The US AI Funding Boom Continues to Burn! 49 Companies Have Secured Millions of Dollars in 2025, OpenAI Raises 40 Billion Dollars in a Single Round, Setting a New Record

2024 was a landmark year for the AI industry in the United States and around the world, and the funding boom in 2025 seems to be even more intense. Latest data shows that within the first 8 months of 2025, 49 U.S. AI startups have completed single rounds of financing exceeding $100 million, with several companies securing rounds exceeding $1 billion.

AIbase report According to TechCrunch's data, 49 AI startups completed financing rounds of over $100 million in 2024, including three companies that secured multiple large funding rounds and seven companies that raised $1 billion or more in a single round. In just the first 8 months of 2025, this number has already been reached, fully demonstrating the fervor of the AI investment market.

OpenAI Achieves Record-Breaking Funding, Valuation Surges to $300 Billion

In this funding frenzy, the most eye-catching event was OpenAI's record-breaking funding round on March 31. This $4 billion funding round, led by SoftBank, pushed the valuation of the ChatGPT developer to an astonishing $300 billion. Renowned investment institutions such as Thrive Capital, Microsoft, and Coatue also participated in this round, highlighting the strong confidence of the capital market in the generative AI field.

Following closely behind is Anthropic, an AI research and large language model company, which completed a $3.5 billion Series E funding round on March 3, raising its valuation to $61.5 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and General Catalyst.

Medical AI Sector Is Highly Favored, Several Companies Reach Valuations Over $1 Billion

Notably, the medical AI sector stood out significantly in this funding surge. On August 20, EliseAI, a medical and housing automation platform, completed a $250 million Series E funding round, reaching a valuation of $2.2 billion, led by the well-known venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Ambience Healthcare, focusing on AI medical operating systems, completed a $243 million Series C funding round in July, led jointly by Oak HC/FT and Andreessen Horowitz. Meanwhile, the medical AI unicorn Abridge completed a $300 million Series E funding round in June, reaching a valuation of $5.3 billion.

OpenEvidence, the developer of an AI clinical search tool, also did not lag behind, completing a $210 million Series B funding round on July 15, reaching a valuation of $3.5 billion, led by Kleiner Perkins and GV.

Programming Tools and Infrastructure Sectors Rise Strongly

The AI programming tools sector also performed outstandingly. Anysphere, the developer of the Cursor programming tool, completed a $900 million Series C funding round in June, reaching a valuation of nearly $10 billion, led by Thrive Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global.

Enterprise search startup Glean completed a $150 million Series F funding round on June 10, led by Wellington Management, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins, reaching a valuation of $7.25 billion.

Infrastructure and Hardware Companies Also Remain Hot

The AI infrastructure sector also experienced a surge in investment. Lambda completed a $480 million Series D funding round on February 19, reaching a valuation of nearly $2.5 billion, led jointly by SGW and Andra Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, G Squared, and ARK Invest.

EnCharge AI, a hardware startup specializing in AI inference acceleration, completed a $100 million Series B funding round on February 13, led by Tiger Global, with participation from Scout Ventures, Samsung Venture Capital, and RTX Ventures.

New Areas Emerge, Full of Innovation

In addition to traditional AI application areas, some emerging niche sectors have begun to attract capital attention. LMArena, an AI model benchmarking tool, completed a $100 million seed funding round on May 21, reaching a valuation of $600 million, led jointly by Andreessen Horowitz and UC Investments.

Harmonic, focusing on a mathematical reasoning engine, completed a $100 million Series B funding round on July 10, led by Kleiner Perkins, reaching a valuation of $875 million.

AIbase observation From this funding list, it can be seen that AI investment in 2025 has shown several clear characteristics: first, the scale of funding is generally large, with single rounds of over $100 million becoming the norm; second, valuation levels continue to rise, with multiple companies surpassing the $1 billion threshold; third, application areas are increasingly diversified, from general AI to vertical domain applications, from software to hardware, with outstanding performances across various niche sectors.

With the continuous maturation of AI technology and the deepening of commercial applications, it is expected that more AI startups will secure substantial financing in the remaining part of 2025, and this AI investment boom is likely to continue until the end of the year. For the entire AI industry, sufficient financial support will further accelerate technological innovation and product iteration, driving the large-scale application of artificial intelligence in more scenarios.