The Big Book of Venture Capital - Q2 2025
Key insights and highlights from the startup and venture ecosystem in Q2.
Hot take: Everyone crying “venture winter” has completely missed the plot.
Sure, the timeline’s still stuck on rinse-and-repeat pessimism—but here’s what Q2 2025 actually looked like:
💰 $205B in H1 global startup fundraising — climbed 32% year-on-year
🚀 $57B in global mega-rounds — U.S. captured 18.5x more than Asia
📈 Valuations? Back to 2021 highs almost across stages (for the right startups)
🤝 M&A? Up 2.7x YoY for H1 — pushed by AI
💼 Secondaries? Activity and fundraising are catching pace. Pricing is rebounding.
But let’s be clear:
This isn’t a comeback.
It’s a reshuffling.
Check out the Q2 Big Book report release HERE.
This 130+ page report is your ultimate guide to venture and startup insights. Whether you’re an investor, founder, or ecosystem enthusiast, it’s guaranteed to light up that insight bulb.
A strategic reordering—brutal and brilliant—that’s only apparent when we peel the layers.
🧊 Europe and Asia fundraising? Still timid in Q2.
😓 Emerging VC managers? Still compressed—top 30 firms raised 74% of capital in Q2.
📉 Generic startup fundraising? Struggling.
🎯 LPs? Leaning into familiar names, creative structures, or secondaries.
📊 IPOs? Increasing pace with FinTechs leading, some standout post-IPO performance, yet Downround IPOs are a thing, and Europe pushed to H1 26 recovery
Meanwhile…
🦾 AI startups and founders are having their moment in the sun.
♟️ Big Tech is playing 4D chess with acqui-hires and minority deals.
🎯 Venture debt is evolving into runway extension tools for post-Series B startups.
👥 Talent is in motion—leaner teams, surging demand for AI specialists, and senior venture talent quietly moving behind the scenes.
💡 This is no longer a game of velocity.
Neither is it about surviving the cycle.
It’s a game of positioning, perception, and power concentration.
It’s about mastering the near-term realities of venture, while aligning for the long-term.
Special thanks to the venture experts who joined TheOnePoint podcast 🙌
Albert Azout from Level Ventures (Topic - Data Science Driven VC FoF)
Cali Chill from OurCrowd (Topic - Democratization of Venture Capital)
Daniel Keiper-Knorr from Speedinvest (Topic - Shifting Dynamics of Venture Fund Management)
Larsen Jensen from Harpoon Ventures (Topic - Geopolitics in Venture Capital)
Rob Hodgkinson from SignalRank (Topic - Indexing Venture)
Shwetank Verma from Leo Capital (Topic - Global Indian Alpha)
And also to VC GPs who contributed ecosystem thoughts 🙌 🙌
Jonathan Lacoste from Space VC
(listed alphabetically)
Headlines from the different startup and venture areas:
Startup Fundraising
Global startup fundraising showed positive H1 momentum in 2025. On a half-over-half (HoH) basis, startup fundraising rose by 21%, and on a year-over-year (YoY) basis, it climbed 32%.
The U.S. continues to dominate the global startup fundraising landscape—reaching 75% of 2024’s total volume already in H1—driven by mega-rounds, growth-stage deals, and surging AI enthusiasm.
Regionally, the recovery remains uneven and muted. Europe (-24%) and Asia (-19%) saw sharper YoY fundraising declines in Q2.
AI continues to be the standout vertical globally, raising $47 billion in Q2 alone (second-highest quarter since 2021) and commanding a visible premium across valuation, deal size, and investor focus.
Mega-rounds pulled in $57 billion globally in Q2, with the U.S. alone capturing 8.8x and 18.5x more capital than Europe and Asia, respectively—cementing its lead in capital concentration.
Venture debt, while tapering off from its record 2024 levels, is becoming more strategic—used increasingly by mature startups to extend runway without dilution. AI and ML companies now account for over a third of venture debt volume.
Deal Dynamics
H1 2025 deal count data reveals continued selectivity across the venture landscape and probably another subdued year of deal count. A key shift is the rise in late- and growth-stage deal activity, as investors increasingly favor mature companies with traction, revenue, or exit potential.
Fundraising timelines are lengthening with a mixed outlook (stage, region).
Valuations, Performance, and Unicorns
Valuations have rebounded sharply across funding stages in the U.S. since 2023, and continued in 2025, pushing valuations toward all-time highs and signalling renewed confidence in a certain type of startups.
AI unicorns are commanding a striking premium in today’s market—trading at 24x revenue compared to 10x for non-AI peers—driven by their perceived scalability and defensibility.
Exits
There are encouraging signs on the exit front in H1 2025, with global exit dollar volume already reaching 62% of 2024’s total and exit count at 50%, indicating the potential for flat or slightly improved full-year activity. The U.S. delivers an outstanding H1 exit performance, despite tariffs and other geopolitical issues in the air during the last few months.
Latest outlook reflects cautious optimism. While most investors expect modest improvement in exit activity over the next 6–12 months, exit sentiment has softened compared to H1 2024.
Unicorn exits today face a more complex and selective path, with only ~25% of unicorns realistically positioned for IPOs as investors demand clearer KPIs—sustainable growth, revenue scale, and profitability.
IPOs
Downround IPOs have become common, with ~60% of listings debuting below their last private valuations and a median cut of 27%, reflecting a recalibration of expectations.
Yet post-IPO performance tells a more nuanced story: while standouts like Circle and CoreWeave shine, overall returns remain mixed, reinforcing that not all IPOs are created equal.
As 2025 unfolds, the year is shaping up as a potential “FinTech exit year,” with several high-profile IPOs and acquisitions on the horizon.
Europe remains in a holding pattern, with forecasts pointing to a potential IPO revival by H1 2026. Q1 2025 offered a brief optimism window, but activity has since narrowed.
Across APAC, IPO markets show an uneven rebound, signalling not just cyclical softening but a structural transition. Liquidity is consolidating in resilient exchanges like India’s NSE and Japan’s TSE, which are emerging as preferred venues in APAC amid volatility.
M&A’s
Startup M&A in 2025 is gaining strong momentum, with Q2 exit volume reaching $50.5 billion—just below Q1’s standout performance driven by the Wiz acquisition—and marking the second consecutive quarter of growth. For perspective, global VC-backed M&A deal volume in H1 2025 is up 1.9x compared to H2 2024 and a staggering 2.7x over H1 2024.
Deal count has remained relatively stable, while AI continues to dominate, with AI-related M&A more than doubling against five-year averages.
Notably, startup-to-startup acquisitions are rising fast, now accounting for a record 36% of all U.S. VC-backed M&A activity.
At the unicorn level, most acquisitions are still led by public companies (nearly 60%), given the scale required for billion-dollar-plus transactions.
Big Tech's strategic retreat from full acquisitions amid regulatory scrutiny has led to an uptick in acqui-hires and minority deals. As AI continues to reshape M&A behaviour, the lines between talent acquisition, product integration, and venture exit are increasingly blurred.
Secondaries
Secondaries are rapidly emerging. Activity has accelerated significantly, with secondary opportunities doubling from 2024 levels and fundraising gaining momentum. Yet, many GPs have yet to engage actively. Ecosystem is arguing that in Secondaries asset quality, not discounts, drives returns.
Median H1 2025 pricing rebound and compression of bid-ask spreads are evident in secondaries—signalling renewed confidence. Demand, premiums, and liquidity are still concentrated in top names.
Talent
Most recent data and charts on hiring trends point toward a broader slowdown in the job market across the tech and startup ecosystem. Startups are increasingly opting to build with leaner teams, delaying hiring plans in response to efficiency pressures and productivity gains enabled by AI.
Even among the largest tech players, headcount growth has been modest, with a 23% decline in 2023–24, signaling a shift from the prior aggressive talent expansion. Meanwhile, broader market layoffs are quietly ticking upward, reinforcing the narrative of caution.
One bright spot: AI-focused startups continue to see hiring growth due to surging demand for specialized talent.
“The Great Venture Talent Flux,” my Crunchbase article perfectly outlines the VC industry talent reshuffle triggered by the turbulence of 2023–24, marked by misalignment, frustration, and tough decisions—yet setting the stage for a springboard effect in 2025.
Venture Business
VC fundraising continues to decline in H1 2025 across the U.S., Europe, and other key regions, pointing toward a fourth consecutive annual dip. This contraction reflects LP caution, longer deployment cycles, and a higher bar for backing emerging managers—ushering in a more selective, disciplined capital formation phase.
The “flight to familiarity” is stark: the top 30 firms command 74% of VC fundraising, while emerging managers capture just 11%. However, mid-sized funds ($100–250M) are gaining ground (at least in numbers), offering LPs a blend of specialization and scalability.
In Europe, venture fundraising slowdown is hitting hard with H1 2025 shaping up to be one of the weakest years in a decade—compounding an already sluggish 2024. But the secondary fundraising is gaining momentum, reflecting a continued focus on risk-managed capital.
Venture is also embracing structural innovation—evergreen vehicles, AI roll-up funds, and even tokenized access—part of a broader democratization push that’s opening access beyond traditional institutional investors. Strategically, VC is converging with private equity and corporate innovation models. Bigger VC firms are acting more like “full-stack investors,” adopting RIA structures, leading strategic roll-ups, and unlocking deeper operational value. Simultaneously, BigTech is embedding in venture via minority stakes in AI funds and high-profile acqui-hires.
Corporates are doubling down—particularly in AI, DeepTech, and Sports—fuelling a CVC resurgence, albeit with turbulence. Meanwhile, the SEC is modernizing private market access rules to expand retail participation, signaling a broader policy shift toward capital market inclusivity with a renewed focus on investor safeguards.
Now, before you dive in too deep, a quick caution label: not everything in venture is sunshine. For a grounded strategic check, read my recent deep-dive, “Rethinking Venture Capital: A Strategic Lens”—a forward-looking reframing of the asset class across its full value chain. One theme runs quietly in the background but looms large: macro matters. Always. Venture doesn’t float in a vacuum—it moves (or stumbles) with the capital markets. And right now? The S&P 500 is at an all-time high while a cocktail of global uncertainties still lingers—tariffs, China, geopolitics, and conflicts… You name it. The real question: do we buckle under pressure, and if so, how deep, how fast, and for how long? A lot of “ifs,” I know—but welcome to the new normal of risk-managed optimism. And yes, I’m still ‘positively cautiously hopeful’ about 2025.