For the first three months of 2025, crypto venture funding in the U.S. reached around $861 million. This amount, however, was overshadowed by artificial intelligence’s massive $20 billion funding, as per data from Pitchbook. The data indicates a clear investor preference towards AI.
The U.S. saw 795 deals closed in AI from January to March, with significant deals like Databricks’ $15.3 billion round and Anthropic’s $2 billion raise making headlines.
Comparatively, the largest crypto deal was Abu Dhabi’s MGX investing $2 billion in Binance, marking the first institutional placement in the crypto exchange. Other noteworthy deals include a $82 million raise from Mesh, a $70 million round from Bitwise, and a $58 million offering from Sygnum.
Previous reports by Pitchbook indicate that AI startups secured one-third of global VC investment in 2024, totaling $131.5 billion. This was spread across 4,318 VC deals, with nearly a quarter of new startups being AI companies, compared to crypto’s $4.9 billion across 706 deals.
Analysis: Has AI overshadowed crypto in venture funding?
With blockbuster rounds from VCs in the AI sector, headline-grabbing activities such as Sam Altman of OpenAI seeking trillions, and the rise of AI from a niche technology to a household name thanks to transformer models, it appears that investors are leaning towards AI over crypto.
Historical data consistently shows that VCs have favored AI over crypto, with AI and machine learning attracting increasing funding over the years, as per Statista data. Funding for AI grew from $670 million in 2011 to $36 billion in 2020.
There was only one year where crypto surpassed AI in funding, but this comes with a caveat: narrower AI categories like ABI Research‘s $22.3 billion estimate in 2021 suggest that crypto briefly outpaced AI funding during a bullish crypto cycle before AI funding surged to over $100 billion by 2024.
It’s important to note that traditional venture capital metrics do not account for unique crypto features like airdrops, which inject new capital into projects and inflate token prices, boosting project treasuries.
A recent report by Dragonfly revealed that between 2020 and 2024, the 11 largest airdrops generated $7 billion. While this may not bridge the gap between AI and crypto funding, it highlights alternative methods of raising capital beyond traditional VC routes.
