In the U.S., crypto venture capital raised around $861 million during the first quarter of 2025, a significant contrast to the nearly $20 billion secured by artificial intelligence, as revealed by data from Pitchbook. This trend highlights a clear shift among investors towards AI.
The statistics indicate that there were 795 AI deals in the U.S. from January to March, featuring notable transactions such as Databricks’ $15.3 billion funding round and Anthropic’s $2 billion funding, which captured a lot of attention.
In comparison, the biggest crypto deal was a $2 billion investment by Abu Dhabi’s MGX into Binance, marking the first institutional investment in the crypto exchange. Other noteworthy transactions included Mesh, a payment infrastructure company, raising $82 million, Bitwise, an ETF issuer, with $70 million, and Sygnum, a digital asset bank, securing $58 million.
Previous reports indicate that AI startups drew in one-third of global venture capital funds in 2024, amounting to $131.5 billion, with nearly a quarter of new startups being AI-oriented, across 4,318 VC deals. In stark contrast, crypto attracted only $4.9 billion through 706 deals.
Analysis: Has AI overtaken crypto in venture funding?
The significant rounds raised by VCs in the AI sector, coupled with eye-catching initiatives like Sam Altman’s trillion-dollar ambitions, along with AI’s transformation from a technological curiosity to a mainstream phenomenon due to transformer models, suggest a growing favoritism among investors for AI over crypto.
Historically, evidence shows that VCs have consistently preferred AI over crypto, with AI and machine learning receiving steady and exponentially increasing investments. According to data, funding for AI skyrocketed from $670 million in 2011 to $36 billion by 2020.
There has only been one year in which crypto surpassed AI in funding, and even that was under special circumstances: narrow AI categories indicated by ABI Research’s $22.3 billion AI estimation in 2021 suggest that crypto briefly outperformed AI during a bullish phase in the crypto market, before AI funding ballooned again to over $100 billion by 2024.
It’s also important to note that this analysis overlooks unique characteristics of crypto, such as airdrops, which distribute new capital to users and consequently boost token prices, inflating the overall size of project treasuries.
A recent study by Dragonfly indicated that the 11 largest airdrops between 2020 and 2024 generated $7 billion. While this won’t bridge the gap between AI and crypto funding, it highlights that there are various avenues for raising capital aside from traditional venture funding.