The BNPL leader’s listing is the first one for BNPL providers since Affirm in 2021 and follows Valu’s filing in June 2025. Regulators continue to raise concerns about BNPL’s impact on consumer debt, yet adoption keeps climbing. Nearly 90 million Americans used BNPL in 2024, up 7% year over year, and in certain global markets, usage is even higher. 

Despite the challenging market for exits overall, CB Insights’ IPO probability scores for the strongest BNPL companies are up to 14x the average for all companies. Using the IPO likelihood and CB Insights’ other predictive signals, including Mosaic scores, we’ve identified the BNPL platforms most likely to go public next and what their listings could reveal about the rest of the market.

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In August, private companies globally raised 1,140+ early-stage rounds (noting this total will rise as more deals are published retroactively). Investors are backing startups targeting applications from AI agents to aerospace manufacturing.

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data on early-stage activity, including top investors & deals, valuation data, and our predictive signals. 

Leading industries & tech areas

Startups targeting healthcare & life science, financial services, and enterprise software led early-stage funding activity in August.

AI is ubiquitous across the landscape. Over 30% of startups that raised rounds are building AI-enabled products and services. Companies targeting AI agent applications in particular raised over 50 deals. 

Other focuses include blockchain/crypto (50+ deals) and robotics (50+ deals). FieldAI, which is developing foundation models for robots, raised a $314M Series A at a $2B valuation — the largest early-stage round of the month. 

CBI Customers: Review the full deal dataset

Emerging & frontier tech categories to watch

More niche categories (those with fewer than 20 deals in the month) show a clear focus on “hard tech” across areas like space, quantum computing, and fusion energy. 

Click the links to see underlying deal activity. Categories are not mutually exclusive. 

• Satellite technology (13 deals): The commercialization of low Earth orbit is accelerating with decreasing launch costs and miniaturization enabling new satellite constellations for communications, Earth observation, and more. SpaceX’s success has opened the door for specialized players, like earth observation platform SkyFi. 12 out of the 13 companies that raised early-stage deals in this category in August are based outside of the US in countries like China and India.
• Space services & manufacturing (9 deals): The emerging space economy is driving activity across areas like transportation & logistics from space to earth (Orbital Paradigm) and in space (Orbital Operations). Companies such as Orbital Matter and Catalyx Space are leveraging microgravity to manufacture materials, components, and pharmaceuticals in space. 
• Quantum computing & secure communications (7 deals): Startups are developing quantum hardware, software, and infrastructure to tackle complex problems and keep data safe in the era of quantum technology. Examples include superconducting processors (QuamCore), quantum-inspired software for industries like finance and logistics (QMill), and quantum-secure satellite networks (olee).
• Fusion (4 deals): The AI boom has created a $500B power infrastructure gap for data centers, triggering a race to secure nuclear technology. Fusion represents a longer-term breakthrough that could revolutionize power generation. Startups like Canada-based Fusion Fuel Cycles and Japan-based MiRESSO are focused on producing enabling materials and tech.

Top companies by Management strength score

Especially at the earliest stages of the startup lifecycle, the strength of the management team serves as a key signal of potential. 

Using CB Insights’ Management strength score — which scores the founding and management team’s prior achievements and likelihood of achieving future success, like a high-value exit — these are the top 3 startups in this month’s cohort: 

• Perle (976 out of 1,000) — Founder Ahmed Rashman was previously Head of Supply and Growth at Scale, and has experience across a range of large tech companies including Amazon and Oracle. 
• Lettuce (973) — Founder Ran Harpaz was founding CTO of Globality (valued at $1B in 2019) and former CTO at Hippo Insurance (went public in 2021). 
• Lorikeet (858) — Co-founder Steve Hind previously worked in product at Stripe for 3 years, while co-founder Jamie Hall was a software engineer at Google for nearly 7 years. 

See the rest of the top 10 by Management strength in the full report. 

Methodology

This report includes equity early-stage financings (convertible note, angel, pre-seed, seed, Series A) to private companies in August 2025. We excluded companies that are later-stage that raised an angel round or convertible note in the month. Categorization based on company descriptions.

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Among the top 50 private companies globally, the US and China account for 86% of the list, while AI startups represent 40%. These companies are reshaping industries and, in some cases, surpassing their public market competitors in valuation. 

OpenAI is reportedly poised to hit a roughly $500B valuation — putting it closer to the ranks of big tech than any other startup. At the same time, the current top 50 companies’ combined valuation represents under half of Nvidia’s current market cap of $4.3T, underscoring the relative scale of public tech giants.

Using CB Insights data, we analyzed the top 50 most valuable private companies globally to identify where value creation is happening in private markets. Below are the key patterns emerging from the group.

Track all 1,200+ unicorns

Key takeaways

• The United States and China dominate the global unicorn landscape, representing 86% of the top 50 companies. The US leads with 35 companies (70%), while China contributes 8 companies (16%), showing how concentrated tech innovation and capital formation remains within these two tech regions. The remaining 6 countries — Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, Sweden and the UK — each have only 1-2 representing companies.
• AI companies represent 40% of the top 50, signaling the market’s confidence in AI as a primary driver of economic value. These companies range from the big names building foundation models like OpenAI and Anthropic to specialized players tackling applications like defense systems (Helsing, Anduril).
• Abundant private funding enables companies to delay going public while continuing to scale. Today, startups are going public an average of 16 years after being founded, 4 years later than just a decade ago. Databricks recently surpassed its public competitor Snowflake in valuation ($100B) at its recent $1B Series K round. Meanwhile, ByteDance ($300B valuation), generated more revenue than Meta in Q1’25 while staying private. With plenty of private capital available and employees able to sell shares on secondary markets, companies can grow much larger without going public.
• Secondary transactions are increasingly driving valuations, with 7 consecutive quarters of YoY growth in transaction activity among VC-backed companies. Recent secondary sales at companies like Canva (valued at $42B, up from $32B in 2024), Revolut (valued at $75B, up from $45B), and OpenAI’s upcoming $10.3B secondary sale at a rumored $500B valuation demonstrate this trend. As startups stay private for longer, secondary sales are providing both liquidity and fresh valuations. 

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To create the 2025 list, we analyzed 10 years of CB Insights’ Business Graph data, evaluating 12,000+ venture firms on portfolio outcomes (unicorns and exits), share of rounds led, portfolio quality via Mosaic Score, capital efficiency, and entry discipline. Smart Money VC portfolios offer a front-row view of where the sharpest investors are placing their bets. Use the list as an early indicator to spot emerging markets and promising founders.

Which VC firms are on the Smart Money list?

Firms are presented in alphabetical order.

1. Accel
2. Andreessen Horowitz
3. Bain Capital Ventures
4. Battery Ventures
5. Bessemer Venture Partners
6. Felicis
7. First Round Capital
8. Founders Fund
9. General Catalyst
10. Google Ventures
11. Greylock Partners
12. Index Ventures
13. Institutional Venture Partners
14. Kleiner Perkins
15. Lightspeed Venture Partners
16. Meritech Capital Partners
17. New Enterprise Associates
18. Norwest Venture Partners
19. Notable Capital
20. Redpoint Ventures
21. Salesforce Ventures
22. Sapphire Ventures
23. Sequoia Capital
24. Spark Capital
25. Thrive Capital

CBI customers: See Smart Money’s latest bets

How Smart Money VCs are outperforming the market

Our 2025 edition of Smart Money VCs:

• 6.5x more likely than the average VC to back a future unicorn
• 2.2x more exits per firm, either through M&A or IPO
• 2.3x higher share of rounds led, shaping pricing and syndicates

Smart Money syndicates amplify signal. The top pairs share dozens of portfolio companies — Sequoia & Andreessen Horowitz (43), General Catalyst & Andreessen Horowitz (42), and Sequoia & Lightspeed (36). Most widely backed across the cohort: Chainguard, Figma, and Wiz (each with 7 Smart Money backers).

Smart Money firms have also been the dominant backers of the AI wave — they backed 52% of new AI unicorns in 2023, 73% in 2024, and 77% in 2025 YTD — and that exposure is translating into outlier outcomes.

Since 2015, Smart Money VCs have backed 80 companies that exited at $10B+ — roughly 100x the $100M median exit. The largest Smart Money exits include Uber ($75.5B, 2019), Coinbase ($65.3B, 2021), and Coupang ($56.6B, 2021).

Mosaic shows where they’re headed next. Smart Money portfolios skew to higher Mosaic Scores — CB Insights’ 0–1,000 predictive rating of private-company health. The average portfolio Mosaic is 628 — about 2.6x the VC norm.

And the edge is most visible at the very top of the distribution: more than 65% of companies in the top 1% of Mosaic Scores are backed by a Smart Money VC. Top firms by average portfolio Mosaic include Meritech (759), IVP (741), and Thrive Capital (688). Standout companies in 2025 include Zepto, Bilt, Glean, Rippling, and Anthropic.

Where Smart Money is deploying now

Smart Money is still leaning into AI — especially agentic applications.

Over the last 18 months, agent-related categories led by deal count: coding agents and copilots (28 deals), agent development platforms (24), enterprise workflow agents and copilots (20), and legal agents and copilots (17). Infrastructure remained active as well, with 17 deals into LLM developers. Top recent AI deals by Mosaic include Glean (enterprise AI agents), Augment Code (coding AI agents), and ElevenLabs (voice AI).

Our M&A probability model points to cybersecurity as the most likely near‑term exit pool among Smart Money portfolios, with companies like Tenex.ai ranking highest. Activity is accelerating — highlighted by Google’s $32B acquisition of Smart Money–backed Wiz in March 2025. For acquirers, targeting Smart Money portfolio or syndicate companies can streamline diligence and post‑deal integration.

Outside the US, cybersecurity is also drawing Smart Money. Since Jan’24, Accel (84 deals), General Catalyst (64), and Lightspeed (55) are the most active by ex‑US deal count; their portfolios include companies like Tines, Cato Networks, and Torq.

Methodology

What is the CB Insights Smart Money list?

The Smart Money list is an unranked collection of the top 25 venture capital firms worldwide. We analyzed 12,000+ venture investors with 10+ unique portfolio companies using 10 years of CB Insights’ Business Graph data (2015–2025) to surface the highest performers via our Smart Money Index.

What makes a VC “smart”?

​​Comparable lists in other asset classes rank firms based on investment performance, but returns data is hard to come by in the VC world, and rates of return can be easily manipulated.

Our methodology factors:

• Portfolio outcomes — unicorn count/share and exit count/share
• Deal leadership — share of rounds led
• Portfolio quality — average CB Insights Mosaic Score
• Capital efficiency — portfolio value created per dollar raised
• Entry discipline — median stage at first check

Inputs were normalized and combined into the Smart Money Index. The top 25 became the 2025 Smart Money cohort.

What can I do with this collection?

Explore the Smart Money Expert Collection on the CB Insights platform to filter deals, build screens, and make faster decisions.

If you are a venture investor and want to submit data on your portfolio companies to allow us to better score you in the future, please reach out to researchanalyst@cbinsights.com.

RELATED RESOURCES FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• All 100 AI unicorns since ChatGPT launched
• State of Tech Exits H1’25
• The top angel investors in AI
• Are AI unicorns starting to move beyond hype?
• Book of Scouting Reports: Enterprise AI Agents

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Combining CB Insights’ proprietary data and AI, scouting reports provide insight into each company’s:

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M&A volume stayed flat in the first half of the year, and the IPO market remained muted, though there are early signs of a potential second-half recovery. In the meantime, capital continues to flow into private tech companies at record levels, including a surge in secondary transactions. This is giving private tech companies more runway (and more reason) to delay public listings.

New exit models are also gaining traction. From large minority stakes to reverse acqui-hires, big tech companies are finding ways to access talent and technology without triggering regulatory review. These deal structures are starting to reshape how value is created, captured, and distributed across the ecosystem — for founders, investors, and employees alike.

Taken together, these trends point to a broader shift: private markets are becoming the dominant venue for value creation and capture in tech. With that comes the need for better private market investing infrastructure, including real-time data and context, turning private company intelligence into a new competitive advantage. 

Below, we break down the top stories from this first half of the year and our projections for the rest of the year, including:

• AI and $100M+ deals drive tech M&A momentum
• Signs point to tech IPO market rebound in H2’25
• Private tech markets top $2T in equity funding
• Secondaries get bigger and pricier
• New exit models emerge amidst the AI talent war

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data and charts on the evolving state of tech exits, in partnership with EquityZen.

Top stories in H1’25

1. AI and $100M+ deals drive tech M&A momentum

Tech M&A activity has remained stubbornly flat since Q4’23, stagnating at just over 2,000 transactions per quarter. We project Q3’25 to follow the same trajectory, with 2,040 deals.

Despite flat volume, this year is shaping up to be a record year in terms of M&A deal value, driven by an increase in the number of $100M+ acquisitions. These large transactions represent 4.7% of deal share so far this year, up from 3.8% from all of 2024, and a level not seen since 2021.

AI has also emerged as a bright spot, as corporations race to grab AI tech & talent.

M&A activity in AI reached record levels in Q2’25 at 192 deals, pushing AI’s share of tech M&A to 7.5% so far this year — almost double its share in 2021. Private companies have notably led some of the largest AI acquisitions in the first half of 2025, with OpenAI acquiring Io for $6.5B and Databricks spending $1B to buy Neon. 

The AI race is also pushing big tech companies to rethink their M&A strategy, after years of muted activity. 

Meta scooped up voice AI startups PlayAI and WaveForms this summer — marking its first acquisition since 2022 — in a bid to win the race to build the future of human-machine interactions. The company is betting that voice will become the dominant interface for interacting with AI.

During the company’s Q3’25 earnings call, Apple’s CEO mentioned being open to larger M&A deals to help accelerate its roadmap. This marks a significant move away from Apple’s historical focus on smaller acquisitions.  

Dive into 7 AI-related areas where we expect to see M&A activity this year, as well as high-potential acquisition targets for each, in the free report.

2. Signs point to tech IPO market rebound in H2’25

The global tech IPO market has remained muted during the first half of 2025, with 122 tech companies going public, in line with the numbers from 2024. But recent activity signals things may be picking up.

Figma successfully went public last month, in an IPO often referred to as a test of the public market’s appetite for tech companies. The company was valued at just over $16B at IPO and now boasts a market cap of $39B (as of 8/20/2025).

A few weeks later, crypto exchange platform Bullish followed a similar path, raising $1.1B in at a $5.4B valuation. The company is now trading at a 60%+ premium to its IPO price.

These recent examples have pushed several tech companies (crypto in particular) to announce they had filed to go public, reviving hopes of a tech IPO market rebound. Based on current trends, we project 84 tech IPOs for Q3 ’25 — above the 2-year quarterly average of 72.

Find 40+ blockchain companies with a high probability of going public in the next 2 years

But any rebound is likely to be modest, with private tech companies expected to remain private for longer and the role of IPOs potentially shifting to becoming a clearinghouse rather than a capital-raising mechanism, as predicted by Jared Carmel, Managing Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners:

“We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how tech companies approach public markets. The average age at IPO has increased dramatically, from under 4 years in 2000 to 12 years in 2015 and nearly 16 years today. I expect this trend to accelerate, with companies staying private for 20+ years becoming the new norm.

The aggressive IPO pops we’ve historically seen are fundamentally unfair to founders and long-term investors who actually built these companies. Over the next several years, you’re going to see VCs, private equity, and sovereign wealth funds step in to extract maximum value before these companies ever go public. When they eventually do an IPO, they’ll go public at fair market value without the pop — essentially using public markets as a clearinghouse rather than a capital-raising mechanism.

This shift is already playing out in the data. We’re seeing record levels of private funding, exceeding $2 trillion in cumulative investment, and explosive growth in secondary transactions. The real value creation and liquidity will increasingly occur in private markets, rather than public ones. With companies staying private for two decades, secondary liquidity becomes absolutely critical — employees, early investors, and founders can’t wait 20 years for an exit.”

3. Private tech markets top $2T in equity funding

Private tech companies are staying private longer and now have more capital than ever to do so. 

Over $2T in cumulative equity funding has poured into private tech markets to date, with 90% raised in just the last decade. That funding has enabled companies to keep scaling before tapping the public markets. Today, startups are going public an average of 16 years after being founded, 4 years later than just a decade ago.

Late-stage rounds have also reached new extremes, with Databricks joining the exclusive “Series K” club in July. Just 16 Series K rounds have ever been raised — half in the last 5 years — signaling the growing normalization of ultra-late-stage private fundraising.

Private market check sizes have also grown dramatically. The past 18 months alone account for the largest Seed, Series A, Series B, Series D, and Series E+ rounds on record. And more dry powder is on the way: a recent executive order in the US is opening the door for 401(k) retirement accounts to invest in private markets, potentially unlocking a new wave of capital for private tech companies.

As regulatory barriers fall and new investment vehicles emerge, private tech company investments will increasingly define institutional — and eventually retail — portfolios. 

But there’s a catch. 

Private companies operate in information shadows, beyond public view. Institutions will increasingly need real-time data and context on companies not subject to quarterly reporting, turning private company intelligence into a new competitive advantage. 

4. Secondaries get bigger and pricier

The last 7 quarters have seen YoY growth in secondary transaction activity among VC-backed companies, with no signs of slowing down. As tech companies stay private longer and valuations continue to climb, secondaries are playing a growing role in providing liquidity.

In August 2025, OpenAI reportedly launched a tender offer at a $500B valuation, a sharp jump from its last reported $300B. The offer gives current and former employees a chance to cash out while attracting new capital from institutional buyers. Canva followed a similar playbook, recently conducting a secondary sale at $42B. That’s $10B higher than its October 2024 valuation, which was also set during a prior secondary transaction.

These moves are helping long-time employees and early investors realize returns, while giving latecomers a shot at high-growth companies.

Investor demand is heating up too. According to EquityZen, average discounts in secondary markets have compressed to just 13% below last-round valuations — the lowest level observed between Q1’23 and Q2’25. That pricing shift reflects growing competition and perceived upside, even in companies potentially years from IPO.

While large players like SpaceX, Ripple, and OpenAI continue to dominate transaction volume, interest is expanding to smaller unicorns and breakout startups. In Q2’25, 7 of EquityZen’s top 10 secondary movers had Mosaic scores over 800 and valuations north of $1B, including names like Axiom Space, Brex, and Skild AI.

Explore 500+ private tech companies with strong secondary potential

As secondary markets mature, they’re reshaping liquidity expectations — and giving investors new ways to get exposure to private tech winners without waiting for the IPO window to reopen.

5. New exit models emerge amidst the AI talent war

The intensifying race for AI talent is driving a new wave of unconventional exits in the tech ecosystem, bypassing traditional M&A while still delivering strategic value to acquirers. 

Tight regulation has pushed big tech companies to shift away from full takeovers and toward deal structures that offer access to technology and, more importantly, talent, without triggering antitrust alarms.

Large minority stakes have emerged as one such mechanism. In Q2’25, Meta invested $14.8B for a 49% stake in Scale, marking the largest private funding round of the quarter. As part of the deal, Meta hired Scale’s CEO and founder, Alexandr Wang. At their current pace, big tech companies are on track to complete 14 corporate minority deals in 2025.

Reverse acqui-hires  — where acquirers buy the team (fully or partially) and license the technology — are also gaining momentum. These hybrid transactions often include lucrative licensing fees that serve as a partial liquidity event for investors.

Notable examples include:

• Google hiring key personnel from Windsurf to join its DeepMind division, including CEO Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen 
• Amazon hiring key members of Adept
• Microsoft bringing in employees from Inflection AI

These transactions let acquirers cherry-pick talent and assets without facing regulatory hurdles or needing to buy out entire cap tables.

But it’s not just big tech adapting;  major LLM developers are adopting similar tactics. OpenAI and Anthropic have collectively made 3 acqui-hires so far in 2025 — Context.ai, Crossing Minds, and Humanloop.

These nontraditional exits may complicate fundraising and hiring for AI startups, as investors and employees weigh the risk of being bypassed in partial team acquisitions. In response, both groups may begin negotiating protective terms to ensure they aren’t left behind.

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Yet this trend isn’t new — it’s been building for years with the 345 investments these institutions have made in the space between 2020 and 2024. In the visual below, we’ve highlighted the G-SIBs’ blockchain investments from 2023-present:

Using CB Insights Business Graph data, and in partnership with Ripple and the UK Centre for Blockchain Technologies, we used CB Insights Business Graph data to power Banking on Digital Assets, a report that explores how banks have made global investments in the digital asset ecosystem over a five-year period.

Download the report for an inside look at how, where, and why banks are investing in blockchain technology and digital asset applications.

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Half of US federal agencies already report high levels of AI adoption, with these systems projected to handle most routine government functions within the next decade. Similar adoption patterns are emerging across municipal governments and international government bodies, particularly in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Generative AI has already transformed procurement and fleet management through automated contract analysis and vehicle optimization, with major partnerships formed between government agencies and providers like Microsoft, Palantir, and specialized govtech firms.

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AI companies drove the surge, accounting for half of all mega-rounds. Many are building foundation models tailored to complex real-world use cases like robotics and healthcare.

Using CB Insights’ Business Graph, our monthly Book of Scouting Reports offers an in-depth analysis of every private tech company that has raised a funding round of $100M or more, to spotlight where capital is concentrating, which startups are gaining momentum, and who’s shaping the next wave of market disruption.

Download the book to see all 50 scouting reports.

Key takeaways from July’s mega-rounds include: 

• Clinical AI moves from development to scaling, with both Aidoc (a clinical AI foundation model developer) and Ambience (an AI medical scribe) having raised mega-rounds last month to build upon their early success and scale across more health systems. Last month also saw OpenEvidence and Tala Health raise $100M+ rounds to bring agentic AI solutions to clinicians, with the latter joining the fast-growing AI unicorn list. 
• Investors keep betting big on the next wave of the AI boom, physical AI. Recent commercial breakthroughs in the autonomous vehicle space and heightened interest in the humanoid space are driving capital toward physical AI infrastructure. This includes robotics foundation models (Genesis AI, TARS), and hardware platforms for embodied AI model training (Galaxea AI). China-based Meituan led both the $100M Series A extension in Galaxea AI and the $125M Seed round in TARS, as it doubles down on physical AI investments.
• AI newcomers are openly taking on tech giants. Half of last month’s mega-rounds went to AI companies, which accounted for 7 of the 13 new unicorns minted during that time. Some of these companies are directly targeting incumbents such as Reka AI which positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to OpenAI or Anthropic, and Perplexity which targets Google‘s core search business with its new browser product. 
• Fintech is minting a new class of financial services challengers.  Fintech companies accounted for more mega-round deals than any other vertical in July, including 2 of the top 4 largest rounds. Ramp’s valuation jumped from $16B to $22.5B in mere weeks, while Bilt more than tripled in value, from $3.3B to $10.8B. Beyond fundraising, fintech leaders are pursuing aggressive expansion strategies. iCapital raised $820M last month to accelerate its acquisition strategy focused on seizing the private markets opportunity. 

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Many of the world’s most influential financial services firms — like Allianz, J.P. Morgan, and Mastercard — have taken concrete action to adopt genAI technology.

The genAI adoption efforts have shaped 2 years’ worth of corporate strategy, unveiling key priorities — from the rise of agentic commerce to customer service copilots — across the competitive landscape.

Using CB Insights data, we identified and analyzed 100 real-world applications of genAI from 69 companies across banking, insurance, and payments.

Download the book to explore all 100 applications, and read on for 5 key takeaways and a breakdown of our methodology.

Key takeaways

1. Cross-functional platforms are now table stakes.

24% of applications center on deploying general-use genAI platforms to employees.

Prominent firms like BBVA have established enterprise-wide genAI capabilities across their organizations (typically via enterprise-wide deployments of platforms like Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT). Early adopters — like Klarna, which shared in May 2024 that 87% of its employees are using OpenAI technology — now have over a year of genAI operational experience at scale, which can guide the development of more complex applications in the future.

Looking forward, financial services firms without a plan to provide genAI access to employees risk competitive disadvantage. Over the past 2 years, simply providing genAI capabilities to employees has shifted from cutting-edge innovation to standard operations.

2. Microsoft and OpenAI permeate the adoption landscape.

33% of applications analyzed disclose involvement from either Microsoft or OpenAI.

Microsoft and OpenAI (in which Microsoft has significantly invested) overwhelmingly permeate the landscape of genAI applications analyzed. Many of these applications anchor on foundational capabilities, from which organizations can build more complex applications and agents. Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud follow a similar deployment pattern across multiple companies in the sector.

Looking forward, financial services firms should prepare for increasingly blurred “build, buy, or partner” decisions. The prevalence of genAI model developers (like OpenAI and Anthropic) and big tech partners (like Microsoft and Google) provide financial services executives with more flexibility to customize their tech solutions than what has traditionally been the case with many point-solution providers.

3. Emerging genAI vendors face a fierce competitive landscape.

Median Mosaic Scores among genAI startups analyzed are in the top 3% globally.

The 100 analyzed genAI applications include engagement from 25 startups as tech vendors, ranging from pre-seed companies like Twin — which offers an agent for invoice collection — to late-stage giants like Anthropic. These startups have a median CB Insights Mosaic Score — which measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies — of 732 out of 1,000, as of July 30, 2025.

Looking forward, financial services firms should prepare for increasingly capable tech vendors seeking to sell their genAI products. These vendors must exhibit a clear advantage over the alternative of building in-house solutions.

4. Customer-facing genAI will become increasingly prevalent.

16% of applications center on customer engagement & self-service capabilities.

Firms like ING, Wells Fargo, and Truist show that customer-facing genAI assistants are capable of powering millions of customer interactions. Customer-facing genAI deployment will accelerate as companies like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal deploy applications centered on “agentic commerce,” where customers can autonomously shop and complete transactions with AI payments agents.

Looking forward, financial services firms need to develop a gameplan for how they will engage customers with agentic AI. The market opportunities for enterprise agents and copilots are growing, so customer-facing applications will quickly emerge.

5. Impact is now tangible, but success definitions remain elusive.

Only 30% of applications disclose quantitative tangible impact from deployment.

Most of the application sources analyzed lack disclosure of tangible impact (i.e., numbers, percentages, or figures to quantify effectiveness). Among the impact metrics that are available, the top-cited focus on operational considerations like call-handle times.

Looking forward, any financial services firm has the opportunity to define “what good genAI adoption looks like” across the sector. The lack of clear success definitions creates an opportunity for financial services firms to stand out among peers.

Methodology

We used CB Insights’ Business Graph — including data points like Dealmaking, Business Relationships, Earnings Transcripts, and Media Mentions — and third-party company releases to identify 100 real-world genAI applications across banking, insurance, and payments. These applications were disclosed between July 2023 and April 2025.

Then, using CB Insights’ Team of Agents, we analyzed these applications across 10 categories. Applications are detailed based on disclosure date, and are not exhaustive of a given company’s genAI initiatives. Applications and categorizations are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive of activity within their respective industries.

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The fastest-growing startups and tech markets signal what’s next: the proliferation of agents and voice AI. 

Below, we break down the top stories from this quarter’s report, including:

• Massive deals continue to drive the AI funding boom
• Consolidation is in full force in the AI market
• AI revenue multiples reflect investor confidence in startups’ growth potential
• Tech market deals signal a shift from infrastructure to applications
• The fastest-growing genAI startups highlight the rise of voice AI

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data and charts on the evolving state of AI.

Massive deals continue to drive the AI funding boom

Funding to private AI companies across the globe reached $47.3B across 1,403 deals in Q2’25. 

Combined with the record total for Q1’25 (inflated by OpenAI’s $40B raise), funding in 2025 ($116.1B) has already blown past 2024’s full-year total ($105.7B). 

Together, the top 10 rounds accounted for 60% of the quarter’s funding total. 

AI development players continue to lead the surge, with Scale (AI training data provider), xAI (model developer), and Thinking Machines Lab (model developer) raising some of the quarter’s largest rounds. Other notable raises went to defense tech startups Anduril ($2.5B) and Helsing ($693M) as geopolitical tensions drive interest in the sector.

The largest round of the quarter — Meta’s $14.8B investment in Scale for a 49% stake (with CEO Alexandr Wang joining Meta) — highlights big tech’s recent “quasi-acquisition” spree.

This trend sees tech leaders hiring away the teams and licensing the tech of promising startups — this allows big tech to avoid antitrust scrutiny while giving startups a way to return capital to investors. These deals enable them to move more quickly and be more selective with the talent they bring on than traditional M&A allows.

Deals in this pattern include: 

• Inflection AI (March 2024): Microsoft paid $650M in a licensing deal to Inflection AI while poaching its founders and key employees
• Adept (June 2024): Amazon hired away Adept’s founders and many employees, with $330M+ going to licensing its tech
• Character.AI (August 2024): Google poached the company’s founders and 20% of its team in a $3B licensing deal
• Covariant (August 2024): Amazon hired robotics startup Covariant’s founders and a quarter of its staff while licensing the company’s models 
• Windsurf (July 2025): Google hired Windsurf executives and R&D employees in a $2.4B licensing deal

This activity reinforces the premium placed on AI talent in the current landscape. 

Consolidation is in full force in the AI market

Despite broader M&A weakness across the venture market, AI is a bright spot.

M&A activity in AI reached record levels in Q2’25 at 177 deals — almost double the quarterly average of 89 since 2020. 

The US was largely responsible for the jump, with acquisitions of US-based AI startups nearly doubling from 59 in Q1’25 to 104 in Q2’25. Europe followed with 46 M&A deals in the quarter.

Major US enterprise tech companies led activity as they embed AI across their offerings. Among the top 10 most active in the quarter were IBM (3 AI acquisitions), followed by Intuit, Nvidia, Databricks, and Salesforce (tied with 2 AI acquisitions each). 

Earlier this year, we predicted enterprise tech heavyweights would compete for AI infrastructure dominance. AI optimization company CentML, acquired by Nvidia in Q2’25, was on our AI infrastructure acquisition target list.

Dive into 7 AI-related areas where we expect to see M&A activity this year, as well as high-potential acquisition targets for each, in the free report. 

AI revenue multiples reflect investor confidence in startups’ growth potential

Leading AI companies that raised funding in Q2’25 did so at sky-high valuations — even by AI standards. 

Model developer xAI raised $5B at a $75B valuation in June 2025, up from its $50B valuation in November 2024. With a projected $500M in 2025 revenue, that’s a 150x forward-looking multiple. Similarly, customer service AI agent startup Decagon raised $131M at a $1.5B valuation on just $10M in ARR.

AI startups are commanding a median 17.1x revenue multiple (based on FY 2024 revenue), but some far exceed that. Companies in the chart below command a median 50.1x multiple. 

This indicates investor confidence and competition for the hottest startups. The big multiples are also a reflection of these companies’ growth potential: xAI projects $2B in revenue next year, while others on the list, like Glean, hit $100M ARR in 3 years.

Tech market deals signal a shift from infrastructure to applications

Among the 1,500+ tech markets that CB Insights tracks, those in the chart below saw the greatest number of AI deals in Q2’25.

Leading markets focus on specific industry or technical challenges — like industrial humanoid robots and coding AI agents — not general-purpose AI models.

In fact, LLM developers tied for 9th place with 11 other markets at 5 deals during the quarter. 

This suggests investors increasingly expect greater value creation to come from applications than from infrastructure.

See how markets stack up in the CBI Market Index

The fastest-growing genAI startups highlight the rise of voice AI

While funding may be concentrated among the largest players, opportunities in AI aren’t limited to those companies. Nearly 3 in 4 AI deals (72%) in 2025 so far still involved early-stage startups. 

Early-stage genAI companies with the fastest-growing headcounts are concentrated in AI agent applications — and more specifically in voice AI development. 

Advancements in voice AI models in 2024 — including the launch of OpenAI’s Realtime API for speech-to-speech applications — jumpstarted voice applications across use cases.

Companies are now positioning themselves for a future where humans interact with AI via conversation rather than text interfaces. 

Job postings from Vapi — one of the fastest-growing voice startups based on headcount — highlight its positioning around this inflection point, as noted by CB Insights Hiring Insights.

Vapi has also seen the greatest jump in its Mosaic health score among voice development companies, as shown in the chart below.

Watch these startups for partnership, investment, and acquisition opportunities. Signaling the potential for increasing consolidation, Meta acquired voice startup Play AI, which uses AI to generate human-like voices, in July 2025. 

MORE AI RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS

• The AI agent market map
• AI 100: The most promising artificial intelligence startups of 2025
• AI agent startups are becoming revenue machines — here are the top 20 ranked
• What’s next for AI agents? 4 trends to watch in 2025
• Pharma AI readiness: How the 50 largest companies by market cap stack up

The post State of AI Q2’25 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Dealmaking fell this quarter by 7% to 804, as mega-rounds drove a substantial share (40%) of funding, and median deal size increased from $4M to $5M.

This quarter, the largest deal was Plaid‘s $575M round, reflecting rising demand for embedded finance and solutions that serve multiple fintech segments. 

Mega-round activity was heavily concentrated in the US, which claimed a record 65% share of mega-round deals.

Digital assets saw momentum on the exit front, highlighted by Circle’s IPO and two of the largest M&A deals involving blockchain companies: Coinbase’s acquisition of Deribit ($2.9B) and Stripe’s acquisition of Privy (undisclosed). 

Wealth tech and B2B fintech stood out as higher-momentum segments in Q2, with wealth tech funding seeing a dramatic uptick (up 171% QoQ to reach $1.9B), while B2B fintechs attracted several of the largest banking and payments equity rounds this quarter.

Download the full report to access comprehensive data and charts on the evolving state of fintech.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• Fintech sector recovery continues with 2 consecutive $10B quarters, which hasn’t happened since early 2023. This quarter’s largest investment went to fintech infrastructure leader Plaid at $575M. Despite these recent highs, funding remains well below 2022 levels.
• US-based fintechs command record share of global investment. The US achieved unprecedented dominance in Q2’25, capturing 65% of mega-rounds and 43% of all deals, both all-time highs. The US also captured 71% of mega-round funding and 60% of total fintech investment, reflecting a clear investor preference for US-based fintech opportunities.
• B2B fintech attracts the majority of large deals. B2B fintech companies brought in 60% of the largest payments investments and 50% of the largest banking rounds in Q2’25, led by Ramp‘s $200M Series D and Dojo‘s $190M private equity round. The pattern signals a growing appetite for business-facing fintech platforms over consumer-oriented applications.
• Digital wealth management is seeing a dramatic funding revival. Q2’25 marked a turning point for wealth tech with $1.9B in funding — nearly triple the Q1 number of $0.7B and the sector’s strongest performance in 3 years. Large deals like Addepar‘s $230M Series G round and Groww‘s $200M Series F drove both average and median deal sizes higher
  
• Fintech M&A activity remains elevated. Fintech M&A deals rose to 205 in Q2’25, following a significant increase in Q4’24. Digital assets continue to drive exit activity, with Circle going public at a $6.9B valuation in June, Stripe’s acquisition of Privy, and Coinbase’s $2.9B acquisition of Deribit.

We dive into the trends below.

Fintech sector shows signs of recovery with two consecutive $10B quarters

For the first time since early 2023, fintech funding has exceeded $10B for 2 consecutive quarters. 

Although Binance‘s $2B round propped up Q1’25, both Q1 and Q2 received 40% of total funding dollars from mega-rounds. Funding increased in most fintech subsectors in Q2, including capital markets, digital banking, digital lending, payments, and wealth tech. Notably the proportion of early-stage deals decreased across all sectors but one (digital lending) in 2025 YTD, indicating that investors are selectively funding mature companies across the fintech ecosystem.

The quarter’s largest investment went to fintech infrastructure leader Plaid, which raised $575M. New investors BlackRock, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton led the round, which also included the company’s existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Ribbit Capital. 

While Plaid’s latest valuation of $6.1B declined by half since its Series D round in 2021, this reflects a broader correction in tech valuations. In fact, Plaid’s fundamentals remain strong with 18% headcount growth over the last 12 months and 25% revenue growth in 2024. Plaid also reported that with an increase in the number of companies and markets it serves, now more than 1 in 2 Americans have used its products. 

The second- and third-largest rounds of this quarter went to payroll fintech Rippling and Addepar, which is building investment portfolio management software. Late-stage deals across digital banking, capital markets, payments, and wealth tech also increased in Q2, suggesting current investment conditions favor established fintechs with proven business models.

Explore 23,000+ fintech companies

US-based fintechs command record share of global investment

The US achieved unprecedented dominance across a variety of metrics in Q2’25, reflecting increased momentum for US-based fintechs.

US-based companies captured 65% of mega-rounds in Q2’25 — the highest share on record. US fintechs also secured 71% of all mega-round funding.

This geographic concentration extended beyond mega-rounds: US-based fintechs received 60% of total fintech investment dollars and 43% of all deals, with the latter representing another all-time high. Meanwhile, median and average deal size have both risen this quarter, and the proportion of early stage deals has dropped in 2025 YTD from 72% to 66%. Investors are focused on mid-to-late-stage, US-based fintechs, which benefit from a mature market and established financial infrastructure that facilitates scaling.

Mid-year 2025, stabilizing interest rates and improved market conditions accompany institutional appetite for later-stage fintech investments. Yet fintech lags behind other sectors in the broader market recovery. Quarterly venture funding has rebounded to over $90B each over the last 3 quarters (heights not seen since 2022) while the increase in 2025 fintech funding remains modest. The US offers compelling advantages for risk-conscious investors, including mature fintechs with proven business models and a large addressable market for end consumers and businesses.

Explore 9,600+ US-based fintechs

B2B fintech solutions attract the majority of large deals

B2B fintech companies dominated in Q2’25, capturing 60% of the top 10 equity payments investments and 50% of the top 10 equity banking rounds.

This dominance signals a clear trend: businesses are increasingly hungry for digital-first financial tools that can streamline their operations, from automated spend management and corporate credit cards to comprehensive business banking platforms.

Major B2B deals included spend management leader Ramp’s $200M Series D at a record $16B valuation, payments platform Dojo’s $190M private equity round from Vitruvian Partners, and business banking provider Airwallex’s $150M Series F. Finom, which provides digital business banking for SMBs, obtained a $132M Series C round.

B2B-focused fintechs companies are rapidly scaling to meet demand — Ramp nearly doubled its headcount over the past 12 months, while its competitor Mercury more than doubled its valuation at the end of March in a $300M Series C round. Ramp launched treasury offerings in 2025, while Mercury Treasury recently upgraded with same-day liquidity. The introduction of new enterprise features, combined with funding rounds, headcount, and valuation increases, signals that these mid-to-late stage companies are expanding aggressively to capture B2B market share amid ample competition.

This shift towards B2B solutions suggests that the need for businesses to digitize their financial operations will drive fintech’s next growth phase, with investors betting on the larger deal sizes and stickier revenue models that business clients provide. Meanwhile, businesses accelerating digital transformation initiatives post-pandemic have created a large addressable market for financial software solutions that can demonstrate clear ROI through operational efficiency gains.

Explore the SMB fintech market map

Digital wealth management sees dramatic funding revival

Q2’25 marked a turning point for wealth tech, with the subsector raising $1.9B in funding, nearly triple the previous quarter’s total and the highest level since Q2’22. A handful of mega-rounds drove the increase, as deal count remained on par with last quarter. 

Notable deals included late-stage equity rounds to portfolio management platform Addepar ($230M), investment app Groww ($200M), digital broker Scalable Capital ($177M), RIA (registered investment advisor) platform Altruist ($152M), and personal finance toolkit Stash ($146M). These deals drove both average and median deal sizes higher across the sector.

Investors are gravitating toward wealth tech as AI unlocks new efficiencies in portfolio management, making investment services more scalable, cost-effective, and accessible to a broader market. Last month, Altruist acquired AI assistant Thyme to better serve financial advisors. Stash has earmarked their $146M round to support AI capabilities, including its consumer financial advice platform Money Coach AI. Addepar acquired AI workflow platform Arcus in May. Among the top 10 wealth tech companies by Mosaic, our proprietary startup health score, half have rolled out AI tools, earmarked new funding for AI capabilities, or made AI-related acquisitions in 2025 YTD.

Track 2,400+ companies in the Wealth Tech Expert Collection

M&A activity remains elevated

Fintech M&A deals rose to 205 in Q2’25, following a significant increase in Q4’24.

Notably, two of the most prominent M&A deals this quarter went to blockchain companies. The second largest fintech acquisition in Q2’25 was Coinbase’s $2.9B acquisition of crypto derivatives exchange Deribit. Meanwhile, Stripe acquired Privy, which provides white-label crypto wallet infrastructure, for an undisclosed sum in June. This follows its Q4’24 purchase of stablecoin company Bridge for $1.1B.

Major stablecoin issuer Circle went public in June at a $6.9B valuation, its stock quickly skyrocketing in value. 

Other important exits this quarter involved neobanks and B2B tech, which have enjoyed momentum in 2025 to date:

The largest IPO in Q2’25 was neobank Chime at a $9.8B valuation based on outstanding shares. Like Plaid, Chime’s valuation represented a significant decrease from its high of $25B in 2021, attributable to broader market correction.

Xero’s $3B acquisition of accounts payable and receivable solution Melio was the largest of the quarter, tying into the surge in B2B interest.

Search recently funded fintech companies with high M&A probabilities

MORE FINTECH RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS

• The SMB fintech market map
• The stablecoin market map
• State of Fintech Q1’25 report

The post State of Fintech Q2’25 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

AI continues to dominate, capturing 50% of venture investment. At the same time, investors are doubling down on hard tech — hardware-focused and capital-intensive technology — driven by surging energy demands from AI, advancements in robotics, and growing defense interest.

Below, we break down the top stories from this quarter’s report, including:

• Funding tops $90B for the third straight quarter, while deal count declines
• Hard tech claims 6 of the top 10 largest deals
• AI companies command funding premiums across sectors
• Regulatory shifts push big tech from M&A to minority investments
• CVC deals hit a 7-year low as the tariff threat looms

We also outline the categories shaping venture dealmaking for the rest of 2025 — including stablecoins, defense tech, quantum, and nuclear energy.

Let’s dive in.

Download the full report to access comprehensive data and charts on the evolving state of venture across sectors, geographies, and more.

Top stories in Q2’25

1. Funding tops $90B for the third straight quarter, while deal count declines

Venture funding reached $94.6B in Q2’25, marking the second-highest quarterly figure since Q2’22 and the third straight quarter to surpass $90B.

While funding dipped slightly from Q1’25, the decline reflects normalization after OpenAI’s $40B raise inflated numbers in Q1. In fact, Q2 remained elevated even as foundation model developers accounted for just 3% of total capital, down from 36% in Q1’25 and 29% in Q4’24. This shift signals a broadening of venture activity beyond foundation models into the broader AI ecosystem and adjacent hard tech sectors.

With this continued momentum, annual funding is projected to reach nearly $440B, a 53% increase from 2024, pointing to a sustained recovery in venture investment.

At the same time, deal volume continues to decline, reflecting greater investor selectivity. Q2 saw just 6,028 deals — the lowest quarterly total since Q4’16. This puts 2025 on pace for around 25,000 deals, or nearly half the volume seen in 2022, even as total funding approaches similar levels.

While investors are pulling back on the number of deals, they’re deploying more capital per investment: the median deal size hit a new high of $3.5M in 2025 YTD. Rising check sizes and falling deal count underscore a shift toward fewer, higher-conviction bets.

2. Hard tech claims 6 of the top 10 largest deals

Six of the 10 largest deals in Q2’25 went to hard tech companies, which are firms building capital-intensive physical products.

CBI customers: Track the highest funding startups in Q2’25

This surge is driven by macro forces such as onshoring initiatives, clean energy investment, and the rise of physical AI, which is enabling new capabilities across robotics, autonomy, and industrial systems.

Mega-rounds ($100M+ deals) spanned multiple sectors:

• Montera Infrastructure: $1.5B for hyperscale data center solutions
• Commonwealth Fusion Systems: $800M for commercial nuclear fusion
• Neuralink: $650M for brain-computer interfaces

Geopolitical tensions are also pushing capital toward defense, where startups are securing large rounds:

• World View: $2.6B for high-altitude aerospace platforms
• Anduril: $2.5B for autonomous defense systems and defense connectivity platforms
• Helsing: $693M for AI-powered defense applications

Across the board, defense tech startups are now commanding a median revenue multiple of 17.4x, edging out AI companies at 17.1x and all other major sectors. This signals high investor confidence and competition, driving premium valuations across the defense tech sector.

With investor appetite moving toward physical infrastructure and embodied AI, the rise of hard tech represents a shift likely to define the next chapter of venture investing.

3. AI companies command funding premiums across sectors

The venture market is experiencing a pronounced “AI premium,” with median deal size for AI companies reaching $4.6M in 2025 — over $1M more than the broader market. 

But the premium isn’t just financial. AI companies also score higher on CB Insights’ Mosaic Score (success probability) and Commercial Maturity (ability to compete and partner) across most sectors, signaling stronger fundamentals and market readiness in the eyes of investors.

AI companies in auto tech — with most focused on autonomous driving — are commanding the highest premium. Their median deal size is $20.6M higher than non-AI auto tech peers, and their average Mosaic score is 99 points greater. This quarter, the largest AI auto tech deal went to Applied Intuition, which raised a $600M Series F round at a $15B valuation.

Robotics and cybersecurity follow closely, with AI firms in those sectors securing median deal sizes $10.7M and $6.4M larger than their non-AI peers.

Team pedigree is further amplifying the premium. Thinking Machines Lab — founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati alongside veterans from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Mistral AI — raised a record-breaking $2B seed round at a $10B valuation, making it the most valuable seed-stage startup ever. 

The deal reflects an increasingly common “go big or go home” investing mentality, as investors make outsized bets on high-credibility AI teams.

4. Regulatory shifts push big tech from M&A to minority investments

Big tech M&A — which includes M&A from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia — is entering a sustained downturn. Annual deal activity is projected to hit just 12 transactions in 2025, a steady decline from 66 deals in 2014. 

US regulatory tightening caused M&A activity to collapse from 30+ deals in 2022 to just 8 deals in 2023 — the steepest single-year decline on record.

CBI customers: Track big tech M&A activity

Big tech companies are adapting by taking large minority stakes, allowing them to circumvent federal antitrust review while still gaining strategic influence and access to key technologies. For example, Meta invested $14.8B in Scale — the largest funding round of Q2’25 — for a 49% stake, as did Microsoft with its recent investments in OpenAI. 

In 2025 YTD, big tech is on pace for 14 corporate minority deals, an increase from levels before the regulatory shift.

Big tech’s shift reflects broader M&A weakness across the market. Global activity has fallen 34% from 3,103 deals in Q1’22 to 2,053 deals in Q2’25, driven by high interest rates that have made financing more expensive and economic uncertainty that has made companies more cautious about acquisitions.

However, acquisitions of AI companies is one area where M&A is increasing. Activity reached record levels in Q2’25 at 177 deals — over double the 5-year quarterly average of 84 deals. This surge reflects companies’ need to acquire AI capabilities quickly rather than build them internally, as AI becomes essential for staying competitive.

While falling interest rates will help smaller deals rebound and provide a modest tailwind to overall M&A activity, we do not expect deal volumes to approach peak years. Big tech and other large corporations will remain constrained by regulatory scrutiny.

We are likely entering a new era where strategic partnerships and minority investments replace traditional M&A as a growth mechanism for major corporations.

5. CVC deals hit a 7-year low as the tariff threat looms

Corporate venture capital dealmaking has reached its lowest point in over 7 years, as CVC-backed investment totaled just $17B across 742 deals, down 8% quarter-over-quarter and representing the weakest performance since Q1’18.

CVC activity has fallen dramatically from its Q1’22 peak due to broader market pressures, including high interest rates and economic uncertainty. Tariff concerns are likely adding further burden to an already weakened market.

Despite fewer deals, median CVC-backed deal sizes have reached their highest levels since 2021. This suggests that CVCs are concentrating capital on fewer, higher-conviction investments.

CVCs are also collaborating more frequently. Deals involving 3+ CVCs reached a record high of 32% in Q2’25, reflecting both strategic necessity and market conditions: larger funding rounds in capital-intensive sectors like AI and hard tech may require multiple corporate partners to provide sufficient capital. At the same time, competition for access to the hottest technologies drives CVCs to team up rather than risk being shut out.

Breakout sectors of 2025

Below, we analyze venture funding across tech sectors to identify where investor conviction and market momentum are strongest.

Stablecoin funding is on pace to shatter its previous record

Stablecoin startups are experiencing an explosive year-over-year funding surge as stablecoins achieve mainstream adoption. Funding is projected to reach $10.2B in 2025, representing more than 10x growth from 2024.

Growing regulatory frameworks worldwide — such as the pending passage of stablecoin legislation in the US with bipartisan support — provide needed certainty for institutional investment, setting the foundation for exponential growth.

Multiple startups are taking advantage of the momentum. While the largest funding rounds occurred during the first quarter — with $2B deals for Avalon Labs and Binance — notable rounds also occurred during Q2’25, including:

• Flowdesk: $100M for digital asset trading and liquidity services
• Conduit: $36M for its cross-border business transactions platform
• Niural: $31M for an AI-enabled stablecoin and fiat payroll platform

Major financial services companies are also increasingly involved. Mastercard, Visa, and established banks are now enabling stablecoin transactions and issuing their own digital currencies, bringing institutional credibility to the space. Meanwhile, stablecoin issuers Circle and Ripple applied for banking licenses on June 30 and July 2, respectively, demonstrating their intent to operate like mainstream financial institutions.

Stablecoins are evolving beyond simple stores of value into yield-bearing tools and liquidity products. Solutions like liquidity mining, lending services, and yield-bearing stablecoins are receiving substantial investor attention. Cross-border payments companies powered by stablecoins are also gaining traction as affordable and accessible USD alternatives in emerging markets.

As regulatory frameworks solidify and institutional adoption accelerates, stablecoin companies are positioned to capture significant market share in global payments and financial infrastructure markets.

Defense tech momentum continues

Within the first two quarters of 2025, defense tech funding has already reached a new annual record of $11.1B.

The funding breakout is driven by multiple forces, including geopolitical instability and technology advancements, notably in drones and other unmanned vehicles.

Concurrently, the US Department of Defense is pushing to diversify the defense ecosystem through public-private partnerships and startup support.

The defense investor landscape is also rapidly evolving, with the number of unique investors in the space expected to increase 34% in 2025 to 950 from 710 the year prior. Traditional defense funds like Shield Capital and In-Q-Tel are now joined by generalist VCs, bringing more capital to fund a new generation of startups.

We expect continued investor interest in defense tech, as NATO recently agreed to increase defense spending from 2% to 5% of GDP by 2035, adding over $400B annually in market expansion. The 1.5% earmarked for security infrastructure aligns with venture trends in AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and technologies developed for both military and civilian use cases.

Quantum tech reaches an all-time high, halfway through the year

Quantum tech is attracting significant investor interest, reaching record annual funding levels at $2.2B within the first two quarters of 2025 — an increase of 69% from 2024.

The surge follows major hardware breakthroughs from Google, IBM, and Microsoft, which may drive confidence in leading startups even though the technology still lacks practical applications that outperform classical systems. Industry leaders like Fujitsu and Quantinuum — a subsidiary of Honeywell — expect fault-tolerant quantum computers by 2030 at the earliest.

Massive investments are flowing towards various quantum applications in 2025 so far:

• PsiQuantum: $750M to build million-qubit photonic quantum computers by 2029
• QuEra Computing: $230M to accelerate fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum systems
• Multiverse Computing: $215M to scale its quantum-inspired AI compression technology

Government support has also increased, with $1.8B in public funding announced globally in 2024. For example, Australia committed $620M to PsiQuantum, while DARPA committed up to $200M in joint funding to assess the feasibility of industrially useful quantum computers.

As quantum technologies move toward commercial viability, the combination of record private investment, substantial government backing, and technical progress positions the industry for significant growth once practical quantum advantage is achieved in commercial applications.

Corporate interest drives a surge in nuclear energy funding

Funding to nuclear energy companies is projected to reach an annual record by the end of 2025 at $5B. Massive energy requirements for AI data centers — with US data center power consumption projected to triple by 2030 — are driving corporate interest in clean baseload power.

Big tech companies are leading the charge, with investments since 2024 across both small modular reactors (SMRs) and fusion technologies:

• Amazon invested in X-energy with plans to develop over 5 GW of SMR projects by 2039; Amazon also backed Realta Fusion
• Google reached agreements with Kairos Power for up to 500 MW of nuclear power by 2030 and has also invested in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and TAE Technologies.
• Microsoft reached a deal with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, while committing to purchasing fusion electricity from Helion Energy by 2028

Corporate interest has also skyrocketed, with earnings call mentions hitting record levels as executives grapple with the major power requirements for AI infrastructure.

Current and previous presidential administrations have reduced regulatory red tape for nuclear development, streamlining approval processes. The bipartisan approach creates stable regulatory support for long-term investments and should accelerate sector growth in the coming years.

As AI adoption continues, nuclear provides the only scalable solution for clean baseload power that intermittent renewables cannot match for always-on AI computing infrastructure. The combination of massive corporate demand and supportive regulatory frameworks positions nuclear for explosive growth in the years ahead.

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RELATED RESOURCES FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• State of Venture Q1’25 Report
• The AI agent market map
• 7 tech M&A predictions for 2025
• State of AI Report: 6 trends shaping the landscape in 2025
• 15 tech trends to watch closely in 2025

The post State of Venture Q2’25 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

These significant cash infusions signal where investors are placing the biggest bets at a given time and which startups are being positioned to shape or disrupt markets.

To track trends in mega-rounds, our monthly Book of Scouting Reports offers an in-depth analysis of every private company that has raised a funding round of $100M or more. The scouting reports provide insight into each company’s funding history and latest round; headcount; opportunities & threats; commercial maturity; and business health.

Download the book to see all 46 scouting reports.

Key trends from June’s mega-rounds include:

• AI attracts the largest funding rounds, fueled by tech talent wars: Meta invested a massive $14.8B in Scale, whose CEO is also joining the tech giant. Thinking Machines Lab raised $2B in seed funding without a live product, with several former OpenAI executives having joined the company. These rounds show how quickly AI talent is moving around the industry — and the hefty price tags that this talent can command.
• Industrials command a third of mega-rounds in June, indicating a hardware renaissance: Industrial companies (including defense, aerospace, energy, and robotics) drove many of this month’s $100M+ deals, from Anduril‘s $2.5B round to Helsing‘s nearly $700M deal. While AI is central to many of the companies in this sector, almost all are developing physical hardware and infrastructure. 
• Quantum computing players get a boost from AI and defense applications: Two quantum computing companies raised mega-rounds in June ’25: Infleqtion, which develops quantum sensing for defense, and AI 100 winner Multiverse Computing, which provides quantum-enabled model compression to speed up AI processing. While not a substantial share of deals, these investments point to an increased demand for quantum capabilities across high-growth applications.
• Capital is going toward product and R&D: 37% of mega-round recipients are directing these funds toward product development and core technology advancement, including AI. For example, Observe intends to use the capital to expand its AI observability features, while Impulse Space is planning R&D for new vehicles for NASA and defense customers. 

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So far this year, 53 companies have reached billion-dollar valuations, putting 2025 on pace to exceed the 80 unicorns minted in all of 2024.

Artificial intelligence is the key driver behind this surge, with AI startups accounting for over half of all new unicorns in 2025 so far. These AI-native unicorns are also breaking the mold, reaching $1B+ valuations on faster timelines, hitting the milestone in 6 years versus the typical 7.

Here’s what today’s unicorn landscape signals about the future of tech:

• 1 in 5 new unicorns are AI agents, with AI taking over the unicorn landscape, representing 53% of all new billion-dollar companies in 2025 so far. Among the newest unicorns, 12 are building AI agents, including Hippocratic AI (healthcare), Cyberhaven (data security), and Parloa (customer support). 
• Newer unicorns generate 83% more revenue per employee than older ones, with $814K per employee on average, compared to the $446K average across all unicorns. This reflects automation-first approaches and leaner operations that avoid the operational bloat older unicorns accumulated during their growth phases. For example, among unicorns born in 2025, the company with the highest revenue per employee is soft drink company Olipop ($1.2M/employee), followed by AI sales agent unicorn Clay ($1M/employee).
• Consumer and fintech companies are most primed to exit, boasting the highest M&A probability scores among the top Mosaic-scoring companies. While payments company PPRO tops the list with a 53% probability of getting acquired in the next 2 years, consumer & retail companies dominate the middle tier with ID.me (41%), Cart.com (33%), and Vestiaire Collective (31%), suggesting acquirers see solutions like identity verification, e-commerce infrastructure, and marketplace platforms as prime M&A targets.

CBI customers: Dive into data on every unicorn

Market map of billion-dollar startups

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Now, we’re examining the critical metrics behind these winners, revealing potential acquisition targets, partnership opportunities, and emerging competitors before they reshape the market.

Below, we analyzed the 100 winners to understand how the cohort stacks up, the markets we’re seeing emerge, top investors in AI, and more.

Learn more about the AI 100 here

Some highlights from our analysis: 

• AI infrastructure shows a maturity gap despite massive funding. Despite the already enormous amount of capital raised in this category, AI infrastructure still has overall low Commercial Maturity Scores and sees a lot of early-stage activity with a specific focus on efficiency. These AI 100 winners are betting on next-generation solutions like specialized AI chips, novel computing architectures with reduced energy consumption and optimized inference, and infrastructure designed for multimodal workloads that current systems can’t efficiently handle. 
• Autonomous vehicles are accelerating beyond the hype cycle. The auto & mobility market ranks third by Mosaic score, with companies gaining significant commercial traction following Waymo‘s recent success in scaling its robotaxi operations. This momentum validates years of R&D investment and suggests we’re entering a new phase of AV deployment. Read more in our recent autonomous vehicle analysis.
• Multimodal AI is driving the biggest breakthroughs. Voice AI platform Cartesia leads the largest year-over-year Mosaic score jump (+321), alongside other companies pushing beyond text-only models toward integrated voice, vision, and reasoning capabilities. This shift represents the next evolution of AI, especially for embodied AI systems like humanoids, moving from single-modality tools toward systems that can understand and generate across multiple forms of media simultaneously. 

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According to the World Bank, 90% of businesses worldwide qualify as small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs — also known as small- and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs), and they account for about half of global GDP. But in a Federal Reserve survey from 2023, only 34% of US-based small businesses said they currently accept digital or mobile payments, pointing to just one of the many openings for digitization in the US and abroad. 

Financial institutions and private tech companies alike are stepping up to the plate. 

Several major banks and leaders are expanding their small business services, including: PayPal, which is growing its ecosystem of SMB services; Fiserv, which is expecting revenue to double in the next 2 years for its small-merchant POS system, Clover; and Mastercard, which launched 10 new small business programs over the last year.

Meanwhile, the landscape of private tech companies developing financial solutions for SMBs continues to evolve. In the market map below, we identify 105 tech companies offering fintech tailored to SMBs across 14 different markets. We organized markets by major divisions in financial operations:

• HR: These solutions help small businesses manage employee benefits and payments. 
• Payments: Vendors in this category assist companies in managing payments both within and outside their business, integrating payment acceptance and processing into customer-facing platforms, and overseeing expenses. 
• Lending: These platforms and tools enable small businesses to access loans and other forms of financing for business growth.
• Banking: These companies help finance teams manage their businesses’ liquidity and track real-time cash positions.

Please click to enlarge.

To identify players for this market map, we included startups with a CB Insights Mosaic score (a proprietary measure of private company health and growth) of 400 or greater that raised funding since January 1, 2023. We then filtered that list based on whether companies have offerings targeting small and medium businesses. Categories are not mutually exclusive and are not intended to be exhaustive.

Key takeaways

1. Investors have concentrated SMB fintech funding on foundational solutions, like embedded payments infrastructure and spend management. Financial services infrastructure has established itself as a must-have for SMBs: embedded payments tools ($9.6B), spend management platforms ($3.5B), and enterprise cross-border payments ($3.4B) have collectively raised 77% of all funding across markets on the map since 2020. This dynamic highlights the need for SMBs to establish essential financial systems before layering new technologies on top.
2. Investors and financial institutions should focus on solutions that flexibly integrate with existing systems. Small businesses are willing to cherry-pick the solutions that will drive the highest ROI, rather than overhauling their entire tech stack. Within payments markets, accounts payable (AP) automation companies have attracted 3x more funding than AR automation companies ($2.2B vs. $733M) and, perhaps more significantly, more than 6x as many partnerships (287 vs. 44). These indicators not only point to AP automation’s clearer ROI for SMB users (who may have more payables to process than receivables), but also to SMBs’ selectiveness about where and when they invest in technology. For the tech companies themselves, emphasizing a range of integration partners will help prove the value and ease of adopting their solutions.
3. The growth in digital-native SMBs is driving early-stage growth and valuations for tech-enabled borrowing. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the 43 deals for revenue-based financing platforms since 2020 have been early-stage. The high share of early-stage activity suggests that there are still numerous entry points for disruptive fintechs, especially as the companies they serve — such as e-commerce, SaaS, and digital brands — continue to evolve. At the same time, investors are placing a high premium on revenue-based financing solutions: multiple SMB-focused companies in the market (Wayflyer, Pipe, and Clearco) are unicorns, compared to only 1 in the market for invoice finance (C2FO).

Market descriptions

HR

Earned wage access (EWA) platforms

The earned wage access (EWA) platforms market provides solutions for employees to access their earned wages before scheduled paydays, addressing financial stress and reducing reliance on high-cost credit options. These platforms integrate with existing payroll systems to verify earned wages and facilitate immediate transfers to employees’ accounts. Many providers also offer additional financial wellness tools such as budgeting assistance, savings features, and financial education resources. EWA platforms serve various industries including retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, typically targeting HR managers and payroll administrators seeking to improve employee retention and productivity.

Benefits administration

The benefits administration market provides solutions to help human resources teams manage their employee benefits programs. These platforms look across health insurance, wellness programs, and more. Providers often have features to support employee enrollment and participation analytics. The market is driven by the need for employers to attract and retain top talent, comply with government regulations, and provide a competitive and targeted benefits package.

Cash forecasting software

The cash forecasting software market uses historical data, financial algorithms, and predictive analytics to forecast future cash flows accurately. Cash forecasting software helps businesses improve cash flow visibility, identify potential cash gaps or surpluses, and mitigate liquidity risks. These solutions typically integrate with existing ERP systems, accounting software, and banking platforms to aggregate financial data. The platforms also facilitate scenario modeling, enabling organizations to simulate different financial scenarios and assess the impact on cash flows.

Enterprise cross-border payments platforms

The enterprise cross-border payments platforms market enables businesses to send and collect payments globally. Companies in this market offer currency exchange solutions that help users monitor exchange rates and hedge currency risk. Some companies also provide specialized solutions for different industries. In addition to enterprise solutions, many providers in this market also offer consumer-specific solutions.

Accounts receivable (AR) automation

The accounts receivable (AR) automation market streamlines invoicing and payment collection processes. Vendors provide APIs and software development kits that allow companies to embed accounts receivable functionalities into their enterprise resource planning software, customer relationship management systems, and other digital platforms. The tools allow automated invoicing, payment reminders and processing, cash application, credit management, and more.

Spend management platforms

The spend management platforms market enables businesses to efficiently manage and control their expenditures through integrated software solutions, including virtual corporate cards, expense management systems, procurement software, and budget tracking tools. Vendors use APIs and cloud-based platforms to integrate these solutions into existing financial and operational systems, allowing for real-time visibility into spending patterns, automated approval workflows, and enhanced compliance controls. These platforms streamline financial processes, reduce administrative burdens, and provide AI-powered insights, helping organizations optimize budgets, negotiate better terms with suppliers, and achieve cost savings.

Embedded payments infrastructure

The embedded payments infrastructure market provides API-based solutions that enable companies to integrate payment processing into non-banking digital platforms without building the infrastructure from scratch. These solutions use APIs and software development kits to embed payment functionalities into software applications, websites, IoT devices, and digital ecosystems. Companies in this market offer features including simplified integration, fraud detection, subscription management, and customized security parameters. The technology primarily serves e-commerce, SaaS platforms, marketplaces, and financial institutions looking to enhance user experience and monetize transactions.

Buy now pay later (BNPL) — B2B payments

The buy now pay later (BNPL) — B2B payments market offers flexible financing options for businesses to enhance their purchasing power and manage their working capital and cash flow by acquiring goods or services immediately and paying for them in installments over time. BNPL solutions in the B2B market provide streamlined application processes, quick approvals, and transparent terms for businesses to make purchases and manage their payments efficiently. These solutions typically include online platforms, embedded finance tools, or integrated payment systems that enable point-of-sale financing decisions. Key features include flexible payment terms, automated credit decisioning, and integration with existing procurement and financial systems to provide businesses with tailored payment plans.

Accounts payable (AP) automation

The accounts payable automation market allows businesses to streamline and automate invoice processing and payment activities. Vendors provide platforms that integrate with existing enterprise resource planning systems and accounting software through APIs and software development kits. These platforms automate invoice capture and matching, data extraction, approval workflows, and payment processing, reducing manual tasks and minimizing errors. This integration improves operational efficiency, enhances cash flow management, strengthens vendor relationships, and supports compliance with financial regulations.

Lending

Lending marketplaces

The lending marketplaces market includes online platforms that connect lenders and borrowers through digital technologies. These platforms use data analytics, automation, and AI to streamline the lending process and provide access to credit for individuals and small businesses who may be underserved by traditional financial institutions. The market serves both borrowers seeking competitive loan options and lenders looking to expand their customer base and optimize lending rates. These platforms typically offer features such as loan comparison tools, financial education resources, simplified application processes, and tailored services for specific customer segments.

Revenue-based financing platforms

The revenue-based financing platforms market offers an alternative funding approach where businesses exchange a percentage of future revenues for upfront capital without traditional equity dilution or fixed-interest debt. These platforms use proprietary algorithms and data analytics to evaluate financial health, growth potential, and creditworthiness to determine funding amounts and repayment terms. Primary users include e-commerce companies, SaaS businesses, and digital-native ventures with predictable revenue streams. Key features include automated underwriting processes, flexible repayment schedules tied to business performance, and rapid funding decisions. These solutions enable businesses to fund marketing, inventory, product development, and operations while maintaining ownership control.

Trade & supply chain finance

The trade & supply chain finance market facilitates loans and financial instruments for businesses engaged in global trade, helping them optimize cash flows and mitigate risks associated with cross-border transactions. Vendors offer digital platforms with financing solutions such as letters of credit, invoice financing, and guarantees, leveraging technologies like blockchain, AI, and APIs to streamline operations. These solutions integrate with supply chain management systems and banking ecosystems to improve transparency, enhance operational efficiency, and accelerate financial settlements, enabling businesses to strengthen trade relationships and expand globally.

Invoice finance

The invoice finance market provides technology solutions that enable businesses to access funds against their unpaid invoices. Through APIs and user-friendly software, these platforms connect companies needing immediate cash flow with funders willing to advance payments on outstanding invoices. Solutions range from dedicated invoice financing platforms to broader financial management systems with invoice finance capabilities. These technologies simplify invoice processing, enhance transparency, and expedite funding timelines while reducing paperwork burden. The market includes factoring services, invoice discounting platforms, early payment programs, and integrated financial operation systems that facilitate better cash flow management.

Treasury & cash management solutions

The treasury & cash management solutions market provides software and platforms for treasurers, CFOs, and finance teams to manage liquidity and gain real-time cash position visibility. These solutions connect directly to bank accounts, aggregate financial data, and deliver actionable insights in a centralized platform. Key capabilities include payment automation, cash flow forecasting, fraud protection, and bank connectivity APIs. The market helps organizations streamline financial operations, reduce manual processes, and enhance decision-making through automated transaction tagging and AI-powered analytics.

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In partnership with Stablecon, CB Insights has created a market map to help enterprises and investors identify high-growth markets and companies within the stablecoin ecosystem. 

After analyzing 600+ companies, we selected 172 recently funded players that demonstrate strong momentum — as measured by CB Insights’ Mosaic score, which assesses private-company health and growth potential based on funding data, personnel, market strength, and online sentiment. We then mapped these companies across 8 categories based on their primary focus.

Please click to enlarge.

CBI customers: Get data on 400+ stablecoin companies in the Expert Collection

Key takeaways

1. Stablecoins are laying the foundation for a new era of crypto-native banking

Stablecoins are solving a key obstacle to cryptocurrency adoption: volatility. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, stablecoins maintain consistent value through ties to underlying assets.

This stability has attracted major players in traditional finance: Mastercard and Visa now enable stablecoin transactions, while established banks Societe Generale and Vantage Bank have begun issuing their own stablecoins. Established blockchain infrastructure providers like Zero Hash and Fireblocks (founded in 2017 and 2018, respectively) are facilitating this mainstream adoption by providing technology geared toward enabling traditional financial institutions to integrate stablecoin capabilities.

Wallets & custodial solutions have experienced the highest average headcount growth (83%) of any market map segment over the past year. Examples include Littio and Open Settlements, which offer custodial services that store and manage stablecoins on behalf of consumers while providing traditional banking features like payments and transfers. Another notable player is KAST, a stablecoin account provider that has increased its headcount by 10x YoY (to more than 40 employees) and secured $10M in funding in December 2024. KAST offers cards compatible with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ATMs, and recently announced plans to evolve into a full-fledged on-chain bank.

Stablecoin issuers are also developing innovative approaches to address the limitations of USD-pegged stablecoins, such as Ampleforth’s cost-of-living-indexed stablecoins that adjust for inflation and Ethena’s synthetic stablecoins that don’t require traditional banking reserves. Stablecoin issuers represent the largest category on the market map by number of companies and have the highest average M&A probability (24%) among segments. This signals high consolidation potential as the market matures and highlights the strategic value of stablecoin issuance to established financial players.

2. Liquidity & yield use cases are transforming stablecoins from passive stores of value into high-growth financial instruments

Stablecoins are evolving into yield-bearing tools and liquidity products, expanding beyond their traditional role as safer alternatives to high-risk cryptocurrencies. For example, established stablecoin issuer Paxos recently introduced a yield-bearing stablecoin, Lift Dollar (USDL). And following its $1.1B acquisition of Bridge last fall, Stripe added payment capabilities for Bridge’s USDB stablecoin, which generates yield through backing by BlackRock money market funds.

The liquidity & yield category, which includes liquidity mining, lending services, and yield-bearing stablecoins, has attracted $2.3B in funding across 40 deals over the last 12 months — the most funding of any category. Although $2B of this was a flexible, scalable credit line for institutional crypto lender and stablecoin issuer Avalon Labs, the funding intensity signals strong investor interest in this nascent category — the liquidity & yield category has the lowest Commercial Maturity score of all markets, with companies averaging Level 2: Validating (i.e., introducing their products to the market through validation and testing).

The category’s growth potential is best exemplified by StakeStone, a cross-chain liquidity protocol that has secured 7 funding rounds since early 2024, while more than doubling its Mosaic score in just over 6 months (from 444 in November 2024 to over 900 in May 2025).

3. Cross-border payments are becoming the breakout use case for stablecoins, especially outside the US

International payments have emerged as a crucial application for stablecoins, with every company in the payments processing category supporting cross-border payments infrastructure. The role of stablecoins varies by region: in countries with robust traditional banking, they serve as specialized alternatives to fiat currency for specific use cases, while they provide more affordable and accessible USD alternatives in emerging markets.

This global appeal is reflected in investment patterns — among companies included in this market map, those based outside the US attracted more than half of all deals in the past 12 months. Major payment companies such as Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe have also entered this space through stablecoin card payments, transaction settlement, and analytics projects. This entry by established payment giants signals mainstream validation of stablecoin infrastructure and suggests that digital currency payments are moving from experimental to essential for competitive positioning in global payments.

The payments processing segment is relatively early in its commercial development, with half of the companies in this category still in the first 2 levels of Commercial Maturity (developing or piloting their products). However, these companies demonstrate significant growth potential — based on CB Insights’ estimates, we expect them to receive $454M in funding in 2025. That’s more than 10x the $45M they received in 2024, when excluding Stripe’s $694M round (the payments processor had not yet launched stablecoin payments at that point).

Market descriptions

Mosaic scores are dynamic and subject to change. Mosaic scores as of May 2025.

Analytics & monitoring

Platforms, tools, and services that track, analyze, and provide insights into stablecoin operations, transactions, and market behaviors. These solutions help users, regulators, and stakeholders understand stablecoin performance, ensure compliance, manage risk, and make data-driven decisions.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $18M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 4
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Chainalysis (861 Mosaic): Transaction monitoring and risk intelligence for blockchain companies
  • Elliptic (773 Mosaic): Transaction monitoring and analytics for stablecoin issuers
  • Coin Metrics (713 Mosaic): Blockchain data and analytics, including dedicated stablecoin coverage

Blockchain infrastructure

Fundamental technological layers, networks, and services that enable stablecoins to operate effectively across multiple blockchain environments. These infrastructure providers deliver the essential technical foundation upon which stablecoin systems are built, operated, and scaled.

The companies in this category offer critical components of the technical stack required for stablecoins to function effectively, including layer-1 blockchains, oracle networks, cross-chain messaging protocols, scaling solutions, and developer tools.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $51M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 10
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Securitize (917 Mosaic): Digital securities issuance platform for tokenization of assets, including the frxUSD stablecoin in partnership with Frax
  • Aptos Labs (866 Mosaic): Layer-1 blockchain which supports Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol and USDC on-ramp services via Stripe
  • TON (851 Mosaic): Layer-1 blockchain which supports stablecoin payments

Enterprise & B2B

These platforms, services, and solutions are specifically designed for businesses to integrate, manage, and use stablecoins within their financial operations. They frequently support use cases such as B2B payments, payroll, treasury operations, and customer-facing payment options, while managing the associated regulatory, accounting, and operational requirements.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $125M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 15
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • BVNK (844 Mosaic): B2B and B2C stablecoin payments infrastructure including an embedded wallet for cross-border fiat and stablecoin transactions
  • OwlTing (832 Mosaic): Its OwlPay solution includes wallet and fiat conversion services geared towards B2B stablecoin transactions
  • Rise (803 Mosaic): A cross-border fiat and stablecoin payroll solution

Exchanges/On & off ramps

Platforms and services that facilitate the conversion between stablecoins and other assets, including fiat currencies (e.g., USD, EUR) and other cryptocurrencies. These services provide the essential bridge between traditional financial systems and the stablecoin ecosystem.

The companies in this category include both centralized exchanges with stablecoin support and specialized on/off-ramp services designed to make it easier for users to enter and exit the stablecoin ecosystem across different regions and payment methods.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $2.3B
• Total deals within last 12 months: 9
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Binance (931 Mosaic): Crypto exchange which recently entered a strategic partnership with Circle, expanding USDC availability to consumers and adopting USDC for its corporate treasury; received a historic $2B investment in the form of stablecoin from MGX earlier this year
  • MoonPay (895 Mosaic): On- and off-ramp and crypto payments solution that recently partnered with Mastercard to enable stablecoin payments via its recent acquisition of Iron (APIs for stablecoin infrastructure)
  • Klickl (849 Mosaic): Crypto and stablecoin infrastructure including exchange, custody, payments, and off-ramp services

Issuers

Organizations and protocols that create, distribute, and manage stablecoins. These issuers are responsible for the provision and ongoing operations of stablecoins in the market.

The companies in this category represent diverse approaches to stablecoin issuance, including fiat-backed stablecoins, crypto-collateralized stablecoins, algorithmic stablecoins, and regional currency stablecoins, each with their own mechanisms for maintaining stability and addressing specific market needs.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $279M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 36
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Ripple (905 Mosaic): Established blockchain infrastructure provider that launched the RLUSD stablecoin in December 2024 and introduced it into cross-border payments in 2025 
  • Circle (903 Mosaic): Issuer of the USDC and EURC stablecoins, recently introducing a stablecoin orchestration layer for global payments
  • World Liberty Financial (871 Mosaic): Issuer of the USD1 stablecoin introduced in March 2025, which is the currency of choice for MGX’s $2B investment in Binance

Liquidity & yield

Platforms, protocols, and services that enable users to deploy stablecoins productively to earn returns, provide market liquidity, or access lending/borrowing capabilities. These solutions transform stablecoins from purely transactional instruments into yield-generating assets.

Providers range from those focused on capital preservation to more aggressive yield-seeking methods, catering to different risk appetites within the stablecoin ecosystem.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $2.3B
• Total deals within last 12 months: 40
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • StakeStone (918 Mosaic): Cross-chain liquidity protocol which recently partnered with World Liberty Financial to support USD1
  • Flowdesk (834 Mosaic): Market maker providing trading infrastructure, recently appointed to provide liquidity for Societe Generale’s EURCV stablecoin
  • Ethena (830 Mosaic): Its synthetic stablecoin USDe, backed by other cryptocurrencies, offers greater opportunities for staking/yield generation than a fiat-backed stablecoin

Payments processing

Platforms and infrastructure that facilitate the use of stablecoins for everyday commercial and personal transactions. These solutions enable businesses and individuals to send, receive, and process stablecoin payments efficiently and securely.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $187M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 23
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Stripe (929 Mosaic): Payments processor that recently rolled out stablecoin business accounts across 100 countries and partnered with Ramp on stablecoin-based corporate cards
  • Rain (857 Mosaic): Card issuance and payments platform for stablecoin transactions
  • Mesh (854 Mosaic): Crypto payments network that recently introduced crypto-to-stablecoin retail payments via Apple Pay

Wallets & custodians

Applications, platforms, and services that enable users to securely store, manage, and transact with stablecoins. These solutions range from self-custody wallets where users control their private keys to custodial services where providers manage crypto assets on behalf of users.

Approaches to stablecoin management range from hardware wallets and mobile applications for individual users to sophisticated custodial infrastructure for enterprise clients.

• Total funding within last 12 months: $237M
• Total deals within last 12 months: 19
• Top companies by Mosaic:
  • Fireblocks (912 Mosaic): Its blockchain solutions include custodial white-labeled wallets, and it recently partnered with Chainlink Labs to create a stablecoin solution for banks
  • Phantom (901 Mosaic): Multichain wallet supporting cryptocurrencies including stablecoins
  • BitGo (899 Mosaic): Offers custodial solutions, including stablecoin reserve assets management for USD1, and has stated intent to launch a stablecoin of its own

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We’ve used generative AI, combined with our proprietary data on these companies and their markets, to create the following scouting reports — in just one click on CB Insights.

Download the book to see all 40+ scouting reports. And stay tuned for our upcoming Stablecoin market map, which we’ll unveil live at Stablecon on May 29.

CB Insights customers can download the book using the left-hand sidebar.

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Now, our Book of Scouting Reports offers in-depth analysis on every single one of the AI 100 winners, from infrastructure to horizontal to vertical applications.

Combining CB Insights’ proprietary data and AI, scouting reports provide insight into each company’s:

• Funding history
• Headcount
• Key takeaways (including opportunities and threats)
• Commercial Maturity score
• Mosaic score

Plus, the analysts behind this year’s AI 100 provide their perspective on every one of the winners.

Download the book to see all 100 scouting reports.

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