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It Was A Big Year For Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity startup investment for 2025 hit the highest level in three years, bolstered by big rounds for AI-focused companies in the space. Overall, investors put $18 billion into seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies in Crunchbase security and privacy categories last year. That’s up about 26% from 2024, with particularly pronounced growth at early stage. It’s also the third-highest annual total in 10 years, as charted below. Table of contents Supersized rounds boosted totals A handful of supersized rounds contributed heavily to boosting annual funding tallies. Per Crunchbase data, cybersecurity companies raised at least seven rounds of $400 million or more last year. Of those, two went to the year’s biggest fundraiser, AI-powered data security platform Cyera, which picked up two rounds totaling $940 million. Saviynt, provider of an identity security platform for humans and AI agents, was another investor favorite, closing on $700 million last month at a valuation around $3 billion. And NinjaOne, the endpoint management automation and security provider, secured $500 million in Series C funding early in the year. For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of seven of the year’s largest cybersecurity-related funding rounds. But overall, fewer deals got done While investment rose, deal counts declined some last year, as more capital concentrated around a handful of hot startups. Across all stages, we saw just under 1,000 reported cybersecurity financings last year, the lowest total in at least 10 years. We expect the 2025 tally to rise slightly over time, however, due to delays in some seed rounds being added to the dataset. Early stage outperformed, US led Even as overall deal volume contracted, early stage posted a gain in 2025, with more than 300 reported deals. That exceeded deal count in each of the prior two years. Early-stage investment was also particularly strong last year, with $7.5 billion invested around Series A and Series B. That’s up a whopping 63% from year-earlier levels, driven largely by heightened investor enthusiasm for deals at the intersection of AI and security. Cybersecurity investment was also largely to U.S. companies. Per Crunchbase data, 74% of funding to the space last year went to U.S.-headquartered startups. These companies also generated the largest exits. Exits were big too That brings us to our next and final point, which is that higher cybersecurity funding also coincided with big M&A and IPO events. For acquisitions, of course the headline deal of the year was Google’s planned $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, which has yet to be finalized. Another megadeal came in late December, when ServiceNow announced an agreement to acquire Armis, a provider of cyber risk management tools, for $7.75 billion in cash. As for IPOs, the standout for 2025 was network security provider Netskope’s September debut. The Silicon Valley company was recently valued around $6 billion. Not a lot of negative For a sector that prides itself on the ability to ferret out risks that others miss, cybersecurity seemed to have relatively little to fret about regarding the investment environment. For companies able to integrate AI in compelling ways, investors have plenty of capacity to write big checks, and exit markets look receptive as well. Surely, there must be some unforeseen risk in the mix. There always is. But for now, things are still looking up. Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. 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. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.) Related Crunchbase queries: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Fintech Funding Jumped 27% In 2025 With Fewer Deals But Bigger Checks
Global venture funding to fintech startups climbed in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows. Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $51.8 billion for the year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a fairly significant – 27% – increase from 2024’s total of $40.8 billion raised. Unsurprisingly, the numbers are still much lower than the peak of $141.6 billion raised in 2021 and the $90.2 billion raised in 2022. But they are trending upward at least, unlike in 2024, when they fell below 2023 levels. And, for the first time in recent years 2025 funding totals came in above pre-pandemic sums, which were $50.8 billion in 2020 and $49.3 billion in 2019. Deal flow, however, was down — signaling fewer, but larger rounds. The year saw 3,457 deals consummated, a 23% decline from the more than 4,486 completed in 2024. Table of contents Large deals The fact that the sector experienced an increase in funding despite a lower deal count indicates that the first half of 2025 saw a number of large rounds. Interestingly, several of the largest deals involved blockchain or crypto companies and prediction marketplaces. Other sizeable deals that occurred during the year include U.K. payments platform Rapyd’s $500 million haul in mid-March; HR and payroll startup Rippling’s $450 million Series G in May; and expense management platform Ramp’s $500 million Series E-2 at a $22.5 billion valuation in late July and $300 million raise at a $32 billion valuation in November. ‘Chasing the AI-hype cycle’ All the VCs we spoke with said they believe 2021 and 2022 were outlier periods for venture funding. The record funding during those years were driven by “the Covid-19 rebound and ultra-low interest rates,” said Raph Osnoss, managing director at General Atlantic, who is based in New York and focuses on investments in the firm’s financial services sector, including financial technology. “After a reset, a more constructive overall market in 2025 has driven renewed investor appetite, albeit with investor selectivity around scale and quality in a world with continued uncertainty,” he wrote in an email interview. VCs appear to be just fine with funding not returning to those elevated levels. Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Jake Gibson put it this way: 2021 and early 2022 were not healthy markets for the tech or startup industry as a whole. Fintech got a disproportionate amount of capital because of the COVID “everything is going digital” craze. “Too much money was chasing too few great founders,” he said. “There would be four to five companies building the same thing, with business models that shouldn’t have been funded in the first place, and in many cases none of them were successful because none of them got to scale.” ‘Flight to quality’ Returning to the pace and exuberance of 2021, isn’t necessarily desirable or sustainable, according to Norwest Venture Partners VP Jordan Leites, who believes fintech is seeing a continued flight to quality with capital increasingly concentrating on companies with differentiated ideas, clear execution and “bona fide traction.” Meanwhile, it has become meaningfully harder for others to raise. “That dynamic helps explain why total funding dollars are up even as deal volume is down,” he told Crunchbase News. “I think the level of activity we saw in 2025 is healthy. At the earliest stages … the pipeline remains very strong, particularly across AI and stablecoins. Those areas have real structural tailwinds.” Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. 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. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.) Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Robotics Startup Skild AI Lands $1.4B, Tripling Valuation To $14B In Just 7 Months
Skild AI, a robotics company building an “omni-bodied” brain to operate any robot for any task, announced Wednesday that it has raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion. The fundraise comes just over seven months after Skild raised a $135 million Series B at a $4.5 billion valuation. SoftBank Group led the startup’s latest financing, which included participation from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, entities administered by Macquarie Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Disruptive and 1789 Capital. Several strategic investors also wrote checks into the round, including Samsung, LG Technology Ventures, Schneider Electric, CommonSpirit Health, and Salesforce Ventures 1. Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, co-founders of Skild AI. [Courtesy photo] The company says it grew from zero to about $30 million revenue “in just a few months” in 2025, and “is growing exponentially.” It is deploying its technology in a variety of environments, including security and facility inspection, last-mile and point-to-point delivery, warehouses, manufacturing, data centers, and construction tasks, among others. Looking ahead, Skild AI plans to deploy robotics in consumers homes, with enterprise tasks as the first application. Last year was a good year for robotic startup funding. Overall, robotics startups raised $13.8 billion in funding in 2025, up from $7.8 billion in 2024 and even topping the $13.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021. Another example of a company building a brain for robots that recently raised capital is Flexion. The Zurich-based startup, which says it’s “building the brain for humanoid and human-capable robots,” raised $50 million in funding in November. Multipurposing intelligence Skild AI claims to be building the industry’s “first unified robotics foundation model” called the Skild Brain. The company says its model differs from traditional ones that are tailored to specific robot designs in that it is omni-bodied and “can control any robot without prior knowledge of their exact body form,” including quadrupeds, humanoids, tabletop arms and mobile manipulators. As such, Skild AI says its technology gives robots the ability to perform simpler tasks such as household chores like cleaning, loading a dishwasher and making an egg, as well as more physically demanding activities such as navigating slippery terrain. “The Skild Brain can control robots it has never trained on, adapting in real time to extreme changes in form or environments. The model is forced to adapt rather than memorize — much like intelligence in nature,” said Deepak Pathak, CEO and co-founder of Skild AI, in a release. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Asian Startup Funding Fell In 2025 But Rose In Q4
Funding to Asia-based startups ticked lower in 2025. Even so, the fourth quarter closed out the annum on an up note, with the highest quarterly investment tally of the year, Crunchbase data shows. In total, investors poured $67.5 billion into reported seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies across Asia in last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a decline of about 6% from 2024, and the lowest annual total in five years. The lackluster numbers resulted mostly from weak investment in the first half of the year. Momentum picked up in the latter half, boosted in particular by rising investment in Chinese startups. Funding gains culminated in Q4, with $21.7 billion in reported investments. That’s a rise of 19% quarter over quarter, and 22% year over year. The increase was most pronounced for late-stage dealmaking. For broader perspective, below we look at dealmaking across stages and country-by-country, as well as focus on AI-focused investment. Table of contents Late stage Later-stage startups received the largest share of funding, so that’s where we’ll start. An estimated $10.4 billion went to Asia-based companies at Series C and beyond in Q4, per Crunchbase data, the highest quarterly total of the year. For the full year, meanwhile, later-stage and technology growth investment totaled $30.8 billion. For Q4, a few jumbo rounds for China-based startups played a big role in boosting the totals. These included a reported $874 million Series C for EV brand Deepal, a $600 million Series D for autonomous delivery vehicle provider Neolix, and a $500 million Series C for agentic AI company Moonshot AI. Early stage Early-stage investors also ended the year on a positive note, with $8.9 billion in reported Q4 deals, the highest quarterly total of the year. For the full year, funding at Series A and Series B stages totaled $28.2 billion, down about 10% year over year. A few large individual rounds lifted the tallies. This included NeueHCT, a startup focused on intelligent driving technology, and AA-I Technologies, an Israeli startup focused on artificial general intelligence, which each picked up $200 million financings. Seed stage Seed-stage investment moved higher in Q4, with $2.1 billion in reported deals, the highest total in the past four quarters. We expect the tally to rise a bit more over time, as well, as more deals are added later to the dataset. For the full year, meanwhile, reported seed funding to startups in Asia was estimated at $8.2 billion. That’s down about 6% from 2024. AI investment Artificial intelligence investment also scaled to record heights in 2025, peaking in the fourth quarter. For the full year, investment to startups in Crunchbase AI-related categories totaled $16.7 billion. Of that, just over 38% was in Q4. Country-by-country funding tallies While China’s startup funding remains far below historical highs, the country remains the leading destination for Asia’s venture investment. Next is India, followed by Israel, Japan and Singapore. For Q4, we saw China widen its lead some, bolstered by large deals around electric vehicles, autonomous driving and AI infrastructure. The big picture: Restrained, but looking up Overall, funding tallies paint an image of an investment environment that’s constrained, but with some bullish undertones. One particularly positive indicator is that investment picked up in Q4, indicating momentum is upward, not downward. Still, funding remains well below peak levels. So there’s a lot of catching up to do. Correction: A previous version of the Asia Venture Dollar Volume By Annum chart contained incorrect data. It has been updated. Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. 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. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.) Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Defense Tech Unicorn Onebrief Raises $200M, Acquires Seed Startup As VC Funding For Military-Related Tech Surges
Defense tech startup Onebrief has raised another $200 million and acquired a small battle simulation company, Axios reported. The deals follow on the heels of a record-setting year for venture investment into defense tech startups, per Crunchbase data. Battery Ventures and Sapphire Ventures led the Series D funding for Honolulu-based Onebrief. Investors including Salesforce Ventures 1, General Catalyst and Insight Partners joined. An updated valuation was not reported, but the company raised its Series C just seven months ago at a $1.1 billion pre-money valuation, per Crunchbase. Onebrief has now raised $311 million in total, per Crunchbase data. Along with the funding, the company acquired Battle Road Digital, a startup that makes simulation and wargaming software for the military and raised a $5 million seed round in 2023. The company’s AI-driven collaborative and planning software is used by the U.S. Department of Defense to design, coordinate and brief complex military operations more efficiently, functions previously done on paper, through email and hand-written notes. “Staffs are too slow. They’re just too slow for how fast our adversaries move now; they’re too slow for how complex the modern battlefield is. We need things to move hundreds of times faster than they do, and that takes automation,” Onebrief CEO Grant Demaree, a former Army officer, told Axios. With conflicts brewing around the world, venture investment in defense tech startups has soared in recent years, Crunchbase data shows. Funding to VC-backed startups in defense — defined by us as the industries of military, national security and law enforcement — hit $7.7 billion across close to 100 deals in 2025, per Crunchbase data. That was a record high for investment in the space and more than double 2024’s tally. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Flip Raises $20M Series A For Its Verticalized Approach To AI-Based Customer Service
Flip, a startup that claims to offer an Amazon Alexa-like voice AI experience for businesses, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. CEO Brian Schiff and CRO Sam Krut met a decade ago in college and began building different ventures together. After a few pivots, they raised funding for New York-based Flip in 2018 with the goal of building AI that “answers and automatically resolves routine requests” for customers calling into a variety of businesses. They started with a focus on transportation companies and moved into retail in 2021 and healthcare in 2024. AI-based customer service is a saturated space, but Schiff claims Flip’s approach is differentiated because it’s a vertical one that is very focused on just three industries. Brian Schiff and Sam Krut, co-founders of Flip. [Courtesy photo] Among vertical players, Schiff claims that Flip has an advantage because its AI “is battle-tested on more than 300 million phone calls.” Next Coast Ventures and Ridge Ventures co-led the round for Flip, which says it has raised a total of $31 million in funding. Data Point Capital also participated in the round, alongside ScOp Venture Capital, Bullpen Capital, Forum Ventures and a group of angel investors. Flip declined to reveal valuation, saying only that it was up 3x compared to its seed raise. Year-over-year growth Today, Flip has hundreds of enterprise customers, including Under Armour, Tory Burch, Newell Brands and global transportation companies. The company has reached an eight-figure ARR, growing 3x year over year, according to Schiff. Interestingly, the idea for Flip came when Schiff and Krut were students at Cornell University. They had built a ride-hailing app called Red Route for calling taxis at Cornell, at a time when Uber was still banned in upstate New York. It was during that experience they came up with the idea for what is today Flip. “Customer service is one of the obvious AI categories for business, and we’re talking on a daily and weekly basis with the largest brands on the planet,” Schiff said. “Even for them, it’s not a question of ‘if.’ It’s a question of ‘when’ and ‘with whom.’” That, he said, has created “a huge amount of noise” in the market. Over the past year or so, a number of what Schiff described as “generic AI providers” popped up. “The great irony of this space right now is that while all of the headlines and much of the funding has gone into these generic platforms that are trying to be the AI everything for everyone, across every industry, every channel, every use case. In reality, most of the actual traction, most of the successful customer stories, are working with vendors like Flip that are going very deep into one or a couple of specific industries,” Schiff told Crunchbase News in an interview. Another differentiator, in his view, is that few companies have developed deep expertise with AI telephone customer service. “Most people are doing it inside of chatbots or auto email responders,” he said. “We really look at the quality of the experience. It doesn’t matter how nice it is to talk to — it’s still just another bot that’s in the way of a customer trying to solve their problem.” When it comes to the revenue model, Flip doesn’t charge an upfront cost or require a long-term commitment. Rather, it charges per automated call — a usage model it has implemented since its early days. ‘A vertical approach yields the best results’ Alex Rosen, managing partner at Ridge Ventures, believes that customer service is one of the few huge markets where generative AI has produced tangible results for enterprise customers and a better experience for users. “Based on our 30+ years of investing in software, we believe a vertical approach yields the best results,” he wrote via email. “Flip has taken a different approach than many others by focusing on a couple of verticals and going really deep … While there are plenty of competitors making noise, some are going after different parts of the market, and Flip has quietly, up to now, launched more live customer deployments, at scale, than anyone.” Mike Smerklo, co-founder and managing director at Next Coast Ventures, said he has spent nearly two decades in and around call centers and voice technologies and has “never seen a more compelling ROI for customers” than what Flip offers. He added: “The founding team is exceptional, customer feedback has been tremendous, and the potential for Flip to become a $1 billion business is clear.” Smerklo said he is also impressed with the company’s capital-efficient approach to growth. “Several other companies that have raised tremendously more money have to rely on ‘forward engineering’ to get their product to work for customers,” he said. “Flip’s solution works, doesn’t require a massive investment from customers, and solves real, salient business issues.” Related Crunchbase query: Illustration: Dom Guzman
LatAm Startup Funding Rebounds In 2025 As Mexico Sees Surge In Investment And VCs Remain Bullish On Region
Latin American startup investment climbed by 14.3% in 2025, driven by a boost in both early- and late-stage funding, Crunchbase data shows. Overall, venture funding in the region increased to $4.1 billion across seed- through growth-stage deals in 2025, up from $3.6 billion in 2024. Investors active in the area who spoke with Crunchbase News also said they remain bullish on Latin America’s potential for startup innovation, particularly in financial services and as the region’s middle class continues to expand. However, venture dollars invested in 2025 across such deals still totaled less than half of the $8.4 billion invested in 2022, and were a fraction of the amount invested in 2021, a record-setting year for the region’s startup investment levels. In the fourth quarter, venture funding in Latin America amounted to $1.085 billion, down 16% from $1.285 billion raised by LatAm startups in Q4 2024, and up 1% from the $1.07 billion raised in Q3 2025. Table of contents Brazil still leads Following historical trends, Brazil remained the region’s top venture investment destination in 2025, followed by Mexico. In total, Brazil-based startups raised $2.1 billion during the year, up 10.5% from the $1.9 billion raised in 2024. Mexico-based startups brought in $1.1 billion in funding in 2025, up 53% from the $718 million raised in 2024. For perspective, we charted out total investment, color-coded by stage, for the past 12 quarters below. Late stage and technology growth Of the total amount raised in 2025, $1.63 billion went into late-stage and growth deals, up 14% year over year. In the fourth quarter, just $251 million flowed into late-stage and growth deals, down 69% compared to $806 million in Q4 2024. That’s also down 39.2% compared to the third quarter of 2025, when startups in the region raised $413 million in late-stage and growth funding. Notably, Mexico-based startups had the distinction of raising the three largest rounds of 2025. Plata, a Mexico City-based startup offering Mastercard credit cards, picked up $160 million in a March Series A led by Kora at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. Then, just over seven months later, the fintech raised a $250 million Series B, more than doubling its valuation to $3.1 billion. And, in late June, Mexico City-based fintech startup Klar — believed to be Mexico’s largest digital bank —- announced a $170 million Series C round that valued the company at $800 million. Early stage Meanwhile, early-stage investment surged in the fourth quarter of 2025 with $690 million flowing into startups, up an impressive 112% compared to the $325 million in Q4 2024. For 2025 as a whole, early-stage investment totaled nearly $2 billion, up 31.9% compared to the $1.48 billion in all of 2024. Seed and angel Seed and angel investment totaled $144 million for the fourth quarter, which marked a 6.5% decrease year over. For all of 2025, seed and angel investment amounted to $540 million, down 22% compared to the $692 million raised in 2024. Investor POV: An inflection point Michael Nicklas, a partner at Valor Capital Group who is based in Rio de Janeiro, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm is optimistic about Latin America because the region “combines scale, a young and increasingly digital population, and deep structural inefficiencies that technology can solve — especially across financial services, commerce, logistics, health, and education.” In his view, Latin America is now reaching a structural inflection point. Greater digital access, middle-class expansion, infrastructure investment and pro-innovation regulation — such as open finance in Brazil — are converging to unlock new business models across the digital economy, he said. At the same time, significant inefficiencies remain, which creates more opportunity. In Brazil, for example, corporate credit represents around 32% of GDP, compared with roughly 73% in the United States, a gap that illustrates how much value is still to be created, according to Nicklas. “The region has already proven its ability to build category leaders, and growing connectivity between the U.S. and Latin America reinforces Valor’s cross-border strategy, supporting both Latin companies expanding globally and global companies entering the region,” he added. “Latin America is also emerging as a pragmatic laboratory for blockchain adoption, driven by real economic needs,” he said. Fintech and broader financial infrastructure are core focus areas for Valor Capital, including payments, digital banking, crypto and digital assets, and platforms that expand financial inclusion and efficiency, particularly in credit. Brazil, in particular, is central to this thesis, he believes. “The country has become a global benchmark for regulatory leadership, with what is often called the “Brazil Stack” — digital identity through Gov.br, instant payments via Pix, and data-sharing frameworks such as Open Finance, alongside the development of Drex,” he noted. “These modern rails materially reduce friction and create the foundation for a new generation of financial and digital products.” Beyond financial services, Valor is increasingly focused on enterprise and B2B software that digitize large, inefficient industries such as logistics, retail and services. The firm also invests in technology-enabled consumer, commerce and infrastructure plays, from mobility and logistics to edtech and healthtech. Damaris Mendoza, a Mexico City-based partner at 500 Global, told Crunchbase News that her firm is “incredibly bullish” on Latin America. “The opportunity is still immense,” she wrote via email. “We’re still a region with deeply significant challenges, which translates into incredible opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs.” The region is also still profoundly underinvested, in her view, “with major capitalization needs,” especially in early stages. “As a region, we have all the ingredients: strong technical talent, ambition, resilience, and massive opportunities,” she said. “And when you add capital that genuinely provides differentiated value, it becomes an incredibly exciting recipe.” As with Valor, fintech remains the asset class favorite for 500 Global. However, Mendoza believes there is room for disruption and capitalization “across every industry” in the region. Hustle Fund partner Haley Bryant noted that her firm has been investing in Latin America since 2020 and has backed more than 20 companies across the region. Fintech makes up about half of Hustle Fund’s LatAm investments. “Neobanks and payments laid the groundwork,” she said. “Now we’re seeing a second wave of more vertical and infrastructure-driven fintech, SME financial services, underwriting, insurtech, and digital wealth.” Beyond fintech, Hustle Fund is also excited about AI-native enterprise and vertical software in under-digitized sectors like healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and back-office ops. “These are markets where strong fundamentals and capital efficiency really matter, and LatAm founders are building with that mindset from day one,” Bryant told Crunchbase News. While acknowledging that Brazil “still matters a lot” given its GDP and scale of outcomes, as in the case of Nubank, Bryant said Hustle Fund is currently especially excited about Mexico. The country has become a “real regional hub” as founders and operators relocate there, “driven by nearshoring, proximity to the U.S., and a growing density of talent and capital,” she added. “Networks and capital are helping LatAm not only mature but compound, as experienced operators from Nubank, Rappi, Newports, Kavak, and others are starting their next act, and global talent is being drawn to Mexico City in particular,” she said. “I’m especially excited about ecosystems with strong fintech talent like Colombia and technical talent like Argentina that could start regionally and expand, and founders coming out of overlooked geographies.” Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026. Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year. 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. Glossary of funding terms Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less. Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million. Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.) Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: xAI Leads As 2026 Is Off To A Brisk Start
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 year’s biggest funding deal roundup here. After a big year for venture investment, fueled by the AI boom, 2026 is not showing signs of a slowdown. Quite the contrary, with the first full week of the year bringing us a whopping $20 billion new funding round for Elon Musk’s xAI. We also counted multiple rounds of over $100 million that look minuscule by comparison but are actually very large by traditional venture standards. 1. xAI, $20B, generative AI: Musk’s xAI, the generative AI startup known for its Grok chatbot and the parent company of X (formerly Twitter), said it secured $20 billion in Series E funding from a long list of venture and strategic investors. Founded in 2023, xAI has raised $42.7 billion in reported debt and equity funding to date, per Crunchbase data. 2. Parabilis Medicines, $305M, precision medicines: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Parabilis Medicines announced it raised $305 million in a Series F financing co-led by RA Capital Management, Fidelity and Janus Henderson Investors. The financing will support continued clinical development of its peptide platform for cancer therapeutics. 3. Soley Therapeutics, $200M, biotech: Soley Therapeutics, developer of a cell stress sensing platform and a pipeline of therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders and metabolic diseases, closed on $200 million in Series C funding. Surveyor Capital led the financing for the South San Francisco, California-based company. 4. LMArena, $150M, AI: San Francisco-based LMArena, a platform for evaluating AI models and systems, picked up $150 million in fresh funding. Felicis Ventures 1 and UC Investments led the financing, which set a $1.7 billion post-money valuation, nearly triple the value at its seed round in mid-2025. 5. Diagonal Therapeutics, $125M, biotech: Diagonal Therapeutics, a biotech developing disease-modifying clustering antibodies that correct dysregulated signaling in severe genetic diseases, raised $125 million in Series B funding. Sanofi Ventures and Janus Henderson Investors led the financing for the Watertown, Massachusetts-based company. 6 (tied). Lyte, $107M, physical world AI: Mountain View, California-based Lyte, a startup focused on integrated perception for robotics and AI, emerged from stealth this week and disclosed it has raised $107 million in aggregate funding. The company says its mission is to “give robots the ability to see, understand, and operate safely in the physical world.” 6 (tied). EpiBiologics, $107M, biotech: EpiBiologics, a company working on tissue-selective extracellular protein degradation, says it completed a $107 million Series B financing. Google Ventures and Johnson & Johnson Innovation co-led the round for the San Mateo, California-based company. 8 (tied). Cambium, $100M, advanced materials: El Segundo, California-based Cambium, a startup developing advanced materials for defense, aerospace, and other sectors, secured $100 million in a Series B round led by 8VC 2. 8 (tied). Rakuten Medical, $100M, cancer therapeutics: Rakuten Medical, a San Diego-based startup focused on photoimmunotherapy for cancer treatment, raised $100 million in Series F financing led by TaiAx. The company is currently enrolling patients into its global Phase 3 trial for recurrent head and neck cancer. 10. Pomelo Care, $92M, virtual care: Pomelo Care, a virtual healthcare provider for women and children, raised $92 million in a Series C funding led by Stripes. The financing set a $1.7 billion valuation for the New York-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 Jan. 3-9. 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