Venture firms that set up shop in the Texas capital city included , , and 1, among others. famously moved ’s headquarters to Austin in 2021, while also purchasing a house and establishing a residence there.

But as more employees returned to in-office work, Austin slowly seemed to fall out of favor with the tech community, some of whom said it had been overhyped as a startup hub.

There were reports of tech workers who had moved to the city during the pandemic and , saying they were going back to places like the Bay Area. Musk back to California in 2023.

Funding tops pandemic peak

Undeterred by the “tourists,” the startup and venture community in Austin kept plugging away. And those efforts are reflected in a surge in funding to startups headquartered there last year, with 2025 posting an all-time high for Austin venture investment, Crunchbase data shows.

Investment into Austin-based startups spiked 64.8% to $7.19 billion in 2025 as more investors poured money into companies based in the region, according to Crunchbase . That’s compared with the $4.37 billion raised by Austin-area startups in 2024 and tops even the $6.1 billion raised in 2021, at the height of the venture funding frenzy.

Notably, deal counts actually decreased from 312 in 2024 to 272 year over year, signaling an increase in later-stage deals. Indeed, the data corroborates that with $4 billion of the total raised in 2025 classified as late-stage rounds.

Last year’s totals were also more than double — 130% higher — than the $3.1 billion raised in 2023. That money was raised across 403 deals, signaling much smaller round sizes at the time and a more mature market.

A tech scene decades in the making

, managing partner of , doesn’t believe that the Austin funding performance in 2025 was anomalous.

Rather, he calls it “the payoff from decades of compounding.”

“Talent density in venture categories such as software, fintech, health tech, defense and  robotics has reached a critical mass, driven by waves of Bay Area relocations, both full HQ moves and satellite offices, that brought technical, product and operational talent into the market,” Flager said.

That talent eventually left to build new companies, he said, and the cycle repeated.

“On the capital side, the stack has matured across all stages, from pre-seed through growth, with local firms that have now cycled through multiple funds and understand the market deeply,” Flager said. “Layer in a business-friendly regulatory environment, a relatively lower cost of living, as well as a lower effective tax rate, and Austin becomes an attractive place to start and scale a company.”

Former Austin Mayor saw so much potential in the city’s startup scene that he began a career in venture investing after his tenure ended in early 2023. (He now works for New York-based ).

Part of the city’s success as a startup hub stems from its reputation as a haven for mavericks and risk-takers, Adler has said.

“Most cities in the world, you try something, you fail; it’s hard to have access to the capital the second time,” he told co-founder in a in 2022. “In Austin, the civic folk heroes are the people that tried something and it didn’t quite work out and they worked on it until it did.”

, founder of , a solo GP venture firm based in nearby San Antonio, said that it feels like Texas and the Austin metro area specifically are becoming more attractive to manufacturing- and engineering-heavy businesses.

“Some of that may be thanks to Tesla, and some of it may simply reflect the physical advantages of the state,” he told Crunchbase News. “Either way, this [surge in financing] feels less like hype returning and more like capital concentrating around a narrower set of serious, technically differentiated companies.”

Deal sizes grow

That diversity among funded startups is reflected in last year’s investment totals for Austin, which were boosted by several large, late-stage deals across a broad range of industries.

The largest was a $1 billion Series C round for energy provider in October. New York-based led that financing, which valued the 2-year-old company at $4 billion.

Looking back, February in particular was a busy month for venture funding. That month alone saw the second-, third- and fourth-largest rounds in Austin for the year. They included:

• A February Series C round in which autonomous surface vessels maker raised $600 million at a $4 billion valuation. led the round for the defense tech startup.
• Also in February, , which provides endpoint management, security and monitoring, raised $500 million in Series C extensions at a $5 billion valuation — more than doubling its value from just 12 months prior. The funding came in separate tranches led by and ’s , with participation from other investors.
• Robotics company in February raised $415 million in Series A financing led by  and accelerator (A $520 million extension to that Series A was raised in February 2026, taking the total round to over $935 million.)

The findings correspond with Flager’s observations.

“A good chunk of the capital raised in Austin was driven by several large deals. Similar to what we saw across the U.S. in 2025, venture funding in Austin was more concentrated than it has been in the past,” he told Crunchbase News. “Roughly 38% of the capital deployed went to the top five venture financings in Austin. I believe the top 10 deals nationally accounted for more than 40% of the capital raised last year. We’ll see if this trend continues into 2026 and beyond. The start of the year suggests it will.”

, founding partner of , agrees, noting that from a dollars perspective, the surge in financings was driven by a handful of outsized capital-intensive deals in newer categories such as defense and deep tech.

“These companies require a combination of technology, land for manufacturing facilities, and talent for manufacturing tasks. Austin has unique skillsets for that,” he said. “It has a density of three things: talent in deep tech with , and many others moving to Texas in light of favorable business conditions with expertise in these industries; expansive land around Central Texas that is inexpensive, especially compared to California; and lower cost manufacturing-related labor especially given the surge in manufacturing jobs such as at Tesla in recent times.”

Burgeoning industries

Once upon a time, Austin was better known as home to software and CPG companies. And while those types of companies certainly still exist, a number of other industries are growing increasingly robust, as the local investors have pointed out.

As with many top tech markets, Flager said Austin has long been strong for application and infrastructure software, which is currently being challenged by AI. In his view, that talent has migrated to building “quality” vertical agentic software and AI-native businesses.

“We are seeing these companies grow quickly and build scale, while using less capital — which is exciting,” he added. “The domain experts who built and scaled application software companies here over the last two decades are spinning out to build the next generation of native AI businesses.”

The market overall is also broadening in interesting ways. Defense and autonomy have emerged as breakout categories, with Austin becoming one of the stronger markets in the country for dual-use and autonomous systems companies, noted Flager.

“The combination of software and hardware skills now in Texas, along with a business-friendly regulatory environment, has allowed Austin to take a leadership position in these important and developing markets,” he said. “Energy tech is also a natural fit given Texas’ grid scale and the surging power demands of AI infrastructure.”

Finally, robotics and advanced manufacturing are also gaining momentum, driven by deep engineering talent and the ability to scale manufacturing near Austin cost-effectively, allowing engineers, executives and other factory employees to coexist and collaborate in close proximity.

Srinivasan noted that his firm is seeing strong activity in vertical AI companies, or companies that serve vertical markets with AI that is tuned on specialized proprietary vertical data, often targeting the services and labor expenditures by their customers.

“These companies deliver ‘Services as Software’ with close to software gross margins and pricing models that are based more on usage and outcomes as opposed to the traditional seat-based models,” he said.

Srinivasan also expects the city to continue to see large funding deals in defense and deep tech, given the combination of local strengths and robust global demand for such products.

Continued momentum

Investors and companies continue to be drawn to Austin. In late December, San Francisco-based venture firm in the city. One of the firm’s founders, , also announced that he had personally moved to Austin. The firm’s other founder, , had lived and worked in the city since 2022.

In late March of this year, Musk to build two semiconductor factories totaling 100 million square feet in Austin to supply advanced chips for and Tesla. The venture, known as Terafab, aims to manufacture 1 trillion watts of computing power per year, he said. Media outlets valued the initiative at nearly

Also this week, Barcelona-based AI health tech startup announced it will open an office and hire in Austin.

CEO told Crunchbase News that with the company’s New York office already established, the next step was not just expansion, “but choosing the right place to build.”

“And we chose Austin for one reason above all: talent,” he said. “As an AI health tech company, our success depends on attracting exceptional people across engineering, data and life sciences. Austin has rapidly become one of the most competitive talent markets. The city is one of the fastest-growing in the United States. This brings together deep tech expertise, entrepreneurial energy and a growing concentration of healthcare innovation. Ideal for our goal of building an R&D hub. “

Coelho also points out that Biorce has witnessed a “trend” of people moving from the Bay Area to Austin, noting that “the quality of life has gained notoriety.”

“But for us, this isn’t about following a trend,” he added. “It’s about building where the best people are — and where they want to be.”

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Only 2 States Saw Their Share Of US Venture Funding Rise Last Year
• Texas Startup Funding Declines, Led By Dip In Austin-Area Investment
• Lower Costs, Laid-Back Lifestyle Continue To Draw Tech Companies To Austin, Texas
• The 10 Biggest Rounds Of February: Saronic And NinjaOne Lead Big Month
• NinjaOne Snags $5B Valuation In Massive $500M Round
• Amid Record Robotics Funding, Apptronik Raises $520M Series A Extension To Boost Production Of Humanoid Robot Apollo

By and

This story starts with a loss.

A client didn’t renew, so we reduced headcount. Operationally, it made sense, but the decision surfaced something bigger than a single role or contract: a growing tension inside modern leadership that’s becoming harder to ignore.

Our company spans a creative services business and an AI-powered software platform. That combination has made one trend obvious: The modern economy rewards software, automation and what investor and entrepreneur calls — the “force multiplier for your work.”

Years ago, Ravikant bemoaned that labor — once the original form of leverage — had become “overvalued,” and that capital, code and now AI would define the next era. “You want the minimum amount of labor that allows you to use the other forms of leverage,” he wrote.

, perhaps the “face” of AI writ large, is famous for espousing the as the ultimate form of leverage, claiming that it will create “,” and that “[a]lmost everyone will want more AI working on their behalf.”

Investor enthusiasm around , and — companies with extraordinary output and extremely small teams — suggests he may be right. Humanoid robots, though still early, extend this trajectory even further.

Behind their enthusiasm, however, lies something the most fervent AI supporters seem reluctant to name. In this brave new world of AI, optimal business models continue to reward leverage, software and automation, of course, but they now also appear to reward something new: having materially fewer people.

As a consequence, we keep returning to a central question: What happens when the efficient thing and the decent thing diverge, even temporarily?

The economic pressure is clear, but the human pressure is just as real. We all seem convinced that we’ll remake our workflows with AI, but what of our culture — the intangible connective tissue beneath it all? It’s no coincidence that before AI, the best companies often had the best cultures. In fact, not only do we believe this dynamic will continue as we adapt to AI, we think it will become even more important.

The future of work — perhaps, even, the future period — will invariably depend on how humans and machines collaborate, but it will also depend upon the culture we create that holds that collaboration together.

The frameworks, norms and practices that will eventually govern human-AI partnerships are critical, but they remain undefined. And we’re all going to have to build that culture largely from scratch.

is the co-founder of the world’s newest creative AI marketing tool, . He’s also the co-founder of , an advertising agency that leverages data to make hits for , , , and many other marquee brands. Over the past two decades he has led cross-functional teams and developed multidiscipline communications and creative strategies for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Himmelsbach is a MBA graduate from ’s

is head of business development at WestComms. He strongly believes that high-quality communication will only continue to appreciate in value and supports clients working in AI, crypto and frontier technologies. Pinson still keeps a regular hand-written journal, loves wine and earned a degree in economics and philosophy at in California.

Illustration:

In this week’s edition of Who’s Hiring In Tech, we round up five fintech startups that have raised money in the past 12 months, that haven’t had reported layoffs in the past year, and that are actively hiring for multiple open roles.

Farther down, you’ll find a complete list of 349 Actively Hiring startups across sectors that meet that criteria.

5 Funded Fintech Startups That Are Hiring

Company:

• Position: Director of sales
• Salary: Base salary is listed at $150K-$175K, though of course earnings potential is much higher including commission. (The company estimates total on-target earnings could be as high as $350K.)
• Location: San Francisco
• What it does: Finix is a payment processing platform for businesses.
• Why it’s cool: If you’re an ambitious sales leader looking to take the reins of the revenue team at a well-funded startup, this looks like a pretty neat gig. The company is looking for someone with at least eight years of experience at SaaS companies and six or more years of experience in a leadership role, specifically managing a revenue organization.
• Funding history: Finix has raised a total of $126 million from investors, including , , , and more.

To learn more about this role and others, click Actively Hiring in

….

Company:

• Position: Lifecycle marketing manager
• Salary: $130K-$150K
• Location: Wealthfront is based in Palo Alto, California, but the position is open to remote candidates in both the U.S. and Canada.
• What it does: Wealthfront is an online wealth management platform that offers automated investing and portfolio management tools, savings accounts, loans and other products.
• Why it’s cool: The company is looking for an experienced lifecycle marketer who is comfortable with data and analytics and enjoys working closely with other teams. Among the benefits that Wealthfront offers — besides standard startup perks like generous vacation time and wellness reimbursements — are 16 weeks of paid parental leave, 401K plans, and an employee investing discount.
• Funding history: Wealthfront has raised a total of $274.2 million, though it’s been a while since its last raise — its Series E was way back in 2018. The company is backed by big-name investors including , , and .

To learn more about this role and others, click Actively Hiring in

….

Company:

• Position: Strategy and new business associate
• Salary: N/A
• Location: Remote, based in Mexico.
• What it does: Tribal provides credit cards and other financial services to small businesses and startups in emerging markets.
• Why it’s cool: This seems like a nice challenge for an ambitious finance geek to help a U.S.-based fintech expand its business in the fast-growing Mexican market. Tribal is looking for someone with two to three years of experience in investment banking or a similar field to “actively participate in all aspects of fundraising efforts, from strategic planning to execution, including creating compelling narratives, preparing materials and analysis, engaging in conversations with investors, supporting the due diligence process, and assisting in valuation discussions.” It goes without saying, but you need to be fluent in Spanish as well.
• Funding history: Tribal has from investors including , and .

To learn more about this role and others, click Actively Hiring in

….

Company:

• Position: Private equity data operations analyst
• Salary: $60K
• Location: The company is based in Brooklyn but says its culture is remote- and hybrid-work friendly.
• What it does: Chronograph’s platform is used by institutional investors to analyze private capital markets.
• Why it’s cool: This early-career position is part of Chronograph’s two-year analyst program, which positions successful employees to be promoted into associate manager roles at the company. The company says it’s an opportunity for someone to “gain deep experience in alternative assets at a market-leading fintech company focused on the space.”
• Funding history: Chronograph has raised a total of $20 million, including from and .

To learn more about this role and others, click Actively Hiring in

….

Company:

• Position: Product manager, fintech.
• Salary: $100K-$150K
• Location: Scratchpay is based in Los Angeles, but the position is remote-friendly.
• What it does: Scratchpay helps veterinary practices provide financing options to their patients (or, more precisely, to their patients’ human benefactors). The company says its payment plans are used in more than 10,000 veterinary care practices across the U.S. and Canada — including pet dentists and pet optometrists (who knew that was a thing?).
• Why it’s cool: Love pets but your skillset is more on the tech and numbers side? This could be a cool gig. The company says it’s looking for someone with at least two years of product management experience who enjoys working very cross-functionally on a small team.
• Funding history: Scratchpay has , according to its Crunchbase profile, from and , among others. led its Series C in September.

To learn more about this role and others, click Actively Hiring in

Methodology:

Crunchbase News editors select interesting roles to feature based on ’s Actively Hiring and funding filters. We looked for companies that are tagged as Actively Hiring — meaning they have multiple open roles listed — within Crunchbase, and have recently raised new funding. We only include companies that have raised at least $1 million in total funding.

We mostly look at U.S. roles, but also feature other locations, and cross-reference companies with our Layoffs Tracker to avoid featuring those that recently laid off employees. Deciding which roles to feature is ultimately based on editors’ discretion.

• at your company for consideration in this feature.

• Have a correction for this list? Email me at mvanromburgh@crunchbase.com.

• Learn more about how Crunchbase’s Actively Hiring filter works.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

The fears are spreading beyond concern over blue-collar jobs. Now there are greater worries that even white-collar jobs that require additional training and education will be replaced by artificial intelligence and AI-powered robots.

Crunchbase News turned to AI expert, CEO and Founder , to get his thoughts on the matter. Austin-based AI startup SparkCognition ­has raised $56.5 million over the past year and $73.5 million since its inception in 2013. Husain is also the author of In 2016, he was ranked among the by .

On top of that, Husain is also a prolific inventor with 22 awarded and over 40 pending U.S. patent applications to his credit. In 2013, a low-cost computing platform Husain invented was added to the collection of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

So what does he have to say about AI’s impact on jobs?

Well, he’s realistic.

“If you take the long view, it’s really quite likely that most of the jobs that we see around us today will disappear and will be done by machines,” he told Crunchbase News. “One hundred plus years ago, half the population was focused on agriculture. And today it’s less than 2 percent, but yet we’re feeding five times the number of people. Obviously, there has been a several hundred-fold increase in the productivity there which is another fancy way of saying there’s much, much fewer jobs. And this will continue.”

Picture by Pasi Salminen, via SparkCognition

Technological innovation has technically been taking jobs from humans for centuries, Husain points out. Humans replicated the human muscle – first with the steam engine and later with the internal combustion engine – which in turn gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. As a result, jobs that required the human beings as a provider of that physical force dissipated over time.

“Now what we’re doing is replicating the cognitive abilities of human beings,” he said. “And when you think about it, that is what man is – cognition and muscle. Basically, those are the two big elements. So I think yes when both of these things are replicated, more jobs will be lost, and we are on the path to do that.”

But at the same time, he is not cold about it. For example, while Husain acknowledges the growing use of AI and robotics in the field of healthcare, he acknowledges that machines will never be able to replace “the human touch.”

“There’s the analysis part of what the doctor does, the diagnosis part, and then there’s the actual caregiving,” he noted. “I think when it comes to caregiving, people are always going to want the human touch.”

Besides agriculture, manufacturing is another big sector that has already been impacted by robots.

“Robots have completely taken over manufacturing,” he said. “Even in low-cost manufacturing destinations like China, they find it more cost effective to buy millions of robots in comparison to keeping relatively lower paid workers around on the factory floor.”

The future of AI will involve more narrow intelligence, Husain believes, which is specialized in certain areas and can exceed human capacity in those areas ­– but isn’t broadly as capable as a human being.

“That’s where we are now,” he said. “Over the long term as the technology is adopted, most of our present jobs will go away.”

To Husain, the question of whether jobs will go away is moot. He believes the real questions are will we have a way to survive economically and will our needs be fulfilled? Furthermore, will we be able to find satisfaction in the pursuit of some labor that is an expression of our higher gifts and of our traits?

“The answers to all of those [questions] are yes, we can certainly do that, but it requires a societal agreement—a rewriting of the social contract,” he said. “We will have to to rewrite the economic norms that govern how somebody is considered economically valuable in a society, and in an economy.”

So When?

So if AI is replacing jobs, when will that happen?

At the rate at which AI progress is occurring today, there will likely be some fundamental breakthroughs over the next five to 10 years, Husain predicts. “There will probably be other kinds of tasks that we’ll be able to have machines perform which today they can’t,” he said.

Robotics is similarly progressing at a very fast pace.

“Robots can now do backflips. From a mechanical standpoint, that’s never been possible before,” Husain said. “When you combine all of these innovations, I think the time is about 15-30 years out, when we’ll actually see almost magical machines that an observer today will look at and say, ‘Wow, this is all I imagined in science fiction and maybe then some.’ So I think that really is the window.”

And according to to Husain, politicians need to focus more on preparing for these things. If they don’t, it could have serious consequences.

“If we’re caught unprepared and we enter this era in a way that is unplanned, then I think we will not be immune from the kinds of destabilizations and disruptions that we have so far only seen on TV unfolding in other parts of the world,” he said. “…And unfortunately, when you stress a population, you find that the uglier aspects of human nature start to manifest themselves, and that certainly is not something to look forward to.”

Back To The Numbers

We thought it would be good to get the perspective of a non-AI executive on this controversial topic. So I talked to , chief economist at New York-based to get thoughts from someone outside the industry.

“Technological unemployment is not anything new,” he said. “It’s been a feature of capitalism over the past 200 years, and there’s no reason to believe that it’s likely to stop. In fact, it’s likely to accelerate.”

For many years, man could not invent the sort of AI or robotics that could conduct routine tasks with regularity and precision. “We are quickly approaching a period where that will occur,” Brusuelas said. “Thus, there will be some wholesale disruption across different industries.”

However, it seems to Brusuelas that there’s been too much fanfare “about the imminent end of routine work.” He points to the area of automated vehicles and truck drivers, for example. Truck drivers are the No. 1 employment category for men aged 25-54.

“The technology is not quite there,” Brusuelas said. “Now we should not take solace that it will never be there. Because it will. But policymakers have a chance to think about what the future of work means, and to put in place policy pathways that can facilitate a transition for those that are in work categories more likely to experience significant displacement.”

Today, artificial intelligence goes way beyond the field of home automation and as technologies continue to advance, it’s likely more jobs will be impacted. But it’s up to us to determine to what degree, and in what ways this change will occur. Ultimately, it’s safe to say that planning and preparation are the key to whether artificial intelligence helps, or hurts, our society and economy.

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