And as was the case in the Q4 as well, Q1 was well above the prior five quarters by funding amounts, signaling that European venture funding may be gaining momentum.

Table of contents

• AI above 50%
• UK and France grew YoY
• Europe by stage
• In summary
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Still, Europe saw more capital going into fewer companies in Q1, with deal volume plummeting 40% year over year. Much of the decline was at seed stage (down 44%) and early stage (down 30%), while late-stage deal volume was in-line with the previous four quarters.

AI above 50%

Funding to Europe-based AI startups increased significantly last quarter, reaching $9.2 billion, or more than half of total venture funding to the region. That marks the sector’s highest proportion in a quarter on record.

The largest four rounds to startups based in Europe in Q1 were for AI-related companies. Data center builder , autonomous driving developer , and frontier lab for physical AI raised more than a billion each, and AI legaltech ’s funding totaled more than $500 million.

UK and France grew YoY

Startups from the U.K. and France raised more funding in Q1, totaling $7.4 billion and  $2.9 billion, respectively. Germany-based startups raised $1.9 billion, flat year over year.

France has emerged as the European leader for AI frontier labs. Last quarter, it saw Paris-based , founded by former AI chief , raise $1 billion in the continent’s largest seed funding round on record. The deal also marked only the second billion-dollar-plus funding deal for a European frontier lab, following s $2 billion round last year.

Europe by stage

In Q1, late-stage funding to Europe-based startups nearly doubled from a year ago. The largest rounds were across a variety of sectors, including AI hardware, fintech, agentic AI, productivity software, sensors, defense, e-commerce and energy.

A total of $9.2 billion was invested at late-stage across 83 deals, up 91% by amounts year over year.

Early-stage funding to the region’s startups fell from a year earlier — by around 20% — Crunchbase data shows. Early-stage investment totaled $5.3 billion in Q1 across more than 240 funding rounds. Within early-stage funding, larger Series A rounds predominated in semiconductors, energy and healthcare.

Seed funding reached $3.1 billion in Q1 across more than 790 deals. The funding total was up 50% year over year, but largely due to the $1 billion round for Advanced Machine Intelligence.

In summary

Larger rounds into critical sectors in AI drove European startup funding up in Q1. A mix of Europe- and U.S.-based investors led the largest fundings last quarter into AI infrastructure, frontier labs, autonomous systems and applications.

Overall, Europe is in-line with global trends as capital concentrates into the largest deals in sectors that are surging due to AI.

Related Crunchbase query:

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of April 2, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration:

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

While no billion-dollar rounds led this week’s list, we nonetheless saw a variety of startups in industries ranging from semiconductors to aerospace to biotech raise sizable rounds. The week’s biggest deal was $400 million for SiFive, a semiconductor startup challenging incumbent with chip designs built on an open rather than proprietary standard.

1. , $400M, semiconductors: San Mateo, California-based semiconductor startup SiFive raised a $400 million Series G round led by . SiFive makes the blueprints used by companies such as to develop their own internal chip designs, on an open standard called RISC-V. CEO Reuters he expects the raise to be SiFive’s last funding round before an IPO, though didn’t say when an offering would take place.

2. , $200M, aviation: Hermeus, an El Segundo, California-based startup developing autonomous military aircraft, raised $200 million in equity in a -led round. The company, which is developing what it says will be the fastest unmanned defense aircraft, also raised $150 million in debt as part of the round, which pushes its valuation to $1 billion. Other investors in the deal include , and

3. $137M, biotechnology: San Diego-based Sidewinder, a biotech startup developing cancer drugs to target difficult-to-treat tumors, raised a $137 million Series B led by and . The company is developing next-generation cancer drugs called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which are designed to act like “guided missiles” by using engineered antibodies to deliver toxic payloads directly into tumor cells. The company said its new funding will be used to push its lead drug candidates into clinical trials.

4. , $125M, AI infrastructure: Palo Alto, California-based Aria Networks raised $125 million in a -led Series A funding round. The company develops an AI-driven networking platform that monitors, analyzes and optimizes data center performance.

5. , $111.7M, aerospace: Starfish Space, a Seattle-based startup developing and manufacturing autonomous space vehicles that perform in-orbit, satellite servicing missions, raised $111.7 million. The Series B round was led by , and . Starfish’s spacecraft dock to satellites already in orbit to service and reposition them. They can also remove defunct satellites and debris from space.

6. (tied) , $100M, biotechnology: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Stipple Bio raised a $100 million Series A round to advance its precision cancer therapies. The round was led by , and . Stipple aims to develop highly targeted cancer treatments that selectively attack cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

6. (tied) , $100M, health insurance: led the $100 million Series E for Chapter, a New York-based startup offering a Medicare navigation platform that provides advisory services for seniors seeking health coverage. Other investors include ​​, and 1.

8. , $85M, fintech: Modus, a Philadelphia-based startup, raised $85 million in a -led seed and Series A round. The startup describes itself as a tech‑enabled audit platform that acquires CPA firms and equips them with AI‑driven audit tools to deliver higher‑quality audits. and also participated in the deal.

9. , $80M, medical devices: and led the $80 million Series C for Menlo Park, California-based Endovascular Engineering, also called E2, which has developed a device called Hēlo for the treatment of venous thromboembolism, or VTE. The company secured clearance for Hēlo in December.

10. , $80M, biotechnology: Boston-based Life Sciences, which aims to develop drugs to promote longevity and find treatments for age-related diseases, says it raised $80 million in Series D funding. The company says it will use the funding to advance human trials of its cellular rejuvenation therapy, called ER-100, which aims to make older, damaged cells act younger again. Investors in the round were not disclosed. The company has previously been backed by , , , and.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of April 4-10. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12 billion across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per Crunchbase . That’s a 5% increase in dollars raised compared to the $11.4 billion raised across 1,097 — or 31.5% fewer — deals during the same time period in 2025.

This trend signals larger deal sizes. Indeed, late-stage or growth funding in the first quarter of 2026 totaled $6.9 billion, up 8% compared to $6.4 billion raised at those stages in the 2025 first quarter.

However, sequentially, the $12 billion raised is down 33% compared to the fourth quarter of 2025, when fintech startups raised $17.8 billion globally. The $6.9 billion raised in late-stage or growth funding is also down markedly — by 43% — compared to the $12.1 billion raised by fintech startups in Q4 2025.

The trend in the first quarter also mirrors what we saw in 2025 as a whole, with global venture funding to fintech startups climbing to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals.

Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $53.8 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase . That’s an approximately 29.3% increase from 2024’s total of $41.6 billion raised.

US booms

U.S.-based startups have historically raised more fintech funding than any other country in the world, and the first quarter of 2026 was no different.

Of the $12 billion raised by startups globally, just over half — or $6.3 billion — flowed to fintech companies based in the U.S. That was an impressive 47% increase compared to the $4.3 billion raised by U.S. fintech startups in the 2025 first quarter. However, it was down 50% from the $12.6 billion that U.S. financial technology startups raised in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The United Kingdom was the second-largest recipient of venture capital, with startups in the region raising a total of $1.2 billion. India came in third, raising $900 million.

Big deals for unicorns

Several fintech startups raised nine-figure rounds in the first quarter, with some doubling their valuations since their last venture financings.

Predictions marketplace was the largest recipient of capital in the first quarter. In March, the company doubled its valuation to $22 billion in just three months with a $1 billion raise led by . The New York-based startup had just raised $1 billion in Series E funding at an $11 billion valuation in December.

In February, , a digital savings platform, raised $385 million in a Series E funding round co-led by and . The New York-based startup said its new valuation was $2 billion, double it achieved when raising its $125 million Series D round in December 2023.

And in January, , which is building infrastructure for payments with stablecoins, raised $250 million in a Series C funding round led by . Its post-money valuation was $1.95 billion, up 17x from last March.

Investors remain bullish

, partner and head of U.S. at , said his firm has been investing at a slightly slower pace so far in 2026 than in years past. But he cited it as “more a quirk of deal flow” and where it gets conviction, rather than a decision to slow the firm’s investing pace.

“It’s certainly true that macroeconomics and geopolitics play a role,” he told Crunchbase News, “but mostly we’re just focused on finding high-conviction companies to back.”

QED is extremely bullish on the application layer for AI in fintech and stablecoin opportunities, and has backed several startups that Gerety said “harness the power of LLMs with the security and reliability guarantees that finance needs.” (, which raised a $45 million Series B in January and is building an AI assistant for financial advisers, is one of those companies.)

“Just in the last few months, agents are now actually able to be effective in many processing tasks, but the stakes in finance are too high for LLMs to conquer financial workflows alone,” Gerety said. “Finance runs on trust, not probability.”

Looking ahead, he said QED remains bullish on fintech overall for the year. Part of the excitement is around the fact that larger companies are “transforming” their operations with agentic workflows, Gerety noted.

“More and more transformation is moving from the ‘co-pilot’ phase, and we’re moving into the ‘OpenClaw’ phase, when reasoning agents will start to actually do all the work that was too tedious and slow to be done manually,” he added.

The geopolitical situation will likely hinder some companies from taking the IPO plunge, in Gerety’s view, although a few companies in QED’s portfolios are “bubbling.”

, partner at , said his firm is on track to make eight to 10 core investments in Seed or Series A companies this year — about the same number as in previous years.

“We’re investing in AI-enabled applications while maintaining patience and focus in our deployment of capital,” he said. “We look for durable, enduring businesses that we believe will withstand the current hype cycle and investment frenzy.”

While TTV is investing in AI-enabled companies, Kapur said it also agrees with that “an AI reset is coming.”

“Many investors have already made their money by getting in on the ground floor, and others are trying to replicate their success,” he told Crunchbase News. “We’re focused on investing in the application layer of AI, and we’re still in the early days with more widespread prosperity and a democratization of enterprise value creation yet to come.”

In particular, TTV sees the biggest opportunity in early-stage AI-native companies that are solving problems in mission-critical workflows “while building durable moats.”

“These platforms will earn the right to be distribution endpoints for financial products … and are even more valuable in the age of AI,” he said.

He believes we may see some fintech IPOs in 2026, but that they will largely depend on how the potential mega IPOs (from the likes of , and ) perform.

“If those IPOs underperform, others may opt to stay private longer,” Kapur said.

Looking ahead, he predicts we’ll continue to see accelerated adoption of AI in financial services, first through straightforward applications, then more operationally complex use cases.

“More broadly, we’re watching how the foundational LLMs further move up into the application layer, which is imperative to the long-term sustainability of their business models,” Kapur said. “We think financial services and fintech are unique enough categories where de novo startups and standalone businesses will beat platforms building experimental applications.”

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Fintech Funding Jumped 27% In 2025 With Fewer Deals But Bigger Checks
• Kalshi Secures $1B To Expand Predictions Market Platform
• Digital Savings Startup Vestwell Lands $385M, Doubles Valuation
• Stablecoin Startup Rain Raises $250M Series C at $1.95B Valuation – Its Third Round In Less Than A Year
• Exclusive: Zocks Raises $45M Series B From Lightspeed, QED For AI Assistant To Financial Advisers

Illustration:

“I recognized both the massive potential AI brought to the tax world, as well as the risks to firms and clients by making mistakes and hallucinations,” he told Crunchbase News.

The accounting industry has historically been slow to adopt new technologies. As of today, the majority of small to mid-sized accounting firms — which make up 90% of the market — remain stuck in a cycle of manual data entry.

Addressing both the opportunities — and risks — that came with advances in AI, Haase started building , a tax prep automation startup, on the side in 2023. Rather than targeting the self-prep market, like does, or the mega-enterprise firms that can afford $15,000-per-return software, Juno was built for the underserved SMB accounting firm.

“We continuously ‘dog fed’ the early Juno prototypes into the firm to see what worked best, what slowed things down, and to make it the most efficient tax preparation platform as possible,” Haase said.

It took about a year and a half just to build integrations. “We had to do a bunch of hacky things to be able to work with the existing tax software,” he explained, “because your typical tax software is actually around 15 to 20 years old and they don’t have public APIs.”

By 2024, Juno had launched a co-pilot. Then, in July 2025, it had a tax product. The startup began onboarding other tax firms, growing to nearly 500 customers over the past year. Last year, Haase sold his accounting firm to focus on growing Juno full-time.

Today, he’s announcing that San Diego-based Juno has raised $12 million in a seed funding round led by , including participation from and .

AI to help humans ‘be the advisers they were trained to be’

What makes Juno different from others in the market, Haase believes, is that it operates on the premise that, at least for the foreseeable future, human tax preparers should be the ones driving the tax-return preparation process.

“A business or high-net-worth tax return requires hundreds of calculations, edge cases, deductions and more,” said Haase, who holds an MBA from . “AI simply can’t do that with the 100% accuracy required not to get audited or charged with tax fraud.”

Describing much of the manual work that most accountants must perform to complete returns as extremely tedious, Haase acknowledges that it’s also very easy for accountants to make mistakes that could prove very costly.

“In school, if you get a 93, an A, you get all the credits,” he said. “But on a tax return, if you have a 99%, you fail, and your client could pay the price in penalties.”

In a nutshell, Juno acts as the bridge between a client’s raw documents and the accountant’s filing software. It performs tasks like pulling data from IRS forms and even unstructured documents, such as business financial statements. Overall, it automates 90% of data entry across more than 90 document types while also flagging prior-year changes and inconsistencies for human validation.

The result is that a process that typically takes a human two to three hours is shrunk down to seven to 10 minutes, Haase estimates.

“We do 95% of a tax return in minutes, leaving the accountant to handle the strategic human decisions — the parts that actually save the client money,” he said.

While he declined to reveal hard revenue figures, Haase said that in just eight months, Juno grew to mid-seven-figure annual recurring revenue.

The startup sells on a per-return basis, starting around $45, dropping to the low $30s for high-volume firms.

‘s recent move into consumer taxes and OpenAI’s hiring of a tax director show that the bigger players are eyeing the tax market. But Haase doesn’t feel threatened.

“High-wealth individuals want assurance. If you’re paying $40,000 in taxes, you don’t want to ‘cross your fingers with a chatbot,” he said. “You want a human to talk to, someone who understands the context of your life.”

Juno isn’t trying to replace accountants, he added.

“It’s trying to rescue them from the data-entry basement so they can actually be the advisers they were trained to be,” Haase said.

The startup plans to roll out business returns soon, a move that Haase expects will significantly scale its customer base.

‘A huge, obvious pain point’

, co-founder and managing director of Bonfire Ventures, said he was drawn to invest in Juno because he believes the company is going after “a huge, obvious pain point in a category that hasn’t been meaningfully modernized in a long time.”

“The workflow pain is real, the labor dynamics make the timing right, and Dave brought exactly the kind of founder-market fit you hope to see,” Andelman told Crunchbase News via email. “He lived this problem before he built the company. That always matters.”

The investor believes that tax prep is a category where trust is crucial to product success.

“If you’re going to bring AI into that workflow, it has to be transparent, auditable, and built with a human in the loop,” Andelman added. “That’s what Juno understood early, and I think that’s a big part of why the product is resonating.”

Fintech startups, particularly those that apply AI to traditionally manual or burdensome processes, have benefited from increased investment in recent quarters. Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $53.8 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase . That’s a more than 29% increase from 2024’s total of $41.6 billion raised.

Related Crunchbase query:

Illustration:

For perspective, we charted out total investment, color-coded by stage, for the past 12 quarters below.

Of that total, $761 million went into late-stage and growth deals, up 158% compared to the $295 million that flowed into such deals in the first quarter of 2025. It’s also up 203% compared with the $251 million in late-stage and growth rounds that were raised by LatAm startups in the 2025 fourth quarter.

Table of contents

• Mexico leads
• Fewer deals
• Some big rounds
• Investor POV
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Mexico leads

Nearly one-third of the total amount raised in the first quarter went to one startup. Mexico City-based , an online used car marketplace, secured a $300 million Series F financing led by and in February.

Notably, mostly due to that outsized round, Mexican startups outperformed their Brazilian counterparts in the first quarter, raising a total of $404 million compared to Brazil’s $240 million.

Historically, Brazil has been the powerhouse in Latin America for venture capital funding. But it’s not the first time in recent quarters that Mexico has topped Latin America’s largest country. Mexico also raised more funding in the second quarter of 2025.

Overall, the first quarter marks only the second time since Q2 2012 that Mexican startups raised more venture capital than their Brazilian counterparts in Latin America, our data indicates.

Fewer deals

Round counts and total dollars raised decreased substantially sequentially and year over year across angel, seed and early stages. Of the $1.03 billion raised by Latin America’s startups in the first quarter, less than 9% — or $92 million — was raised across the angel and seed stages.

That compares to $161 million raised across those stages in the fourth quarter of 2025, and $152 million in the same first quarter last year.

Just over 17%, or $179 million, was raised at early stages, significantly lower than the $690 million raised in the fourth quarter and $472 million in the same period last year.

We expect the Q1 deal counts to rise somewhat over time, however, as seed rounds in particular are commonly reported weeks or months after they close.

Some big rounds

While Kavak’s round was the largest financing in Latin America in the first quarter, it was not the only nine-figure raise the region saw in Q1.

Argentinian fintech raised $195 million at a $3.2 billion valuation in March in a round led by .

Other large deals that took place in Q1 include:

• Mexico City-based , a financial app built around stablecoins, raised $70 million in a round co-led by and .
• Buenos Aires-based , a payments infrastructure startup, landed a $55 million Series C financing co-led by and.

Notably, the largest rounds included participation from high-profile global funds, including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital and Insight Partners.

Investor POV

, managing partner of New York-based , said his firm has made more than 60 investments in Latin America since 2022 — steadily increasing its investment pace every year from 11 deals in the region in 2023 to 20 in 2025.

In his view, many of the global investors who began putting more funding into Latin America’s startups in recent years are still writing checks there. However, he acknowledges that some “momentum” investors have slowed down.

Still, “almost all of the long-term smart capital investors have remained very active,” he said.

Last year was “all about stablecoins and fintech infrastructure” for the region. We should expect more of that this year, along with increased AI use across all sectors and strong enterprise growth in Brazil, he told Crunchbase News.

Brazil continues to be Endeavor Catalyst’s top market, but it is watching startups across the region, including in countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and even smaller markets such as Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay.

Endeavor Catalyst has reason to be bullish on Latin America. Startups it has backed in the region are among the top performers of the firm’s portfolio. More than one-third (34%) of its 2026 Outlier class, which comprise roughly the top 10% best performers in its network, are from Latin America, according to Taylor.

, general partner at São Paulo-based seed-stage firm , told Crunchbase News that his firm’s pace in Latin America has remained constant and “intentionally selective.”

“We’ve always believed that seed in Latin America works best when you’re deeply involved with a small number of exceptional founders and not try to index the market,” he noted.

But like many other investors, OneVC is also investing at an earlier stage.

“One notable shift is that, as founding teams move faster than ever, often reaching product-market signal with leaner teams and AI-native tooling,” Cartolano said, “pre-seed is taking a larger share of our investments, and we expect that to continue being the case for this cycle.”

Like Endeavor Catalyst, Brazil is OneVC’s primary market. It has a home court advantage, but as Cartolano notes, the country also has a lot going for it including being the largest economy in Latin America, one of the world’s most active early-adopter communities for new technology (, -native commerce, AI), and a regulatory environment — particularly in financial services — which in his view “that fosters innovation”

As a secondary focus, interestingly, his firm is tracking an increasing number of strong Latino founders relocating to the United States to build companies.

“We like that,” he said. “They combine deep operational instincts from LatAm with access to the largest addressable market and most liquid exit environment.”

He agrees with Taylor that global interest appears to be renewing in Latin America startups.

“There is no shortage of capital for the best companies in the region, regardless of the state, and we are seeing some large firms investing in LatAm for the first time or coming back after a long period,” he said.

And while fintech has historically dominated when it comes to venture funding in Latin America, Cartolano said that fintech is now unsurprisingly giving way to AI-first companies that sell services, particularly to enterprises.

“The broader market is also shifting from consumer-facing models toward B2B, as enterprise companies are more incentivized than ever to adopt new technologies,” he added. “OneVC is especially focused on GenAI companies that ‘sell work,’ replacing headcount and outsourced services with AI-driven delivery at a fraction of the cost.

Related reading:

• In Q2, Mexico Surpasses Brazil In Venture Dollars For First Time In Over A Decade

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of March 31, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration:

The fundraise includes $1 billion for KP22, a fund to back early-stage companies, and $2.5 billion targeted for growth-stage investments.

It’s a considerable increase in capital commitments compared to the last time the Silicon Valley-based firm raised a flagship fund, back in 2024. In that raise, Kleiner just over $2 billion for funds to back early- and later-stage startups.

This time around, Kleiner believes market fundamentals look particularly attractive for scaling up.

“The AI super-cycle is one of the most important company-building moments in our lifetimes, and we are still in the early innings,” its fundraising announcement states. Kleiner also notes that AI is enabling today’s startups to iterate and grow faster than in past cycles.

Founded in 1972, Kleiner has long been known as a cross-industry investor, active in virtually every popular sector for venture dealmaking. For its latest fund, the firm also identified a broad array of focus areas, including professional services, healthcare, autonomy, security, financial services and the physical economy.

Recent investments

Most recently, Kleiner, like most venture heavyweights, has been focused on AI startups. Beyond that, however, its portfolio companies are a highly varied lot.

To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to put together a list of the latest reported rounds in which it served as a lead or co-lead investor. It spans healthcare, accounting and cybersecurity, among other areas.

Large lead investments

While it’s active in seed- and early-stage dealmaking, Kleiner also leads quite a few larger rounds. Over the past year, it’s been lead investor in at least five valued at $150 million or more, which we list below.

Of these, the largest was a $600 million Series F for , a developer of autonomous vehicle technology. The next-largest include a $356 million Series D for , focused on secure open-source software for AI systems, and a $300 million Series E for , the AI legal tech unicorn.

Exits too

Kleiner has also seen a few sizable recent exits for portfolio companies that it backed as lead investor. This includes last year’s largest software IPO — — which counted Kleiner as Series B lead investor.

The firm was also an early lead investor in business credit card provider , which agreed to acquire this year for $5.15 billion.

Of course, Kleiner also has much more famous portfolio investments in its more distant past, including , and , to name a few. You don’t last 50 years in the venture business without at least some of those too.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Capital One To Buy Fintech Startup Brex At Less Than Half Its Peak Valuation In $5.15B Deal

Illustration:

In that moment, “you’re in a very tough spot mentally and emotionally,” Gerstenzang recalled about the experience. “To feel taken advantage of — and then feel that the person you love isn’t being honored the way they should — it’s not a good feeling.”

The experience left the serial entrepreneur so disappointed that he felt compelled to offer others in similar situations better options. So in January 2024, he teamed up with to launch New York-based , which describes itself as a “contemporary funeral home without the home.”

When a person is overcome with grief, making so many decisions related to what is often the biggest unplanned purchase of many people’s lives can be daunting. Meadow aims to make it as simple as possible by allowing families to arrange funerals over the phone or online. The startup also partners with a curated set of venues so funerals can happen, for example, at a wedding venue that’s only booked on Saturday nights or at a local chapel rather than a funeral home.

“Because we’re software-enabled and not stuck in the way things used to be, we can offer honest pricing and unmatched hospitality,” Gerstenzang told Crunchbase News in an interview.

Meadow recently raised a $9 million Series A funding round led by and following a $2 million seed round in 2024, it told Crunchbase News exclusively. Uniquely, the initial capital for both Meadow and Moxie came from the founders’ own permanent capital firm, a vehicle they use to lead their own seed rounds.

Lower costs, more software

Meadow operates by stripping away the most expensive part of the business: the real estate. By forgoing physical storefronts and using software for administrative tasks, Meadow claims it can offer dramatically lower prices.

The national median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial in 2023 was $8,300, while the median cost of a funeral with cremation was $6,280, to the .

Meadow says that its services are significantly more affordable. A typical funeral can cost around just $1,300, according to Gerstenzang.

“There are a lot of markups on coffins [at funeral homes], because of the increased rate of cremation,” he explains. “So a lot of funeral homes really want you to do a burial. They want you to do an elaborate service because that’s how they make their money. And there’s a ton of markup embedded in that.”

From fintech to funerals

Gerstenzang is no stranger to scaling complex systems. An alumnus of payments giant , where he led product teams for consumer payments, he and Gilsanz in 2022 also co-founded , which helps nurses open medspas. In founding both companies, Gerstenzang has noticed a pattern: highly regulated markets that impact millions of people but haven’t seen meaningful innovation in decades.

In the funeral industry, he saw a landscape dominated by private-equity rollups. He claims that some large corporations buy up local family funeral homes, keep the original names on the doors to build false trust, and then quietly hike prices.

Meadow’s business model seems to be resonating. The company grew its revenue 3x from 2024 to 2025 and is on track to triple it again in 2026, according to Gerstenzang. The company worked with more than 400 families in February alone, he said.

After becoming the largest independent funeral home in California, the company recently expanded into Texas and Washington, with Arizona and five other states on the horizon this year.

Today, nearly a third of Meadow’s business comes from “pre-planning” – from people who, for example, have just navigated the process of burying their own parents, and want to spare their children the same burden. It also offers both a direct cremation and a funeral, depending on a family’s wishes.

“We fundamentally care about the quality of what we do,” Gerstenzang said. “We believe we can actually increase quality as we scale because our software allows our team to spend their time working directly with customers, rather than dealing with paperwork the same way it’s been done for 50 years.”

, founder and general partner at Meadow investor Haystack, noted that that his firm was also among the earliest investors in and .

Backing ‘broken, unsexy’ industries

“We know when there’s a broken, unsexy industry that hasn’t adapted to serve the modern consumer,” he wrote via email. “Meadow’s combination of software operations with unmatched hospitality is exactly what the deathcare industry needs and what families deserve.”

Related reading:

• Startups Look To Streamline Tasks Around Death And End-of-Life Planning
• More Funded Startups Focus On Dying And Bereavement

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Onboarding new vendors often requires tax forms, compliance checks and obtaining bank information. For smaller, one-off tasks — say, ordering flowers for a one-time corporate event — all that overhead can prove more trouble than it’s worth.

Enter . The New York-based startup aims to help large companies pay small, one-time, or irregular vendors without the administrative headache or risk that comes with onboarding them.

Candex essentially acts as a tech-based master vendor. A large company sets Candex up in its system once and when it wants to make a purchase from a small supplier, it pays Candex, which then handles the compliance, tax and payment delivery to the actual supplier.

Today, the company shared exclusively with Crunchbase News that it has raised funding from longtime customer London-based bank to extend last July’s -led $33 million Series C to $40 million. The company says the financing brings its total funding to over $120 million since its 2011 inception.

Existing backers include , , and .

The raise comes amid a wider surge in funding to fintech startups. Global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled around $53 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase . That’s a roughly 27% increase from 2024. Like Candex, many of the more heavily funded fintech startups in recent quarters focus on helping companies automate and streamline their processes, often through use of AI.

Bigger footprint

Founded by and , Candex says it surpassed $1 billion in payments in 2025. While it did not disclose hard revenue figures, the company makes money primarily through transaction fees on purchases made through its platform, similar to how a credit card interchange fee works.

It counts hundreds of Fortune 2000 companies among its customers, including HSBC, , , , , and , among others.

The company claims its biggest value proposition is that it solves tail spend (the majority of a company’s suppliers that account for a small percentage of its total spend) in a way that is “simple, compliant, and fully integrated into existing enterprise systems.”

“Candex does not ask companies to change how they buy,” said Lappin. “It works within their existing procure-to-pay process.”

The startup also says one of its biggest differentiators is that it uses automation and AI for invoice and tax verification.

It plans to use the new capital to expand globally, particularly its footprint in Asia and the Middle East, and further automate its offering. Presently, it has more than 270 employees and operates in more than 50 countries.

For its part, HSBC says its decision to invest comes after years of being a Candex customer. “We see Candex as a differentiated solution for helping large organizations improve vendor management and operational efficiency at scale,” , group chief procurement officer at HSBC, said in a press release.

Related Crunchbase query:

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Correction: This story has changed since its original publication to clarify terms of the deal.

A total of 27 companies joined the ������Ƶ last month, including six robotics companies and four semiconductor-related startups. Healthcare minted three new unicorns, while foundation AI, cloud services, aerospace and financial services each accounted for two companies that joined.

The U.S. once again dominated, with 19 companies joining the board. China tallied four new unicorns, the U.K. contributed two, and India and Germany each added one new unicorn.

Soaring valuations

Overall unicorn values soared in February as raised $110 billion at a value of $840 billion, making it the most highly valued private company of all time. Its closest rival, , raised $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion, making it the fourth-largest valued company on the list. , the autonomous driving technology company, was valued at $126 billion, positioning it among the top 10 most highly valued private companies.

February’s new unicorns

Here are February’s newly minted unicorns.

Robotics

• , a solution for automating building equipment for autonomous construction, raised a $270 million Series B led by and . The 1-year-old company, based in San Francisco, was valued at $1.8 billion.
• Beijing-based , a physical intelligence foundation model and humanoid robotics company, raised a $290 million Series A led by and . The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• , a builder of intelligent robots for industrial and service industries, raised a $145 million Series B round. The 2-year-old Beijing-based company was valued at $1.4 billion.
• Humanoid robotics company raised a $145 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old China-based company was valued at $1.4 billion.
• , a testing and control software layer for aerospace, defense, robotics and industry, raised a $150 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old Los Angeles-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a company that transforms 5G and Wi-Fi into spatial awareness for connective devices, an underlying layer necessary for physical AI, raised a $100 million Series B from well-known investors , , , and . The 9-year-old Belmont, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Semiconductor

• China-based , developer of a chip for advanced autonomous driving, raised a $330 million Series A led by and . The company, which is less than a year old and spun out of automaker , was valued at $1.5 billion.
• London-based , a photonic chip company for more efficient AI inference, raised a $220 million Series A led by . The 2-year-old company, valued at $1 billion, has plans to ship its first product in 2027.
• Reno, Nevada-based , builder of memory chips for AI, raised a $230 million Series B led by , and . The 3-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a chip developer for AI training, raised a $500 million Series B led by and . The 3-year-old company, based in Mountain View, California, was valued at $1 billion. It plans to ship its first product in 2027.

Healthcare

• New York-based , a platform that helps employers and employees source the best doctors with improved costs, raised a $118 million Series D led by . The 7-year-old company was valued at $1.4 billion.
• Palo Alto, California-based , a women’s telehealth provider, raised a $100 million Series D led by . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a Redwood City, California-based digital platform that helps medicare customers connect with advocates to navigate healthcare, raised a $130 million Series C led by . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Cloud services

• , a cloud platform for application development teams, raised a $100 million Series C led by . The 8-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Mumbai-based , a cloud service GPU provider, raised a $600 million round led by . The 3-year-old company was valued at $1.4 billion.

Foundational AI

• , builder of an AI model to analyze large databases, raised a $225 million Series A led by . The company also says it has signed a partnership agreement with ‘s to offer the model to its customers. The 2-year-old, San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.4 billion.
• , a model developer to debug and understand AI, raised a $150 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.3 billion.

Aerospace

• , a space-based communications infrastructure player to support commercial satellite and government missions, raised a $100 million Series B led by and. The 4-year-old Livermore, California-based company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• , an aviation hardware and software company for automated flights, raised a $300 million Series C led by and . The 10-year-old El Segundo, California-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Financial services

• London-based , a U.K.-based digital bank for small and medium-sized businesses, raised a $155 million Series D led by , and . The 8-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• , an agentic platform for accountants, raised a $100 million Series B led by , and . The 3-year-old company, based in New York, was valued at $1.2 billion.

E-commerce

• Brooklyn-based , a marketplace for creators to sell digital products, raised a $200 million round led by . The 5-year-old company was valued at $1.6 billion.

Coding

• , a Boston-based code translation service for legacy code, raised a $125 million Series B led by 1. The round valued the 2-year-old company at $1.3 billion.

Defense

• Berlin-based , a developer of strike drones and autonomous defense systems, raised an undisclosed sum in a round led by that valued the 1-year-old company at $1.2 billion.

Forecasting

• Boston-based , an AI-native weather satellite constellation, raised a $175 million Series F led by and . The 9-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Sales & marketing

• New York-based , a brand marketing platform geared for AI search, raised a $96 million Series C led by that valued the 1-year-old company at $1 billion.

Web3

• , a blockchain intelligence platform to detect crime networks, raised a $70 million Series C led by . The raise valued the 8-year-old company, based in San Francisco, at $1 billion.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:

• (1,703)
• (604)
• (65)
• (187)
• (115)
• (102)
• (878)
• (500)
• (228)
• (38)
• (471)

Related reading:

• Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel
• Crunchbase Data: The AI Boom Has Drastically Changed Who’s Funding The Hottest Companies In 2025 Vs. 2021
• January Delivers Highest New Unicorn Count In More Than 3 Years

Methodology

The Crunchbase ������Ƶ is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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Founded in 2025 by brothers (24) and (20), San Francisco-based Denki aims to build “modern” infrastructure for financial audits, which verify that financial statements are accurate and controls are functioning. The startup wants to help replace manual, “evidence-heavy” processes with software automation that makes audits run more like code.

“Denki helps auditors review and prepare evidence more quickly, document their work more effectively, and test process controls more rigorously,” CEO Felipe told Crunchbase News. “With higher risk coverage and reduced costs, public companies can comply better with financial regulations.”

and co-led the raise, which included participation from , and others. Denki also participated in YC’s Fall 2025 cohort.

The raise comes amid a broader surge in funding to fintech startups, particularly those that apply AI in their offerings. Global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $52.9 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase . That’s a 27% increase from 2024’s total of $41.6 billion raised.

Interestingly, the most-active investor in the space by far all year, in terms of deal volume, was Denki backer Y Combinator, which participated in 151 fintech startup deals last year. That’s up 24.8% compared to the 121 deals it wrote checks into in 2024.

Landing on capital and an idea

The two brothers grew up in Spain and the U.K. Upon moving to London to study computer science, the pair participated in hackathons organized by , , and VC-sponsored programs, and won several competitions.

“That opened up opportunities, including being offered a $135,000 pre-seed check before we had an idea, which we declined,” Felipe recalls.

The brothers eventually accepted a small angel check from a former staff research scientist at , which gave them a few months of runway to explore ideas before being accepted into the Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch.

“We spent time digging into compliance and landed on audit. It is a technically rich problem, with large volumes of unstructured data, high regulatory stakes and very little modernization in tooling,” Felipe said. “It also connected naturally to what we had each been doing.”

David was building financial data pipelines at — a company trusted by top hedge funds — turning messy data into usable information. Felipe was working on his Ph.D. in explainable AI at , evaluating vision-language models and making black-box systems “interpretable.”

They discovered that a common approach to addressing all the manual work required by auditors was to build Excel extensions designed to make audit work faster.

“We believe it is worth changing the status quo by moving away from Excel as the primary workspace,” Felipe said.

Denki, he said, offers cleaner logs and less room for sample manipulation. Also, because the brothers have a research background, they are “constantly” staying on top of new concerns.

“One major audit risk today is AI fraud,” said Felipe. “There is promising research on detecting forged AI-generated receipts using invisible watermarks, and translating that research into something auditors can actually use is a big part of what we do.”

Denki makes money by offering a tiered SaaS annual contract that depends on the number of controls automated, team size and other integration factors. Its customers are pre-IPO and publicly traded companies.

Building for a ‘high-stress industry’ under scrutiny

Denki’s founders believe their solution is timely. Last year, the imposed the third-highest cumulative penalties in its 21-year enforcement history, totaling $17.7 million, to a report. That was after issuing a record $35.7 million in penalties in 2024. The Jin Li brothers believe those metrics signal that “scrutiny is intensifying even as traditional methods strain under complexity.”

For now, Denki is a two-person company, but it plans to hire engineers and auditors with its new capital.

, Base10 Partners co-founder and managing partner, told Crunchbase News that his firm was impressed by the brothers’ “passion for the industry” and their focus on automating “very discrete tasks” for auditors.

“It was unusual to see such young people so strongly empathetic to issues in auditing but it was clear they were determined to build something great for this industry,” he wrote via email.
“But also it’s a large market that is burdened with labor supply constraints (which is not getting any better), in a high-stress industry with ever increasing scrutiny.”

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Fintech Funding Jumped 27% In 2025 With Fewer Deals But Bigger Checks
• Y Combinator Was By Far The Most-Active Fintech Investor in 2025, Data Shows
• Here Are The Fintech Companies That Could Go Public In 2025

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