AI Tops Crypto in Q1 2025 Venture Funding
New York, NY (March 14, 2025) – Early data from 2025 indicates artificial intelligence (AI) startups are significantly outperforming cryptocurrency in attracting venture capital (VC) funding. While the crypto market saw a boost at the end of 2024, the first quarter of 2025 shows a continued preference for AI investments.
During the first three months of 2025, U.S.-based crypto ventures secured approximately $861 million in funding. In contrast, AI companies in the same period attracted nearly $20 billion, according to Pitchbook data. This stark difference highlights the current investment landscape where AI continues to command significant interest from investors.
Sam Reynolds
Major Deals in AI and Crypto
Several large funding rounds in the AI sector have captured headlines. Databricks secured a massive $15.3 billion, and Anthropic raised $2 billion. The largest crypto deal was Abu Dhabi’s MGX’s $2 billion investment into Binance, representing their first institutional placement in the exchange. Other notable crypto deals included Mesh’s $82 million raise, ETF issuer Bitwise’s $70 million round, and digital asset bank Sygnum’s $58 million offering.
“Investors continue to show a strong bias toward AI,” said Sam Reynolds, CoinDesk’s senior reporter based in Asia. “The scale of recent AI investments dwarfs what’s happening in the crypto space, and it’s a trend we’ve been tracking for a while.”
Historical Trends
Historical data supports the sustained dominance of AI in attracting VC funding. Reports show that AI startups attracted one-third of global VC investment in 2024, which totalled $131.5 billion. Nearly a quarter of new startups were AI companies across 4,318 venture capital deals compared to crypto’s $4.9 billion across 706 deals. Statista data indicates that AI and machine learning have seen consistent funding growth, expanding from $670 million in 2011 to $36 billion in 2020.
There was only one year where crypto surpassed AI in funding, which was 2021, when VCs invested $30 billion in the market compared to ABI Research’s $22.3 billion AI estimate for the year. Crypto has unique elements like airdrops, which also inject fresh capital into the industry, but is not the same as venture capital.
Analyzing the Trend
The massive investments in AI, alongside prominent figures like OpenAI’s Sam Altman seeking significant funding, have driven the perception of an investor preference for AI. However, it remains to be seen if this impacts the overall long-term growth for cryptocurrency markets.
According to a report by Dragonfly, large airdrops between 2020 and 2024 generated $7 billion. This shows there are other ways to get funding other than through venture capital.
