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Exclusive: BoomPop Books $25M To Help Companies Plan Events And Offsites Using AI
BoomPop, an AI-powered event planning platform, has raised $25 million in equity funding, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The startup has also secured $16 million of debt and credit via Silicon Valley Bank. The equity portion of the raise was led by Wing VC. Other participants included Atomic, Acme Capital, Four Rivers Group, Thayer Investment Partners (which counts large hotels as LPs), the Fund of Operators Guild, and Gaingels. Several individual investors also wrote checks into the round, including MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez, former DoorDash President Christopher Payne, and other Silicon Valley founders. With the latest financing, San Francisco-based BoomPop has raised a total of just under $56 million in funding since its 2020 inception. The company declined to reveal valuation, saying only that it was a “good up round.” BoomPop started as a research entity called BoomBox during the COVID pandemic, planning virtual events, before transitioning into its current iteration in 2023. It was born out of the Atomic venture studio. The startup essentially aims to function as a “trusted event planner,” making it easier for companies to plan offsites and events for employees. Blake Hudelson and Healey Cypher, BoomPop co-founders. Courtesy photo. “Most people don’t realize that when it comes to corporate travel, almost 60% of it involves groups,” said CEO and co-founder Healey Cypher in an interview. “And most people don’t know that if you need to book more than 10 hotel rooms, you cannot do that online.” The demand is apparently there. BoomPop said it has more than 450 clients, including Netflix, Google, Amazon, Hims & Hers and Anaconda, and has seen impressive growth. It ranked No. 115 on the most recent Inc. 5000 list, reporting 3,073% three-year growth. It currently has a revenue run rate of over $75 million. Cypher projects the company should cap just over $100 million in total gross revenue this quarter. (The company makes 12% to 14% of gross for net revenue, he said.) BoomPop’s raise is one of the largest so far this year for events-related startups, Crunchbase data shows. All told, startups in the category globally have raised just under $252 million year to date, including BoomPop’s funding deal, marking a down year for the sector. That compares with more than $361 million in all of 2024, $435.6 million in 2023 and $2.1 billion in the peak year of 2021. How it works BoomPop is powered by AI, but it operates on the premise that “nothing replaces authentic human connection,” Cypher told Crunchbase News. It works as a companion to employees working to plan offsites or events for a company, with both self-serve and full-service options. For those who want more hand-holding, BoomPop employs a 35-person professional planning team that handles planning and on-site support “for higher end, more complex events,” according to Cypher. Presently, BoomPop has about 110 employees. A staffer could tell BoomPop that his or her company wants to plan a 100-person founder summit within a three-hour drive from San Francisco with a lot of fun activities. The system would then analyze “millions” of data points in real time, such as weather, hotel and venue pricing, flights, citywide events that might also be taking place, and past itineraries. It would then offer event options, with a range of variations. Based on preferences, the AI then takes over execution, booking “vetted” vendors, reviewing contracts, building event websites, managing RSVPs and coordinating directly with hotels “to ensure guest preferences — such as dietary restrictions — are met.” The company claims that its AI can accomplish tasks in minutes that “once required entire teams weeks to complete.” BoomPop’s AI is trained on a proprietary database of curated, vetted vendors, including hotels, spaces, restaurants, activities, facilitators, caterers and photographers. It can do things like message employees if there’s a last-minute change in dinner venues. It can also get sizes for any swag and compile any dietary restrictions, in addition to planning minute-by-minute itineraries, among other things. To date, BoomPop has helped book over 60,000 hotel nights for its customers. Its fastest-growing segment is company offsites and retreats. Interestingly, the startup doesn’t just help plan events for employees. It also helps them plan events for clients. “I did deep research and found that the number one marketing channel for the scaled AI companies is client events,” Cypher said. Making group events scaleable Gaurav Garg, founding partner at Wing Venture Capital, notes that in a post-pandemic world with more remote and hybrid work models, companies are investing more resources into bringing their employees together. But the process behind planning and executing these gatherings “is still painfully manual,” in his view.“BoomPop brings together what used to be a patchwork of tools into a single intelligent product,” he told Crunchbase News via email. “At Wing, we believe the next generation of enterprise software will be AI-native: deeply intelligent, vertically focused, and obsessed with user experience. BoomPop embodies that thesis perfectly. It’s transforming an outdated, service-heavy industry into a digital, automated ecosystem that’s built for the way modern teams actually work and travel.” BoomPop makes money in several ways. For one, it charges what Cypher described as a “relatively low” SaaS fee for its offering that allows internal staffers to plan events. It also offers an optional premium product, which acts as a boutique agency to help plan events or offsites, that are billed per attendee, per event. BoomPop primarily makes its money from vendors who pay it a finder’s fee. In late September, Brex also announced a partnership with BoomPop that allows companies to book private dining and sports suites using Brex points. Related Crunchbase query: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Crunchbase Sector Snapshot: It’s Been A Down Year For E-Commerce Funding
Consumers and businesses are projected to spend more than $6 trillion on e-commerce retail platforms this year. Nonetheless, startup investors are finding fewer deals they like in the space. The broad trend: While investors are still backing some big rounds, overall funding to e-commerce startup categories has declined in 2025. Even so, we are seeing some bright spots, including quick delivery, livestream shopping and AI-enabled e-commerce. The numbers: So far in this year, investors put around $7.3 billion into global e-commerce-related startup funding rounds. That puts 2025 on track to deliver the sector’s lowest investment tally in years. Funding remains stuck at a fraction of its peak four years ago, and deal counts are also way down. To illustrate, we charted investment for the past six calendar years below. U.S. e-commerce funding, by contrast, looks on track to be relatively flat year over year. Even so, investment is down more than 80% from the peak. Noteworthy recent rounds: Food and grocery delivery continue to be major themes for e-commerce funding. In the U.S., the largest financing along these lines went to New York-based Wonder, a food takeout and delivery startup that raised $600 million in May at a reported $7 billion valuation. A sort of modernized version of the food court, Wonder lets customers order a selection of different cuisines from a single location. Indian e-commerce unicorn Zepto, which offers quick deliveries of groceries and household supplies, also did well, snagging $450 million last month at a $7 billion valuation. Live shopping platform Whatnot was also a venture favorite, securing $225 million in an October Series F. The San Francisco-based company said it has surpassed $6 billion in live sales this year. Below, we look at nine of the leading e-commerce fundraisers of 2025. The broad takeaway: A mature space, but newcomers can still find niche markets. Early adopters have been buying stuff online for roughly three decades now, and early entrant Amazon is now a $2.6 trillion company. Suffice it to say, e-commerce is a fairly mature space, leaving limited new addressable markets for startups. That said, we haven’t reached the zenith of on-demand commerce, and, as Whatnot’s rise exemplifies, buyers are always looking for a compelling new shopping experience. As AI technology advances, we’re also likely to see more startups finding innovative ways to apply it to e-commerce. Related Crunchbase queries and lists: Related reading:
Crunchbase Sector Snapshot: Funding To AI-Related Healthcare Startups Is Robust This Year
Startup investment has been on the rise this year, but some industries have benefited more than others. AI-related healthcare is one of the spaces that have seen a significant rise in funding globally, Crunchbase data shows. Overall funding to the space is up this year, as more startups are tackling high-pain and high-cost parts of the healthcare system. The broad trend: Venture investment in healthcare and biotech companies that have an AI bent has been on an upward trajectory in recent years. This year is on track to be another up one, with 2025’s funding totals already topping 2024’s full-year tallies. It’s not entirely surprising why: Many healthcare organizations still operate with outdated tech, and the need for innovation is massive. (As one personal example, I was given a CD with X-ray imaging at a recent ER visit.) The numbers: Investors put an estimated $10.7 billion into seed- through growth-stage funding to companies in AI-powered health tech categories so far this year, Crunchbase data shows. That means that 2025 funding is already 24.4% higher than the $8.6 billion raised in all of 2024. Investment hit a high point in Q1 of this year, with a drop in the subsequent two quarters, per Crunchbase data. Interestingly, a recent report from Menlo Ventures about AI and healthcare outlines the factors that are likely contributing to heightened investor interest. The report surveyed more than 700 health systems, outpatient, payer and life sciences leaders. Some of its findings include: This year has seen multiple megarounds in the health care space. The largest AI-related healthcare/biotech venture round of the year closed in March. That’s when Isomorphic Labs, a Google spinoff that provides AI-driven solutions for drug discovery and development, raised $600 million in a funding round led by Thrive Capital. The financing marked the company’s first external funding round as it looks to apply artificial intelligence to the drug development process. Other investors included GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Alphabet. Notably, more than one company in the space raised multiple rounds this year: There were many other interesting rounds raised in 2025 that caught our attention. In early October, Duos, an AI-powered digital health platform for member activation and benefits execution, raising a $130 million strategic growth equity investment led by FTV Capital. Also in October, DeepMind alumnus Domenic Donato raised $13 million for his startup, Attuned Intelligence, a developer of hospital call center AI agents. (The company told Crunchbase News that it was already processing thousands of calls daily. Attuned says it went live in 10 days at Lowell Community Health Center, handling every mainline call 24/7, and that it was working toward automating up to 70% of interactions across multiple languages. Honey Health also recently emerged from stealth with $7.8 million in seed funding led by Pelion Health Partners. The company says its AI agents log into existing EHRs, or electronic health records, and autonomously complete full workflows end-to-end with the goal of cutting millions of dollars in administration overhead. And in September, Hello Patient, a 1-year-old Austin-based conversational AI company aiming to “reinvent” patient communications, announced a $22.5 million Series A financing led by Scale Venture Partners. For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of 10 of the year’s largest AI-related healthcare and biotech financings. The broad takeaway: It’s clear that the overall AI investment boom has funneled more capital into healthcare as one of the sectors where AI can have a large, measurable impact. Funding is climbing because the technology is better, the need in healthcare is urgent, more providers are starting to adopt AI solutions, and investors are now seeing clearer paths to scale and profit. Related Crunchbase queries: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: A Varied Lineup, Led By Crypto And Parking
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 rounds here. This week has been a busy one for good-sized rounds, led by $500 million financings for crypto unicorn Ripple and AI-enabled parking provider Metropolis. We also saw multiple large financings for biotech startups, plus some big rounds for cybersecurity and enterprise software. 1. (tied) Ripple, $500M, cryptocurrency: San Francisco-based crypto payments company Ripple raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation. Funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities led the investment, along with Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace. 1. (tied) Metropolis, $500M, parking: Metropolis, an AI-powered checkout-free parking platform, announced that it has secured $1.6 billion in debt and equity financing, including a $500 million Series D at a $5 billion valuation. LionTree led the equity financing for Los Angeles-based Metropolis, while JP Morgan Chase Bank provided a $1.1 billion term loan. 3. Armis, $435M, cybersecurity: Armis, a provider of tools for monitoring cyber risk exposure, closed on $435 million in what it described as pre-IPO funding round. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the financing, which set a $6.1 billion valuation for the 10-year-old, San Francisco-based company. 4. Synchron, $200M, neurotech: Synchron, a developer of nonsurgical brain-computer interface technology, picked up $200 million in Series D funding led by Double Point Ventures. The New York-based company wants to use its technology to restore communication and mobility for people with paralysis. 5. Hippocratic AI, $126M, healthcare AI: Hippocratic AI, a developer of generative AI healthcare agents, landed $126 million in Series C financing. Avenir led the round, which set a $3.4 billion valuation for the Palo Alto, California-based company. 6. MoEngage, $100M, marketing automation: MoEngage, an AI-enabled customer engagement platform, raised $100 million in new financing, with reportedly 60% going to the company and 40% going to secondary share sales. Goldman Sachs Alternatives and A91 Partners led the financing. 7. Infravision, $91M, aerial robotics: Infravision, a company that aims to transform how power lines are built and maintained with aerial robotics, raised $91 million in Series B funding. Singapore’s GIC led the financing for the 7-year-old, Austin-based startup. 8. Reevo, $80M, AI go-to-market tools: Santa Clara, California-based Reevo, developer of an AI platform for managing go-to-market strategy and processes, launched publicly and announced it has raised $80 million in funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. 9. Neok Bio, $75M, biotech: Palo Alto, California-based Neok Bio, a startup focused on developing antibody drug conjugates for improving cancer outcomes, emerged from stealth with $75 million, backed by Korean biotech ABL Bio. 10. Azalea Therapeutics, $65M, genomic medicines: Berkeley, California-based Azalea Therapeutics, a developer of precision genomic medicines, launched from stealth and announced it has raised $65 million in a Series A led by Third Rock Ventures. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Nov. 1-7. 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
Startups Are Serving Up Drinks With Protein, Caffeine And A Shot Of Wellness
Stuff it with protein. Add a kick of nutrients and caffeine. And please, stay away from sugar. Those, in obnoxiously overgeneralized terms, are the basic tenets of launching and scaling a beverage startup targeting the modern consumer. Per an analysis of Crunchbase data, recently funded companies in the drinks space typically check one if not all of those boxes. These are not especially shocking findings. Consumers willing to pay handsomely for a container of liquid are commonly looking for health and wellness benefits, as well as an energy boost, if not a buzz. That’s reflected in our sample list of 26 noteworthy beverage startups funded this year. Standouts include such potable offerings as protein soda, botanical tonics and sugar-free energy drinks. We take a closer look at where the money is going by focusing on a few top investment themes. Protein everywhere First off, it seems safe to say protein is officially the macronutrient of the year. This is evident in the beverage space, where startups and established brands alike are competing to stuff more protein into everything from sodas to lattes to flavored waters. Below, we assembled a list of four startups along these lines funded this year. Dutch startup Vivici, which produces dairy proteins through precision fermentation, picked up the biggest recent round, landing $37 million in a February Series A. The company makes a whey protein that’s been used for clear drinks, powder mixes and snack bars. Slate Milk, which makes high-protein milk shakes and iced coffees, is also poised to scale, having secured a $23 million Series B in September. More than three-fourths of the calories in its drinks come from protein. For those seeking something fizzier, Don’t Quit is another option. The Los Angeles-based company sells canned sodas that feature 15 grams of whey protein. Energy Of course, what use is all that protein if one isn’t awake or alert enough to appreciate it? Enter our next favored funding category: energy-boosting drinks. Using Crunchbase data, we assembled a sample list of five such startups funded this year. One continuing trend is the incorporation of caffeine into drinks that traditionally don’t contain the stuff. Gorgie, for instance, markets a sparkling pink lemonade with more caffeine than many cups of coffee. Lucky Energy, meanwhile, sells a lineup of even more caffeinated fruity-flavored drinks. We’re also seeing startups straddling multiple hot beverage niches. Concentrated coffee purveyor Jot, for instance, sells a protein latte. And Atomo Coffee makes products with added ingredients offering nutritional and health benefits. Wellness Drinks for health and fitness buffs are also attracting investors. To illustrate, we assembled a list of five startups funded this year that meet this criteria. Hiyo, a maker of fizzy tonics crafted with potentially mood-boosting plant ingredients, scored one of the more high-profile rounds, selling a minority stake to the venture arm of spirits maker Constellation Brands early this year. The Southern California startup promotes itself as a festive alternative to alcoholic beverages. Venice, California-based Magic Mind also picked up a venture round, per a securities filing, as it scales up its offerings of drinkable shots crafted to augment mental performance. Anything but tap water It’s a good thing for startups that consumers are accustomed to paying up to quench our thirst with basically anything other than tap water. But given the plethora of options already out there, newcomers are playing in a crowded field. “The big question starting to emerge is: How big can the shelf get and how many options can consumers truly absorb?” research and accounting firm Ernst & Young posited in a recent report on beverage industry trends. The firm sees certain categories as better poised to cut through the clutter, with wellness drinks having a particular edge. Sugar-free or low-sugar drinks also appear to be on the rise, at least looking at funded startups, with a sizable chunk of this year’s investment recipient boasting this attribute. It’s not just zero-calorie drinks either. In fact, both startups and established brands are increasingly pushing the envelope on the notion that a drink can be both sweet and protein-rich enough to sub for a steak. Now that brands have made such strides in the nutritional profile of drinks, the next step will be to see which ones consumers believe actually taste good. Related Crunchbase list: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Fast Growth, Fragile Foundations: How High-Growth Startups Can Build Financial Resilience
By Julio Martínez When a startup takes off, it’s easy to mistake momentum for stability. MRR is climbing, new markets are opening, and hiring never stops. But for every early-stage business reaching new heights, there’s another quietly struggling to keep its financial foundations intact. Scaling can expose weaknesses previously hidden within a smaller operation. Cash flow becomes harder to track, hiring becomes reactive, investments that once felt bold now look risky without a clear link to outcomes, and the same speed that fuels growth can also spark internal chaos. This is where finance leaders come in. Their role isn’t to simply report numbers — it’s to bring clarity, consistency and control to a business moving too fast for its own good. The startups that survive this scaling mayhem are those that treat financial discipline as a growth enabler, not a constraint. Seeing the full financial pictureJulio Martínez Visibility is the foundation of resilience. You can’t navigate what you can’t see. As companies grow, financial data often lives in scattered spreadsheets or disconnected systems. That lack of clarity not only makes cash flow management harder, it also means leaders are blind to problems before they escalate. Fixing this doesn’t have to be complex. Reconcile accounts, categorize spending and track the basics: recurring revenue, outstanding invoices and payments in progress. Even assigning one person to chase late invoices can free up cash and improve forecasting pretty much overnight. Then build a rolling three-month projection with best- and worst-case outcomes. It’s not about predicting the future but rather about being ready to react quickly when it changes. Finding the real drivers of growth When growth goes wild, it’s easy to lose sight of where success really comes from. Headline metrics like total revenue or customer count rarely tell the whole story. The best finance teams dig deeper and break down performance by region, product and channel to see which areas are truly pulling their weight. Numbers alone, though, don’t necessarily explain why something works. Finance leaders need to speak to sales, product and marketing to understand what’s behind the trends. Are conversions dropping because of pricing? Is churn higher because onboarding takes too long? Blending financial data with real-world insight is where the smartest growth decisions happen. Turning retention into predictability Sustainable revenue doesn’t just come from selling faster, but also from retaining customers for longer. As companies scale, customer success becomes a cornerstone of financial stability. Mapping the customer journey helps identify weak points that cause churn. Some of the most effective teams use a simple, visible customer health score. If an account shows signs of risk, it triggers action across departments before it’s too late. This shared visibility makes revenue more predictable and helps everyone see how their work directly impacts financial performance. Making every investment count In high-growth companies, speed often outpaces structure. Budgets expand, projects multiply, and suddenly it’s unclear whether spending is strategic or simply habitual. To stay grounded, link every major investment to a measurable business outcome. For product and engineering teams, that might mean connecting roadmap decisions directly to revenue from expansion, retention or cost efficiency. Keep this alignment in check with regular reviews and avoid quarterly scrambles. The best finance leaders ask why expenditure mattered, not what was spent. Using talent data as a forecasting tool Headcount is one of the biggest line items in any scaling business, as well as being one of the richest sources of insight. By linking hiring data with performance metrics, finance and HR teams can spot productivity patterns early. If certain functions consistently deliver above or below expectations, that informs future resourcing decisions. Aligning incentives with company performance matters too. When bonuses and rewards are tied to shared business goals, accountability flows naturally. The result is an organization that grows in sync, not in silos. A faster path to financial maturity A financial transformation doesn’t need to take a year. In fact, 60 days is enough to create real change. Start with the foundations: clean data, consistent reporting and real-time visibility into cash and expenses. Then move to improvement by standardizing processes, identifying inefficiencies and linking operational data to financial outcomes. Once systems run smoothly, embed them into daily workflows. Consistency is crucial as too many initiatives lose momentum just as they start to deliver results. The bottom line Fast growth is both a privilege and a pressure test. The startups that thrive evolve their financial practices just as quickly as their products. It’s not about choosing between discipline and growth. Financial discipline is what enables growth to continue. By maintaining visibility, linking decisions to outcomes, and embedding accountability at every level, startups can turn fragile foundations into lasting strength. Julio Martínez is the co-founder and CEO of Abacum, a company specializing in financial planning and analysis software for mid-market firms. Abacum’s all-in-one platform enables CFOs to forecast revenue, plan headcount and account for unseen financial circumstances amidst tough macroeconomic headwinds. Under Martínez’s leadership, the company has expanded internationally, with its headquarters in New York City, and offices in London and Barcelona. Before co-founding Abacum, Martínez had a career in finance and technology. In 2018, he attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Active US Investors Kept Busy Cutting Checks In October
The ranks of most-active U.S. startup investors featured familiar names in October, as leading players continued to back an AI-dominated assortment of large rounds. Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel, Nvidia and Y Combinator were standouts for the month across metrics including deal count, lead rounds and size of lead rounds. Overall, activity remained close to September’s busy levels, even as some big names scaled back a bit. Below, we look at October’s active investor rankings in closer detail across four metrics: active venture investors, lead backers, high spenders and seed dealmakers. Most-active venture investors Among venture investors, Andreessen Horowitz ranked as the most-active dealmaker, backing at least 14 rounds valued at $5 million or more during the course of the month. Sequoia Capital and General Catalyst tied for second place, with 13 deals each, followed by Accel, with nine. Lead investors As for lead investors, Andreessen once again led the pack on this count. The Silicon Valley firm led seven known U.S. post-seed rounds in October, well ahead of any other investor. Meanwhile, three other firms led four deals apiece: Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and Accel. Highest-spending lead investors In addition to tracking who backed the most deals, we also try to gauge who put the most capital to work. This isn’t an exact measure, as rounds with multiple investors rarely break out individual contributions. However, we can get a sense by looking at who led or co-led rounds with the highest aggregate dollar value. By this measure, Nvidia was far and away the spendiest lead investor in October, mostly due to leading a $2 billion Series B for Reflection.AI. Next on the list is Mubadala Capital, which co-led a $1.38 billion financing for Crusoe Energy Systems, a developer of AI data centers and infrastructure. Seed investors Among active seed investors, meanwhile, Y Combinator held on to its customary spot in first place. The storied accelerator had more than 3x the reported seed investments of anyone else on the list. Even so, its investment pace slowed considerably month over month. Below are the other most-active seed investors An active month overall Overall, active investors kept busy in the course of the month, although several did tamp down the dealmaking pace. As we come closer to year-end, it’s likely we’ll see some pickup in coming weeks, followed by the usual winter holiday season slowdown. Illustration: Dom Guzman
Tech Giants Accumulate Huge Startup Stakes, Even As M&A Appetite Wanes
Why acquire a startup when you can get a piece of it instead? Increasingly, that’s the mindset of the world’s most valuable technology companies. Over the past couple years, the top tech giants have made comparatively few big-ticket purchases of venture-backed companies. However, the Big Five — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon — have been actively and extravagantly investing in startups, particularly of the AI variety. Those stakes are adding up. Last week, OpenAI and Microsoft drove home the reality of just how valuable a startup investment can become. Under an updated company structure OpenAI unveiled last week, Microsoft holds 27% of OpenAI Group, its for-profit arm. That stake is worth around $135 billion, based on the generative AI unicorn’s recently reported $500 billion valuation. Other big solo stakes Microsoft’s OpenAI stake looks to be the most valuable private startup holding by one of the five largest technology companies. It’s also the most expensive investment, with Microsoft shelling out $10 billion in a 2023 financing, as well as backing follow-on rounds. However, other tech giants have also poured billions into startup deals in the past couple years. These include both solo financings and investments made as part of broader syndicates. Not surprisingly, the largest solo investments have mostly gone to generative AI leaders, topped by Anthropic and OpenAI. These are both strategic and financial investments, as the tech giants jockey to maintain their market edge in the AI age. Lead syndicate investments More commonly, the Big Five invest as part of syndicates. They don’t always insist on leading rounds, but they often do. Many of those deals turn out to be quite large. To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to put together a list of the largest financings of the last couple years with one of the tech giants as lead or co-lead investor. In addition, the Big Five have also participated as non-lead investors in a number of giant rounds for companies including xAI, Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machines Lab, Mistral AI, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. You can make big returns doing this Besides the strategic benefits the tech giants derive from these investments, they’re also generating enormous paper wealth. Take Microsoft’s OpenAI stake. At $135 billion, it’s more than 6x larger than the purchase price of the largest completed private startup acquisition to date. (Meta’s 2014 purchase of WhatsApp). We don’t know the precise value of Amazon’s stake in Anthropic, but it’s also certain to be sizable. The e-commerce and cloud giant committed to invest $8 billion in the Gen AI company in 2023 and 2024. With Anthropic’s valuation nearly tripling over a six-month period this year to hit $183 billion, Amazon’s stake has obviously appreciated. Ditto for Google, which also invested in the company at lower valuations. Not just giant rounds The Big Five aren’t just making huge AI investments. They’re also actively partaking in startup rounds at various sizes and stages. Per Crunchbase data, so far this year, the group 1 has made at least 208 disclosed startup investments, with those rounds collectively valued at just over $70 billion. 2 Annual deal count for the prior four years also held up at similar levels, as charted below. Why invest in startups rather than acquire them? It’s probably not a money issue. Given that the five top tech companies have a combined market capitalization of over $18 trillion, they can afford to buy pretty much any startup they want. More likely, tech giants see strategic advantages in owning stakes of the most promising upstarts in relevant sectors. And seeing how many of these companies have shot up in valuation, there are financial gains to be had too. Related Crunchbase lists: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman