI browsers, for $610M.
The activity signals enterprise software incumbents are now seemingly looking to acquire their way into “accelerating their AI roadmaps.”
Workday was reportedly the second most active acquirer in the quarter with 3 acquisitions (behind Salesforce, with 4 acquisitions). The HR & finance software firm has also picked up agent builder Flowise and AI-enabled recruiting platform Paradox.