All Stories
5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed In August: Sewing Robots, Rare Disease Advocacy And More
This is a monthly column that runs down five interesting startup funding deals every month that may have flown under the radar. Check out our July entry here. AI was yet again an inescapable theme this month as we looked for interesting startups that landed fresh investment. From a company using AI to help Alzheimer’s patients and their families better manage care, to another promising to streamline clothing production in the U.S. through advanced robotics, startups scooped up cash around a variety of AI-related businesses in August. Sewing robots stitch up new funding Atlanta-based SoftWear Automation — the company behind the Sewbot autonomous sewing robot — this month said it has raised $20 million in a Series B1 round. Its robotic sewing machines use machine vision, AI and machine learning to produce apparel that SoftWear claims is cost-competitive with importing garments to the U.S. from low-wage countries. The company says its robots support local production and allow garments to be made more efficiently, closer to their final destination and with less human labor. Its Sewbots also enable faster manufacturing, it says, meaning clothes are produced more in line with current fashion trends and demand. “SoftWear Automation is helping address some of the key challenges we face across the industry — from speed and flexibility to lowering environmental impact. We’re pleased to support their development and explore how this technology can help us move forward,” said Thomas Børglum Jensen, CFO at Danish fashion company Bestseller, which led the round as a strategic investment through its Invest FWD arm. Current investors including CTW Venture Partners, SRI Capital and MacDonald Ventures also participated in the round. SoftWear has now raised $45.6 million total, per Crunchbase data. Startups that incorporate artificial intelligence into the fashion industry have seen strong investor interest, Crunchbase data shows, raising around $100 million globally per year. Funded companies include those working on more efficient garment manufacturing, and others that aim to help consumers more easily shop for clothing online. Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Fashion-Related AI Startups Better advocacy for rare disease patients A rare disease — one that affects only a small number of people relative to the general population — by definition doesn’t necessarily represent a massive addressable market for companies or health providers. But there are thousands of such diseases. Although each affects 200,000 or fewer Americans, altogether some 30 million people in the country are estimated to live with one of those conditions. For those diagnosed with conditions such as sickle cell disease — which affects around 200,000 Americans and is most prevalent among Black and Hispanic people — accessing the care and information they need can represent a major challenge. With that in mind, San Mateo, California-based Citizen Health this month raised a $30 million Series A. The startup aims to use a personalized “AI advocate” to help folks living with rare diseases better navigate the care and management of those conditions themselves. The company says its platform combines AI with community and longitudinal data “to help patients interpret medical records, track symptoms, learn from peers, manage appointments, and connect to the next best step in their health journey.” Its newest round was led by 8VC 1 , with participation from Transformation Capital and Headline. Citizen Health has raised $44 million since its December 2023 launch, per the company. The startup aims to launch the first version of its AI Advocate tool to select communities this quarter, along with a new product for patient advocacy groups. It says it will use the new capital to expand its AI engineering and product teams. “Today’s patients aren’t waiting — they’re searching, deciding, and expecting more,” Citizen Health CEO and co-founder Farid Vij, said in a statement. “They deserve the same clarity, personalization, and intelligence in healthcare that they get in every other part of their lives.” Notably, Citizen Health is a relaunch of Ciitizen, the startup where Vij and co-founder Nasha Fitter met. Ciitizen had been acquired by genetic testing company Invitae in 2021, then sold off before Invitae filed for bankruptcy protection in early 2024. Delivering better Alzheimer’s care Of course, it’s not just people dealing with rare diseases who might struggle to navigate a complex and costly healthcare system. An estimated 7 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, a figure that’s only slated to grow as the population ages further. At the same time, patients wait an average of 36 months for Alzheimer’s care appointments. New York-based startup Isaac Health sees a gap to provide better preventative care for cognitive decline. The company this month raised $10.5 million in a Flare Capital Partners-led Series A round for its platform, which offers AI screening technologies it says can help detect, diagnose and manage dementia from home. The company says its “predictive machine learning can quickly identify patients with different cognitive and brain health conditions and pair them with a team of specialists that offers center-of-excellence level care, resulting in 73 percent of patients with improved neurocognitive function over the course of six months, and an improvement against cognitive goals in only three weeks for 92 percent of patients.” New investors Industry Ventures and Black Opal Ventures, as well as investors Meridian Street Capital, B Capital and Primetime Partners, participated in the round for Isaac Health, which says it has raised $16.3 million to date. Overall, startups working on both healthcare and AI-related technologies attract strong investor interest, Crunchbase data shows, raising $5 billion globally last year, the highest total since 2021. Through the first half of 2025, such companies raised around $3.9 billion, a slight uptick compared to H1 2024. Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Health And AI Startups Slashing vendor costs “Sorry, our AI says your product is too expensive.” That might just be the conversation many businesses are having soon with their vendors, as companies increasingly turn to AI tools to help them track, manage and even renegotiate expenses and contracts. Providing those tools is New York-based Infinity Loop, which this month raised a $5 million seed round for its AI-powered vendor contract management platform. The company says its platform is designed to replace the methods many enterprise teams use to manage their vendor spend — legacy tools such as spreadsheets and outside consultants — with AI-powered tools that “grade existing and proposed contracts, flag underperforming terms, and recommend specific, data-backed negotiation strategies tailored to each vendor and deal.” Every company using its platform has seen at least 12% in annual savings, according to Infinity Loop. The company’s seed round was led by Glasswing Ventures and TIAA Ventures, with participation from Plug and Play, Restive and unnamed angel investors. Related Crunchbase query: Rounds Raised By Startups Using AI Using AI to sniff out fraud Handling credit card and banking disputes is an increasingly costly part of doing business for banks and credit card companies. To help tackle the problem, New York-based Casap this month closed a $25 million Series A that brings its total funding to $33.6 million, per Crunchbase. The round was led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Primary Venture Partners, SoFi and others. Notably, Casap’s customers are the financial institutions themselves, and its product aims to eliminate what’s known in the industry as “first-party fraud” — that is, when a bank or credit card company’s own customers fraudulently dispute legitimate transactions. Casap said its AI‑powered platform manages the entire dispute process — from intake to chargeback filing to customer communication — which can otherwise take as long as three months. Its AI agents evaluate evidence, forecast outcomes and automate steps such as issuing credits or responding to merchants. The company says it also has a proprietary fraud‑scoring engine that flags sketchy activity before it becomes a problem. “Disputes are one of the most broken and expensive workflows in financial services. What should be a simple resolution often turns into a slow, manual process — frustrating consumers, overloading teams, and bleeding revenue along the way,” Casap CEO and co-founder Shanthi Shanmugam wrote in a blog post announcing the funding. The company says its Series A is the largest investment for a startup catering to the issuer — rather than the consumer — side of the business. With the fresh capital, it plans to grow its engineering, GTM and product teams. Startups at the intersection of financial services and AI raised about $2 billion in venture funding in each of the past two years, Crunchbase data shows. Through the first half of 2025, such startups raised about $1.4 billion, up notably compared to the $907 million raised in H1 2024. Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Financial Services And AI Startups Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Tech IPO Darlings Give Up Some Gains
High-performing public debuts this summer from companies like Figma, Circle and Chime Financial helped drive the narrative that the tech IPO market is back in business. In recent days and weeks, however, shares of many of the most sought-after new market entrants have taken a steep tumble. And while by many metrics valuations still look elevated, the degree has lessened. The most prominent example is Figma. The design software company went public nearly four weeks ago in one of the year’s biggest IPOs, with shares more than tripling in first-day trading. The stock peaked at over $140 per share a day later, setting a market cap of nearly $70 billion. Since then, San Francisco-based Figma has headed lower. Shares were selling for around $72 apiece on Monday, down nearly 50% from their peak, closing the day lower at $70.40. Coreweave, Circle and Chime In a similar vein, one of the year’s first mega-IPOs, CoreWeave, is also down from heights scaled in June. Yet the cloud-based AI infrastructure company is still well above its PO price. Circle has also taken a cut. Shares of the New York-based stablecoin issuer zoomed up 168% during its June 5 market debut. The stock roughly tripled again over the next few weeks, hitting a peak market cap over $60 billion. Since then, the stock has lost close to half its value. It’s not a tragic story arc, given that Circle is still well above its IPO price. But still, it does demonstrate that one can’t expect shares of unprofitable companies to go up forever. Online banking provider Chime Financial, by contrast, had a more modest debut. Its shares rose a solid but not eye-popping 37% in initial trading following its June IPO. Even so, Chime is still down from that level today. A pullback, not a crash These pullbacks don’t look like a reason for alarm yet. For one, the companies are still trading above the levels at which they priced their IPOs, indicating these are share prices insiders consider satisfactory at least. Additionally, most of the early gains look more like momentum trading, since these companies are new and thus don’t have an earnings track record to justify a big rally. Looking ahead, it’s unlikely any companies in the IPO pipeline will change course based on a down period after several buoyant up weeks. If it continues and intensifies, however, we may revise that outlook. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The rise of retail investors in secondaries, and why delayed IPOs will become the norm
Retail investors are increasingly shaping the secondary market. In Q4 2024, platforms like EquityZenreportedthat 86% of total transaction volume came from retail participants—an eye-catching shift as tools like Forge and EquityZen promise broader access to private shares. But does more access mean more opportunity, or more risk? Today onEquity, Rebecca Bellan is joined byJared Carmelof Manhattan Venture Partners to dig into what he calls a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” in secondaries, why he’s not crazy about the increase of retail investors, and how secondaries provide a “pressure relief valve” that could keep startups private well past their startup years. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How MVP has worked to “institutionalize” secondaries out of the Wild West of investing.Why “informational asymmetry” makes some secondary offerings a raw deal for retail investors.How a sluggish IPO market is catalyzing a robust secondaries market that creates a liquidity flywheel for VC.And Jared’s prediction that in a few years, the secondaries feedback loop will delay IPOs up to 20 years. How MVP has worked to “institutionalize” secondaries out of the Wild West of investing. Why “informational asymmetry” makes some secondary offerings a raw deal for retail investors. How a sluggish IPO market is catalyzing a robust secondaries market that creates a liquidity flywheel for VC. And Jared’s prediction that in a few years, the secondaries feedback loop will delay IPOs up to 20 years. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodeshere.
Exclusive: Insurtech Startup Inclined Raises $8M For Offering That Was ‘Historically Reserved For The Wealthy’
Inclined Technologies, a fintech startup that lends against whole life insurance policies, has raised $8 million in a Series B funding round, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively. HSCM Ventures led the financing, which also included participation from Northwestern Mutual and other new and existing backers. The raise brings San Francisco-based Inclined’s total funding to $31 million. The company did not disclose its valuation, saying only that the Series B was raised “at a premium” to its $16.5 million Series A. In 2020, Strava co-founder Mark Shaw teamed up with Josh Wyss and Graham Gerlach to start Inclined, his third company. He’d previously founded insurance software startup Guidewire Software, which ended up going public in 2012. Shaw joined activity and fitness tracking platform Strava as a co-founder in 2009 to lead engineering as CTO. The goal with Inclined, he said, is to digitize many of the traditional time-intensive operations involved in the process of lending against whole life insurance policies. Shaw concedes that insurance may not be considered among the sexiest of industries, particularly in the age of AI. But in his view, Inclined is able to do something that has historically been reserved for the wealthy: open up the option to borrow against whole life insurance policies to more people. Whole life insurance policies differ from term life in that they accumulate value that is available permanently, rather than just paying for coverage. Shaw, who serves as Inclined’s CTO, likens it to buying versus renting a home. And when whole life policyholders want to access their cash value, they often choose to do so via a loan, rather than withdrawing the money directly, which is less efficient, he explains. This gives banks a way to better participate in the market at scale, according to Shaw. And because banks often have “much lower rates than insurance companies,” he explained, that means borrowers get to borrow at lower interest rates. Plus, their money can be compounded over decades. Inclined’s flagship product is called “iLOC” and is a revolving line of credit collateralized by the cash value accumulated within a whole life insurance policy. It’s offered through advisers of insurance carriers such as Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual and Guardian Life. No recurring interest payments are required, there are no late-payment penalties, and no fees are charged to borrowers, according to Wyss, who serves as the company’s CEO. People “are essentially borrowing from themselves,” he said. Many people access the money they have built up in these policies to do things like make investments, pay for education or fund other large purchases such as real estate. “They can access this liquidity during their lifetime,” Wyss told Crunchbase News. “It’s not just something used after a person dies.” Insurtech funding sees choppy funding Inclined’s funding follows several years of declining venture investment in insurance and insurtech startups but a more recent uptick, Crunchbase data shows. Last year, such startups raised some $4.5 billion globally, down from $6.3 billion in 2023 and $9.5 billion in 2022. In 2021 — the peak year for global venture funding — insurance-related startups raised close to $19 billion worldwide, per Crunchbase data. But through the first half of 2025, those startups have raised nearly $4.3 billion, putting them on pace to top last year and 2023. Inclined’s rapid growth Since Inclined’s founding, more than $1 billion of credit has originated on its platform, its co-founders said. While they declined to reveal hard revenue figures, they told Crunchbase News that the company’s annual recurring revenue is “up more than 50x” since it last raised in September 2022, for a compound annual growth rate of 318%. Because of its B2B2C model, Inclined has a few different types of customers. Over 2,000 insurance professionals recommend and sell its iLOC product to their policyowner customers who want to access the cash they have built up in their policies. It has about 3,500 whole life policyowners who are using the iLOC product. The company makes money primarily through fees paid by its banking partners. When asked why the startup opted to raise less money in its Series B than it did in its Series A, Wyss said the company was “just being judicious” about the amount of capital it needed. “We felt like this was the right amount of capital to get to the next milestones of the company,” he said. “And, partnering with Northwestern Mutual and getting them on the cap table was a big part of this, too.” Inclined plans to use its new capital mostly to “invest in sales,” and grow its engineering team, according to Shaw. Craig Schedler, vice president of venture and corporate development at Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, told Crunchbase News via email that Inclined’s technology platform will help enable its policyowners “to understand and optimize the value of their whole life insurance policies, helping them manage their financial lives and have greater access to the living benefits of their Northwestern Mutual policy.” Related Crunchbase query: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Why More Startups Are Buying Other Startups In 2025
Despite a pickup in IPOs, startup exits and funding are still harder to come by than in years past. Add to that an increasingly competitive landscape for AI startups, and it’s no surprise that we’ve seen an upturn in startups buying other startups this year. The reasons for the rise in startups buying their brethren are varied. In many cases, consolidation is driven by market forces, including a more challenging fundraising environment and more affordable valuations for buyers. For other startups, it’s simply faster to buy another company than try to build out certain technologies themselves. By the numbers In the first half of 2025, there were 427 reported M&A deals globally in which startups bought other startups, according to Crunchbase data. That compares to 362 in the same period last year, representing an 18% increase. For comparison’s sake, in the full years 2021 and 2022, there were more than 1,000 deals in which startups bought other startups, per Crunchbase data. Buyer’s market Michael Mufson, managing partner of investment banking firm Mufson Howe Hunter, believes that we’re seeing more early-stage startups combining forces because the fundraising environment “has become so challenging.” “Venture capital is still tight, and without enough liquidity events to cycle capital back to LPs, VCs are being far more selective,” he told Crunchbase News. “For founders, it’s survival of the fittest — and that means getting creative to build a very tight investment thesis.” In many cases, a merger between two early-stage companies can create a stronger, more compelling narrative for investors, in Mufson’s view. “It may broaden the customer base, consolidate IP, or, increasingly, bring in critical capabilities like AI,” he added. “For startups lacking in AI expertise, acquiring or merging with a team that has that technical depth can help accelerate product development and improve funding prospects in a highly competitive market.” Startup adviser Itay Sagie, owner of Israel-based Sagie Capital Advisors, agrees that the most significant driver of the startup-to-startup M&A uptick is the tightening of venture funding — despite a modest bump in venture funding globally in Q2. “Small scale, startups which are far from being profitable have a hard time raising capital as VCs become more conservative, so they see M&A as the most logical option,” he told Crunchbase News in an email interview. Another driver, Sagie believes, is that valuations appear to be “stabilizing at reasonable ARR multiplier ranges.” This allows for larger startups that raised large rounds in 2021 at 40x-70x ARR valuations to use cash reserves to acquire smaller startups at reasonable valuations. “So rather than facing a down round, they’re deploying that capital toward acquiring startups, especially ones that offer one of the three “Ts: complementary tech, traction, or talent,” Sagie added. On the other side of the spectrum, the larger startups who are more financially sustainable with impressive unit economics and growth KPIs are even more attractive as startup buyers, in Sagie’s view, “as their equity is a more valid asset versus an overpriced, cash burning unicorn.” Purchases include larger deals Some of the deals this year have also been high-dollar transactions. And unsurprisingly, some of the larger deals involved AI companies. Not all large M&A deals involved AI companies. Other notable startup purchases of peers this year include: Also, many of the major acquirers raised large rounds before making their buys — with OpenAI in early April announcing a staggering $40 billion investment led by SoftBank. That deal marked the biggest venture investment ever. Last December, Databricks raised $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation, marking one of the largest venture capital raises of 2024 and one of the largest on record. Asset purchases and acquihires Lindsey S. Mignano, co-founder of SSM Law, notes an interesting trend she’s seeing: more asset acquisitions plus acquihires. This is where larger technology companies are buying the assets (think IP portfolio) of an early-stage company and taking one to three people from the founding team to integrate the technology and transition customer relationships. SSM Law generally represents tech startups being acquired by larger, more established startups who have received more venture capital financing. An example of this would be an AI company that received a seed or Series A funding being acquired by a Series C or D company. “The seller’s motivation to sell is often economic or market related — i.e., this company could not raise another round of venture capital or simply saw the writing on the wall that a big tech company was going to surpass them on ‘go-to-market’ due to strategic acquisitions or consolidations,” she told Crunchbase News in an interview. The buyer’s motivation to buy is likewise economic, Mignano notes. It’s typically cheaper to buy the technology than build it, and cheaper “to buy the team with a six-month golden handcuff earnout than recruiting.” But it’s also based on a rush to market, most particularly in the extremely competitive AI field. “For AI companies, the buyer has immediate access to proprietary model architectures, inference platforms or edge-device integrations without the spend associated with AI training,” she said. “The buyer gets to immediately procure specialized datasets or fine-tuned models from a seller that effectively block out the competition in verticals with especially clunky sales cycles such as law, government or hospitals.” In general, Mignano believes that “buyers are in a really good place right now.” Related Crunchbase query: Related Reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Analysis: Venture-Backed IPOs Of 2025 Have Done Well Post-Debut; Now It’s Figma’s Turn
The U.S. tech IPO scene hasn’t exactly been busy this year. But for those who have made their debuts, the market reception has been exceptionally positive overall. That could be a helpful tailwind for Figma, which priced its IPO late Wednesday at $33 per share, slightly above the projected range. Shares of the design software provider will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FIG. If Figma follows in the footsteps of other big IPOs this year, we can expect shares to go up from there. That, at least, was the pattern we found in a Crunchbase review of venture-backed companies that went public on U.S. exchanges this year. Among the nine largest offerings, all were up from where they priced their IPOs. Circle leads Circle Internet Group is the top performer by a long shot. The New York-based stablecoin provider, currently valued above $40 billion, has seen the value of its shares rise more than 5x following its early June IPO. The stupendous performance has helped spur a raft of other newcomers looking to test their luck on public markets. In the past few weeks, BitGo, a provider of secure wallets for digital assets, and Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, both submitted confidential draft registrations to go public. Also this month, digital asset platform Bullish filed publicly for its IPO. It also likely helped that Circle’s debut coincided with a sharp rise in crypto values, with Bitcoin recently near its all-time high at more than $118,000. CoreWeave, Chime and others still up While Circle is the biggest gainer, AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave is still the most valuable venture-backed company to go public this year, with a recent market cap around $52 billion. Shares of the New Jersey company have also more than doubled since its April IPO. Digital banking provider Chime, the next-largest offering, is also up a bit, albeit not so dramatically. And while a market cap over $12 billion certainly sounds like a lot, it’s still far below the $25 billion peak valuation Chime garnered several years ago. Several mid-sized IPOs have also posted big gains. Metsera, a developer of therapies for obesity and metabolic diseases, is trading at roughly double the level it priced shares for its January IPO. And shares of MNTN, a targeted TV advertising platform, are also up sharply from the initial offering price in May. Up next: More huge offerings Even with some large offerings in the mix, the pace of venture-backed IPOs so far this year has been on the slow side. Granted, it’s a pickup from the latter part of 2024, which was even slower. But to really be able to declare the IPO market is back in a big way, we’ll need to see more large, successful offerings. Fortunately, those are likely on tap. Most anticipated of all is probably design software developer Figma, which recently boosted the proposed price range for its upcoming IPO, raising its expected initial valuation to up to $18.8 billion. Another smaller but nonetheless successful debut came to fruition on Wednesday as Ambiq Micro, a maker of low-power chips for AI computing, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares closed up 61% in first-day trading. Given that preparing for an IPO is a notoriously demanding process, it remains to be seen how many of today’s eligible unicorns will add themselves to the public offering pipeline. If things continue in the current fashion, though, many of those who opted to stay private may be regretting their decision. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Ultra-Unicorn Investors: These Firms Have Amassed The Largest Portfolios Of $5B+ Startups
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series looking at how the venture and startup landscape has evolved over the past 10 years. Read more articles about ultra-unicorns, seed funding, Series B trends, the rise of megafunds and the unicorn backlog over the decade. Ultra-unicorns — private companies valued at $5 billion or more — are a growing cohort, with 17 companies joining this elite 211-member club so far in 2025. A further analysis of Crunchbase data finds that alongside active venture firms, private equity investors have played a significant role in funding this group of highly valued private companies, which make up 13% of the overall Unicorn Board but represent the majority of value, accounting for $3.5 trillion of the total $6 trillion collective value. Among the most active by investment count in $5 billion-plus unicorns, private equity firms represent half of the firms listed, Crunchbase data shows. We analyzed the investors who amassed the largest count of portfolio companies and those who invested at the highest values. Let’s dive in. Andreessen leads Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel have the highest investment counts in $5 billion-plus unicorns, our data shows. Tiger Global ranked third despite its pulling back massively from investing in private companies since the second half of 2022 and reportedly selling off investment stakes in individual companies. The New York-based firm has invested in ultra-unicorns including Databricks, Scale AI and Shein. It is worth noting that across this list of leading investors, half are venture capital and half are private equity investors — an indication of how much private equity has invested in this asset class of highly valued private companies. Private equity investors dominated the list by portfolio counts as they rack up later-stage investments across a wider pool of companies compared to venture capital firms that invest earlier and keep investing in their winning companies. Portfolio counts were led by Tiger (19% of companies), Coatue (18%), then SoftBank Vision Fund, GIC and venture investor Andreessen Horowitz. Early investors Andreessen, Accel and Sequoia Capital hold the top three slots for investment counts in Series A and B rounds, Crunchbase data shows. Those firms have invested in ultra-unicorns including Scale AI, Databricks, Stripe and Klarna. Andreessen invested in 16 unique companies at early-stage, while Accel and Sequoia each invested in 14 companies. The list of early investors was dominated by U.S. firms. Active investors in China — the second-largest market for $5 billion-plus unicorns — were Beijing’s IDG Capital, Hong Kong-based HSG (formerly Sequoia Capital China), and Shenzhen-based Tencent. Few private equity investors are listed as active at this funding stage. Andreessen, Accel and Index Ventures — which invested in ultra-unicorns including Figma, Discord and Revolut — led the most rounds from seed through Series B. Y Combinator leads for seed At the seed level, portfolio counts are led by Y Combinator by a large margin, with the startup accelerator representing 10% of the seed investments in the $5 billion-dollar-plus club. It was an early investor in Rippling, Scale AI and Deel. SV Angel 1, which typically invests with smaller checks, ranks second. The San Francisco-based firm was an early investor in Harvey and Notion. Other seed investors in this cohort in the top five are Initialized Capital — which invests heavily in YC companies — Soma Capital and Homebrew. Private equity dominates for dollars SoftBank and Softbank Vision Fund led the largest rounds by amounts in this asset class. (Note: This does not indicate the amount an investor invested in a round, but the overall size of the rounds they led.) This list was dominated by private equity as well as some Big Tech companies including Meta and Microsoft, which backed Scale AI and OpenAI, respectively. Andressen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital also make the list of leading investments above $8 billion. Will exits pick up? To date, six companies valued at or above $5 billion have exited in 2025, compared to nine companies in 2024. A number of ultra-unicorns have also moved toward IPOs. They include Figma (valued at $12.5 billion), Navan ($9.2 billion) and Klarna ($6.7 billion), which have all filed confidentially with the SEC. With $482 billion in investor capital placed into these 211 private high-value companies since the early 2000s, a few more listings in 2025 would certainly help alleviate the venture capital liquidity crunch. Related Crunchbase unicorn lists Related reading: Methodology The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. For this article, we examined a subset of these companies which are still private and have a current value of $5 billion or more. Investment analysis is based on disclosed rounds in Crunchbase. The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter. Illustration: Dom Guzman
Crypto Custody Startup BitGo Files Confidentially To Go Public
Crypto custody startup BitGo filed confidentially to go public on Tuesday, the company said. It is not yet clear on which exchange Bitgo plans to offer its shares, or what its price range will be. Founded in 2013, Palo Alto, California-based BitGo has raised a known $170 million in funding, per Crunchbase data. The company aims to securely store and manage cryptocurrency and other digital assets In August 2023, BitGo raised a $100 million Series C round at a $1.75 billion valuation. It was a step up in valuation from what BitGo would have been valued at had it been acquired by digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital in a proposed $1.2 billion acquisition that was called off in 2022. The company went on to raise another corporate round of funding in January 2024 for an undisclosed amount, according to Crunchbase data. Bitcoin prices soared to over $100,000 in 2024, and currently trades at nearly $119,000 with projections it could go even higher in 2025. And after many headlines about regulation in the industry, the U.S. passed what is being described as the country’s “first major national cryptocurrency legislation.” The legislation is expected to be signed into law later this week. A thawing IPO pipeline? After an IPO drought, we’re seeing a flurry of filings in 2025, with more potentially planned in the coming year. Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is expected to go public via an initial public offering sometime in early 2026. San Francisco-based collaborative design platform Figma on Monday outlined the plans of its IPO, revealing it intends to raise nearly $1 billion. But other fintech and crypto-related companies have already gone public so far in 2025. In early June, shares of Circle closed up 168% at $83.29 in their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, minting the stablecoin issuer with a market cap of around $16.7 billion and renewing hopes for an IPO market rebound. As of July 22, the stock had more than doubled from its first-day closing — trading at over $194 per share. Digital bank Chime went public on June 12, and came out swinging. Chime’s shares shot up 37% in first-day trading on Nasdaq, closing at $37. As of July 22, the stock was trading at just over $33. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman