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Why Accel Led A Round For Fintech Startup Campfire For The Second Time In Under 4 Months
Campfire, an AI-powered accounting startup, has raised $65 million in a Series B round just months after closing on a Series A. Accel and Ribbit Capital co-led the round, which brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total raised to $103.5 million since its 2023 inception. Most founders count themselves fortunate if they go a couple of years between each venture round. However, in every cycle, there are a few outliers who raise funds much faster. The past couple of years have offered plenty of examples of those types of companies. According to Crunchbase data, a sizable cohort of companies has progressed from Series A to Series C between 2023 and this year. Several have managed to scale all three stages in less than 12 months. John Glasgow and Paul Nichols of Campfire. Courtesy photo. In Campfire’s case, a common history between Campfire CEO and founder John Glasgow and John Locke, partner at Accel, was a factor in the fast fundraising pattern. The two first met when Glasgow was working at Invoice2go, a startup that was acquired by fintech giant Bill in July 2021 for $625 million. Locke was also an investor in Invoice2go, where Glasgow was a vice president of business development and partnerships before the acquisition. Glasgow eventually left Bill, which he joined after the buyout, to start Campfire with the goal of building an AI-native ERP, or enterprise resource planning software, for “modern” finance and accounting teams at mid-sized and enterprise companies. Campfire participated in startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch. “We went our first two years since YC with just $3.5 million in funding,” Glasgow said in an interview. “And we still had about half of it. But then we felt an intense market pull, so we raised a Series A.” The startup went on to raise $35 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel this past June. Since that round, Campfire has quadrupled its team from 10 to 40 employees, according to Glasgow. After Campfire’s last raise, several Accel portfolio companies reached out to demo Campfire, in addition to other companies that had generally heard about its offering for the first time, according to Locke. “The demand is quite a bit higher than what we even anticipated,” he said. “And we want to make sure that John and the team are appropriately enough capitalized to meet that demand.” Campfire’s customers include Decagon, Replit, CloudZero, TwelveLabs and Tilt, among others. Overall, the demand for new ERPs is high, and that’s evidenced by the amount of venture dollars flowing into the space. DualEntry on Oct. 2 announced a $90 million Series A raise co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures at a $415 million valuation. And on Aug. 6, Rillet announced that it raised $70 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Capital. Meanwhile, for Locke, having worked with Glasgow previously was also another factor in his feeling comfortable in writing another check into the company so soon after his first. “This is the second time that he and I have worked together, and I have a tremendous amount of confidence in John as a leader and recruiter,” he said. “And he’s added some really terrific people to the company in a short amount of time.” Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: B2B Marketing Analytics Startup Dreamdata Lands $55M Series B
Dreamdata, a B2B marketing analytics platform, has secured a $55 million Series B round of funding, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively. PeakSpan Capital led the round, which included participation from InReach Ventures, Angel Invest, Curiosity Venture Capital and Crowberry Capital. With this latest financing, Dreamdata — which has dual headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, and New York — has raised $67 million since its 2018 inception. The company’s last raise was in December 2022 with an $8 million Series A led by Signals Venture Capital. CEO Nick Turner declined to reveal at what valuation Dreamdata raised its latest round, saying only that it was “an incredibly significant increase” when compared to its previous venture funding. Dreamdata’s goal is to provide “the most complete B2B buyer journey map anywhere by joining ads, website visits, emails, CRM … into one clean timeline per account,” according to Turner. Examples of functions its platform can perform include syncing “high-intent” audiences to ad platforms such as Google or Meta, triggering notifications to a sales team, or running marketing workflows. “That gives marketers a trustworthy ‘single source of truth’ to see what’s working, prove ROI, and then act on it, with AI assistance,” Turner said. “We do both activation and attribution. We’re not just a reporting tool; we are building the operational infrastructure for the B2B marketer.” Clio, Finastra, Cognism, Oyster and Turing are among its “thousands” of customers. AI has had a profound effect on many sectors such as biotech and cybersecurity, as many startups have added the technology to their platforms. Marketing is no exception, as Dreamdata is only the most recent marketing tech startup to get funding. In February, marketing and personalization startup Hightouch locked up an $80 million Series C led by Sapphire Ventures, minting it as a new unicorn at a $1.2 billion valuation. Also in February, Toronto-based StackAdapt raised a $235 million growth round led by Teachers’ Venture Growth — the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The startup has a multichannel programmatic advertising platform that uses AI and automation to help with digital marketing efforts. Overall, global venture funding to sales and marketing tech startups totaled $5.9 billion through Oct. 10, 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s down 11.9% compared to the $6.7 billion raised in the same time period in 2024. Sustainable growth Dreamdata operates its business under a SaaS model with a component of usage-based pricing. The company has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue while maintaining the same number of employees it had one year ago (50), according to Turner. “We are operating with disciplined ambition via sustainable growth,” he said, noting that Dreamdata is focused on growing its business in Europe and North America. One of Dreamdata’s biggest differentiators from traditional competitors, such as Adobe’s Marketo Measure/Bizible, Turner claims, is that it’s designed for “forward-looking action” as opposed to focusing on what happened in the past. Matt Melymuka, co-founder and managing partner of PeakSpan Capital, leads the GTM technology investing at the venture firm and said he’s been partnering with companies in the space for over 15 years. “It is with that long-tenured perspective and context that I have developed a deep appreciation for the problem Dreamdata is solving. Accurate revenue attribution has been a persistent challenge for years and years, and the problem today is complex and multi-faceted,” he told Crunchbase News via email. “The modern customer journey is convoluted, spanning numerous channels and disparate touchpoints, so understanding with high confidence what contributes most to a conversion is incredibly complex.” In Melymuka’s view, Dreamdata’s offering solves the challenge of revenue attribution while also leveraging signal data and AI to support activation and execution. “Relative to other solutions in the market, Dreamdata delivers far and away the quickest time to value – despite the complexity underpinning the solution,” he said. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading:
Active Investors Kept Busy In An AI-Centric Quarter
A familiar set of active investors led startup dealmaking in the third quarter, backing and leading the most rounds as well as spending heavily to do so. Y Combinator, the global leader at seed and an active follow-on investor, was a particular standout in Q3 for deal count. As for the highest-spending investors, backers in Anthropic’s $13 billion Series F led the pack. Overall, meanwhile, serial backers of AI megarounds topped our most-active investor ranks. These included well-known names like Insight Partners, General Catalyst, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Capital. For more detail, below we break out the most-active investor ranks across multiple categories, looking at busiest lead dealmakers, highest spenders, and top venture and seed backers. Most-active lead investors Insight Partners was the most-active global lead investor in Q3, serving as lead or co-lead investor in 19 reported deals, per Crunchbase data. The largest rounds included a $1 billion financing for Databricks and a $260 million Series E for legal tech unicorn Filevine. Accel was next, with 14 deals, followed by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia) and General Catalyst. Spendiest investors We can also get a sense of who put the most capital to work in Q3 by looking at lead investors in the most expensive collection of rounds. It’s not an exact science, given that investors seldom disclose their share of a particular financing. However, it does give us an idea. At the top of the list are co-lead investors in the latest Anthropic round: Fidelity, Iconiq Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Among other investors who led multiple rounds last quarter, the most active were Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners. And as shown below, there were 19 investors who led or co-led one or more rounds valued at $1 billion and up. Busiest post-seed investors The rankings look quite a bit different when we stop focusing on lead investors and instead look simply at who backed the most post-seed rounds. By this measure, the far-and-away leader is Y Combinator, which rarely takes a lead role but does participate as a return investor in rounds for startups that came through its accelerator program. General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz tied for second place, with 29 reported deals each, followed by Insight Partners and Accel, with 25 and 24 rounds, respectively. Most-active seed investors For this past quarter, Y Combinator also claimed its usual spot as the most-active seed-stage investor. Per Crunchbase data, the famed accelerator backed at least 218 reported seed financings, up from Q2 but down a bit year over year. Next in the ranks was TechStars, followed by Antler. And below, we take a lengthier look at the most-active global seed investors. Chugging along The big picture from Q3’s active investor tallies is that established leaders among startup investors are still very much in the game. While there’s been some shuffling in the ranks in recent quarters, the top active investor slots on our lists still contain mostly the same names. Not coincidentally, many are also some of the biggest AI investors and already have some of the highest-profile startups in their portfolios. Given that so many of these companies continue to see big markups and red-hot investor demand, the immediate forecast is that many more big checks from these investors are likely to pile up before years end. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Polymarket And Reflection AI Lead A Varied Lineup Of Megarounds
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. The past week brought a varied assortment of large startup financings, with big rounds in sectors ranging from events-based betting to AI to energy to biotech. Leading the pack for round size were prediction market platform Polymarket and open standards-focused AI startup Reflection AI, which each raised $2 billion. 1. (tied) Polymarket, $2B, prediction market: Intercontinental Exchange, the operator of clearing houses and exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange, announced that it will invest up to $2 billion into the prediction market platform Polymarket. The deal sets an $8 billion pre-money valuation for New York-based Polymarket, which lets users wager on event probabilities across markets, politics, sports and other areas. 1. (tied) Reflection AI, $2B, AI: New York’s Reflection AI, a developer of LLM training models based on open standards, raised $2 billion in a funding round backed by Nvidia and a long list of venture investors. The financing sets an $8 billion valuation for Reflection, which is reportedly 15x the valuation it secured just seven months ago. 3. Base Power, $1B, battery power: Base Power, an Austin, Texas-based provider of battery-powered home energy, secured $1 billion in Series C funding led by Addition. Founded in 2023, Base has raised $1.3 billion in known funding to date, per Crunchbase data. 4. Stoke Space, $510M, space tech: Stoke Space, a developer of reusable launch vehicles, picked up $510 million in Series D funding led by US Innovative Technology Fund in conjunction with a $100 million debt facility led by Silicon Valley Bank. The funding will be used toward expanding production capacity in its launch vehicle and activating its launch complex at Cape Canaveral. 5. Expedition Therapeutics, $165M, biotech: San Francisco-based Expedition Therapeutics, a developer of therapies for inflammatory and respiratory diseases, closed on $165 million in Series A funding co-led by Sofinnova Investments and Novo Holdings. Funding will support a Phase 2 study for its drug candidate to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 6. EvenUp, $150M, legal tech: EvenUp, a legal tech startup that creates artificial intelligence products for the personal injury sector, landed $150 million in Series E funding. Repeat backer Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, which sets a valuation of more than $2 billion for the San Francisco-based startup. 7. Duos, $130M, health benefits: Minneapolis-based Duos, a digital health platform focused on Medicare beneficiaries, locked up $130 million in a growth equity investment led by FTV Capital. Founded in 2020, Duos has raised over $160 million in known funding to date. 8. Nilo Therapeutics, $101M, biotech: Nilo Therapeutics, a startup focused on developing therapies based on advances in neuro-immunology, launched with a $101 million Series A round. The Column Group, DCVC Bio and Lux Capital led the financing for the New York-based company. 9. Torl Biotherapeutics, $96M, biotech: Torl Biotherapeutics, a startup focused on antibody-based immunotherapies for cancer patients, closed on a $96 million Series C round. The Los Angeles company did not disclose investors but did say the funding would go to advance multiple clinical trials in progress. 10. Harvey, $59M, legal tech: Harvey, a provider of AI-enabled tools for legal professionals, raised $59 million from EQT Growth aimed at supporting international expansion. The financing brings total reported funding to date for San Francisco-based Harvey to $865 million, with most of that secured in 2025. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Oct. 4-10. 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
Brazil Back On Top In Q3 When It Comes To Venture Funding In Latin America
In the second quarter of 2025, Mexico emerged as the leader in terms of venture capital dollars raised in Latin America, per Crunchbase data. It marked the first time since the second quarter of 2012 that Mexico’s startups brought in more venture funding than their Brazil counterparts, our data indicated. Now in the third quarter, it appears that Brazil is back on top — and in a big way. Brazil-based startups raised $692 million in Q3, up 47% year over year and 92% quarter over quarter. Mexico-headquartered startups brought in $126 million, down 21% year over year and a 71% dip quarter over quarter. The largest raise in Brazil — and Latin America as a whole — was announced on Sept. 11. That was a $160 million Series D round for Sao Paulo-based Omie — which offers cloud-based management software for SMEs —- that valued the company at $700 million. Partners Group led the financing. In general, a boom in late-stage and growth funding helped buoy the region year over year, Crunchbase data shows. Overall, startups in Latin America raised a combined $1 billion across seed- through growth-stage deals in the third quarter, up 21% year over year and up 8% from the second quarter. Of that total, $477 million went into late-stage and growth deals, up 176% year over year. That’s down 16%, however, from the $565 million in late-stage and growth financing the region saw in the second quarter of this year. Early-stage investment surged in the third quarter with $425 million flowing into startups, up 18% year over year and 48% compared to the second quarter. Seed and angel investment totaled $105 million for the third quarter, which marked a 34% increase compared to the prior quarter, but a 47% decrease year over year. For perspective, we charted out total investment, color-coded by stage, for the past 10 quarters below. Table of contents Late-stage boom While Omie’s venture round was the largest financing in Latin America, it was not the only nine-figure raise the region saw in Q3. Other large deals included Kapital, a Mexico City-based Y Combinator-backed digital bank, raising a $100 million Series C that propelled its valuation to over $1.3 billion. Pelion Venture Partners and Tribe Capital led that financing. Canopy raised $100 million in a round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Cloud9 Capital. Founded in 2025, the Sao Paulo-based startup is a tech holding company that aims to acquire and scale B2B software providers. Investor POV Camila Vieira, head of Brazil at QED Investors, said the quality of the companies getting funded in Latin America as of late seems “high” and “like a step up from earlier in the year.” “We saw big rounds, a solid shift to AI taking over, and lots of activity in fintech both in terms of deals and market events,” she told Crunchbase News. “The AI hype felt like it was a wave behind the U.S. for a bit,” she said, “but now we are seeing application layer solutions getting funded in addition to companies leaning heavily into AI-enhanced strategies.” Fraud prevention and security are taking center stage on the backs of major breaches in Brazil. Vieira cited research revealing that in 2024, Brazil’s financial sector reported R$10.1 billion ($1.88 billion in USD) in losses related to fraud. “This is already increasing the regulatory thresholds in Brazil and is likely to put more scrutiny in fintech,” she said. Mexico was not excluded from the drama as a number of banks dealt with FinCEN issues — potentially delaying or postponing activity to push fintech forward, Vieira noted. “On the positive side, Colombia gave clarity around open banking and launched Bre-B, the country’s real-time payment network,” she added. Rocio Wu, partner at F-Prime, said her firm has long tracked the rise of alternative assets, or alts, as they “become a core piece of the modern investment portfolio,” and amid the subsequent rise of infrastructure players enabling their expansion. Within “alts,” private credit has been one of the fastest-growing and most overlooked segments, she noted. That led to F-Prime leading the $30 million Series B round into Kanastra, a platform that offers tech-driven back-office services for alternative investments, to “spearhead Brazil’s private credit infrastructure development.” Over the past 12 months alone, she said, the company grew 150%, with customers spanning Brazil’s largest banks, investment managers, private credit funds and originators. Overall, Diana Narváez, principal and head of LatAm investments at Flourish Ventures, believes that Latin American founders generally “are rewriting the rules of financial innovation.” “Fintech remains the region’s No. 1 funded sector because trust, access and agency are still the biggest pain points for consumers and businesses,” she told Crunchbase News. “In LatAm, entrepreneurs innovate under tighter capital and tougher consumer realities, producing solutions that are not just resilient but transformative. This is not a story of catching up, it’s a story of leapfrogging.” Recent LatAm investments for the firm include co-leading rounds for: Akua, which aims to modernize payment acquiring in LatAm, and Kamino, a Sao Paulo-based platform that integrates financial management software, a native bank account and corporate card for midsized businesses in Brazil. It also wrote a check into a $2.1 million round for Liquid, also based in Sao Paulo, which is building real estate credit infrastructure. The rise of stablecoins Vieira believes that “everyone continues to watch stablecoins, trade and other cross-border activity as a big opportunity for Latin America.” A stablecoin is a type of digital currency designed to maintain a stable value. Wu is also excited about the potential for stablecoins in the region. “We have increasingly high conviction that stablecoins are the killer use case for crypto, and cross-border payments are an ideal use case because they offer material benefits over current rails — faster, cheaper and more transparent — in a massive market,” she said. In addition, with upcoming regulatory clarity in Brazil, the local denominated stablecoin is on the rise, “with the promise of yield-bearing stablecoins and tokenization of real-world assets,” Wu noted. “Overall, the stablecoin market in LatAm has numerous nascent players with liquidity fragmentation, and we look forward to seeing more interoperability and consolidation,” she said. Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 6, 2025. 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.) Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Payments Tech Startup Routefusion Raises $26.7M Series A
Routefusion, an Austin, Texas-based financial infrastructure provider, has raised $26.7 million in a Series A round led by PeakSpan Capital, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively. Silverton Partners also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total funding raised since its 2018 inception to $40.7 million. Other backers include Initialized Capital and Forum Ventures, among others. Colton Seal, co-founder and CEO, declined to reveal at which valuation this round was raised, saying only that it was an up round. The company last raised in January 2022 — a $10.5 million seed round. Overall, global venture funding to financial technology startups has already reached $36 billion across 2,810 deals in 2025 as of Oct. 8, per Crunchbase data. That’s a 28.93% increase in dollars raised compared to the $26.9 billion raised across 3,508 deals during the same time period in 2024. Accessible unified networkRoutefusion co-founders Richard Scappaticci Jr., Colton Seal and Nabeel Siddiqui. Courtesy photo. Routefusion has created a single API that it says gives businesses the ability to embed accounts, payments, currency conversion and compliance into their products. Put more simply, it aims to make it easier for platforms and financial institutions to open global accounts and make international, or cross-border, bank-to-bank payments. It works with over 30 customers in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Mexico and Brazil. Those customers span a variety of industries, including payroll and employer-of-record, B2B payments and banking, and include Payment Labs, Rise, Jeeves and Clara. What sets Routefusion apart, according to Seal, is that it was built as a unified network, with multiprovider and multibank redundancy. “We are highly configurable and have positioned ourselves to be adaptable to the most complicated use cases, both from a technical and compliance perspective,” he told Crunchbase News. And unlike traditional middleware, Routefusion manages integrations, onboarding and compliance in-house, which Seal said allows businesses “go live faster and scale globally without managing fragmented infrastructure.” Competitors include Airwallex and Wise. Those companies are more focused on consumers and SMBs, however, while Routefusion targets global platforms and financial institutions as customers, according to Seal. Over the past 12 months, Routefusion has seen its revenue triple, he said, although he declined to reveal hard revenue figures. The company operates with a usage-based revenue model and charges platform access subscription fees. “We operate capital efficiently and see ourselves as able to reach profitability with this round of funding,” said Seal, who previously worked as a network engineer for Citi. The company is also planning to use its new capital to invest in its engineering, product and compliance teams while also experimenting with GTM programs. Presently, Routefusion has about 25 employees. Justin Kelly, vice president at PeakSpan Capital, said his firm invested in Routefusion because it sees the startup as “a mission-critical infrastructure provider.” “Most providers are either application-first with an API bolted on or thin middleware that leaves customers to stitch together banks, FX, and compliance themselves. Routefusion is API-first at the surface but operated end-to-end underneath,” he told Crunchbase News via email. “What this means in practice is that, in addition to providing access to its network, the company also supports customers in running ‘the hard parts’ of a cross-border payments or global accounts program: integrations, onboarding, compliance workflows, and post-launch maintenance.” Related Crunchbase query: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Asia Startup Investment Up In Q3
Asia’s startup funding rose sequentially in the third quarter, boosted by a handful of hardtech-focused megarounds. Overall, investors put $16.8 billion into reported seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies across Asia, per Crunchbase data. That’s a 20% increase from the prior quarter and a 16% rise from the year-ago period. But while funding is up in the short-term, investment remains well below the levels typical a few years ago. In multiple quarters in 2021 and 2022, funding was more than twice current levels. Still, sequential improvement is a positive indicator. And for Q3, it’s also encouraging that reported round counts were up along with total funding, rising by around 10% from Q2. Table of contents China leads, India lags Funding gains were unequally distributed among countries in the region, with some posting sharp gains and others seeing investment fall. China: China, the region’s largest recipient of venture investment, was among those in the plus column. Funding to China’s startups hit $6.2 billion in Q3, up 13% from an unusually weak Q2. Even with those gains, however, China funding is down from a year ago and far below 2022 and 2023 levels. The largest financing went to Galactic Energy Aerospace Technology, a developer of commercial launch vehicles, that raised $337 million in a late-September financing. Two robotics-focused companies, X Square and EngineAI, also secured $140 million each. India: India, the second-largest venture funding destination in Asia, saw investment contract in the third quarter. Per Crunchbase data, a total of $2.7 billion went to reported rounds for India-based startups in Q3, down 22% quarter over quarter and the lowest tally in two years. Even so, there were some larger rounds in the mix. Truemeds, an online pharmacy and telemedicine app, picked up $65 million in Series C funding. And Flipspaces, a design tech brand, closed on $50 million. Singapore, Israel and other top funding destinations While China and India, with roughly 60% of Asia’s population, are predictably the continent’s largest venture markets, several smaller countries also proved popular with investors. Singapore: Startups in the Southeast Asian financial capital landed a combined $2.4 billion in Q3, nearly triple year-ago levels. The quarter included a $220 million Series C for Airalo, an eSIM provider for mobile devices enabling data connectivity for travelers. Israel: Funding to Israeli startups was estimated at $1.4 billion in Q3 — down from the prior quarter, but still up significantly from a year earlier. Noma Security, a cybersecurity platform for AI and autonomous agents, closed on the largest venture fund, a $100 million Series B. The next-biggest was a $96 million Series B for Exodigo, based in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, focused on underground mapping. UAE, South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia: For other Asian nations, fluctuation was the only consistent attribute for funding levels. United Arab Emirates was one of the gainers, largely due to big rounds for Dubai-based companies. One standout was Xpanceo, a developer of connected smart contact lenses that pulled in $250 million in a July Series A. South Korea funding also ticked up in Q3. The largest round for the quarter was a $250 million financing for AI semiconductor startup Rebellions. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, clinched a big round with payments platform Hala closing on $157 million for its Series B. And in Japan, overall funding was down, but we did see some jumbo-sized rounds, including a $100 million Series B for back-office automation provider LayerX. Late stage, early stage and seed Overall, late-stage and technology-growth deals captured the largest share of funding across Asia. For Q3, investors put $8.3 billion into 151 reported rounds at these stages. In dollar terms, it was the highest quarterly total for the year. Early-stage dealmaking also saw a pickup in Q3, with reported investment hitting $6.7 billion, also a quarterly high for the year. At seed, meanwhile, it appears investment declined in Q3 based on reported totals. However, we expect these numbers to rise some over time, as deals at this stage are often recorded in the dataset weeks or months after they close. AI funding rises We also broke out the share of Asian funding going to AI-focused companies, given the popularity of this investment theme in recent quarters. For Q3, AI-related investment rose significantly, hitting the highest total on record. Better, but still room for improvement Overall, Asia startup funding tallies for the third quarter indicate some improvement in the flow of investment. Given that the region is home to most of the world’s population and still pulls in a disproportionately small share of total funding, clearly there’s room for growth. Perhaps we’ll see some more progress in that direction next quarter. Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 6, 2025. 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.) Illustration: Dom Guzman
Europe’s Venture Scene Held Steady In Q3, Buoyed By Early-Stage Funding And Klarna IPO
Klarna’s long-awaited IPO provided a standout moment for Europe’s venture ecosystem in Q3, but the more noteworthy signal may be what’s happening earlier in the funding pipeline. While late-stage startup investment in Europe remains relatively muted, early-stage funding has quietly become Europe’s engine of resilience — helping sustain overall funding levels even as global capital continues to concentrate around massive AI rounds in the U.S., Crunchbase data shows. All told, European startups pulled in $13.1 billion across more than 1,000 deals last quarter, flat quarter over quarter but up 22% year over year, per Crunchbase data. Early-stage investment accounted for roughly 60% of that total, buoyed by strong activity in deep tech, biotech and AI applications. This contrasts with North America, which has seen a surge of megarounds of $500 million or more, largely into AI-related companies, over the past four quarters. North American companies raised 68% of global funding in Q3, up 10 percentage points from a year ago, with two-thirds invested in later-stage financings. Table of contents Klarna debuts and strong M&A Sweden-based Klarna went public on the New York Stock Exchange in Q3 at a value of $15.1 billion, marking the completion of one of the most-anticipated European debuts in recent years. Still, while Klarna’s listing price was well above its most recent private valuation at $6.7 billion in 2022, it was still far below its 2021 valuation of $45.5 billion. Five European companies were also acquired for close to or more than a billion dollars each last quarter, including Sweden-based enterprise knowledge platform Sana, which was purchased by Workday, and Germany-based conversational AI platform Cognigy, acquired by Nice Systems. Other billion-dollar startup exits out of Europe last quarter were in healthcare — Vicebio and OrganOx — and Calastone, in asset management. AI stepped up Close to 40% of European funding was invested in AI-related startups last quarter, totaling $5.2 billion, per Crunchbase data. That was up from $2 billion in Q3 2024. The large fundraisers in the space were Paris-based frontier model company Mistral AI, which raised $2 billion, and London-based Nscale, a 1-year-old data center and cloud provider that raised $1.1 billion. (Within a week in early October, Nscale raised another $433 million from Nvidia, Nokia and Dell, among others.) Other large rounds in AI last quarter were raised by Sweden-based vibe coding startup Lovable, London-based accounts payable company Xelix, and Switzerland drone and robotics operations platform Auterion. Late stage Around $5.4 billion was invested last quarter across 75 deals into Europe startups at growth stage, per Crunchbase data. That represents around 9% of global late-stage venture funding, the smallest proportion compared to other funding stages. The Other late-stage fundings went to London-based smartphone and device maker Nothing, Netherlands-based website design Framer, and Italy-based embedded device security platform Exein. Early stage up Early-stage funding in Q3 was up year over year by 31%, with $6.1 billion invested across more than 257 funding rounds. European funding represented 20% of global early-stage funding. Early-stage rounds also went to Finland-based IQM Quantum Computers, Belgium-based Aerospacelab, and U.K.-based material science company CuspAI. Seed European seed funding totaled $1.7 billion in Q3 across 745 seed rounds, representing 18% of global seed funding. Large seed rounds were raised in energy, AI, biotech, fintech, autonomous driving and robotics, among other sectors. Robust early stage Early-stage funding to European startups picked up in Q3 with large rounds in deeptech, biotech and AI applications across many European cities. Europe’s early-stage funding represents around 20% of global venture funding, while funding lags at the later stages, coming in at 9% of global funding. So while Europe’s startups haven’t produced the splashy growth figures of their North American counterparts, the region has now delivered several sequential quarters of steady funding, not to mention resilient early-stage investment and strong exits in Q3. In fact, four of the nine companies acquired globally for more than $1 billion last quarter hail from Europe. As Europe and the U.S. come closer together, with many European founders launching in the U.S. market earlier, the question is: Will Europe continue to create those standout $10 billion-plus companies as it did most recently with Klarna? Methodology The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 6, 2025. 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.) Illustration: Dom Guzman