Even so, the industry’s strongest startups face favorable business conditions, as insurtech M&A exits reached a recent high in Q3’25.

Below, we break down the key takeaways from this quarter’s report, including:

• Median early-stage insurtech deal size shrinks, thinning innovation pipeline
• Insurtech deal count hits 9-year low
• Insurtech sees the fewest active investors since Q1’17
• Insurtech M&A activity reaches a 3-year high

Download the full report to access comprehensive data and charts on the evolving state of insurtech.

Median early-stage insurtech deal size shrinks, thinning innovation pipeline

Insurtechs are scaling with less capital as median early-stage insurtech deal size fell 24% year-over-year (YoY), from $3.8M in 2024 to $2.9M year-to-date (YTD) in 2025. The drop reverses much of the early-stage growth seen between 2023 and 2024, signaling a tougher environment for seed-stage insurtechs looking to raise Series A and B funding.

In contrast, the broader venture  environment has seen median early-stage deal size increase 39% YoY as investors redirect capital to more AI-driven sectors, including capital-intensive markets like humanoid robots.

Insurtech’s early-stage pipeline continues to narrow. In 2025 YTD, only 60% of all deals have gone to early-stage startups — the lowest share since 2011 and down from 72% in 2022, 66% in 2023, and 64% in 2024.

Future implication: Reduced early-stage insurtech dealmaking weakens the pipeline for potential acquirers, who will increasingly need to identify and assess promising acquisition targets earlier than the competition.

Insurtech deal count hits 9-year low

Insurtech deal count fell to just 76 in Q3’25 — the lowest level since 2016 and 65% below the Q1’21 peak of 219 deals. Both property and casualty (down from 65 to 56 deals) and life and health (34 to 18) saw quarter-over-quarter declines, reflecting a broader slowdown in the venture environment.

Despite fewer deals, insurtech funding is generally stable, averaging $1.2B per quarter since Q4’22, suggesting a more selective environment. Unless there is a significant surge in deal activity or a resurgence of $100M+ mega-rounds, funding levels are likely to remain close to $1B per quarter.

Future implication: Incumbents should closely monitor recently-funded insurtechs, as many exhibit operational strength. Insurtechs with 10+ employees that raised in Q3’25 grew headcount 15.8% over 12 months, signaling capital flows to companies with measurable traction.

Insurtech sees the fewest active investors since Q1’17

Investor count peaked in Q2’21 at 655 and has since fallen by 72% to hit 186 in Q3’25, mirroring the broader venture pullback that leaves insurtechs competing in a smaller funding pool.

Commitment to the sector is also waning. In Q3’25, only 4 investors made 2 or more insurtech investments: American Family Ventures, ManchesterStory Group, Munich Re Ventures, and OperaTech Ventures — the fewest in over 10 years, and down sharply from the 13 last quarter.

Future implication: Established insurance companies (and tech vendors) have a rare opportunity to engage more closely with emerging insurtechs given reduced competition for attention from investors.

Insurtech M&A activity reaches a 3-year high

Insurtech M&A increased from 16 in Q2’25 to 21 in Q3’25, the most since Q3’22 (23). The increase reverses the trend of decreasing M&A activity within insurtech between 2022 and 2024, signaling increased confidence in the industry’s startups.

5 key acquisitions occurred in Q3’25:

• Hong Kong-based health insurer and 2024 Insurtech 50 winner Bowtie was acquired in a corporate majority deal by Sun Life.
• Canada-based cyber MGA BOXX Insurance was acquired by Zurich Insurance Group.
• Cytora, an AI claims and underwriting processing platform, was acquired by Applied Systems.
• DigitalOwl, an AI medical review platform and 2024 Insurtech 50 winner, was acquired by Datavant.
• Italy-based Prima Assicurazioni, a personal lines MGA, was acquired in a corporate majority deal by AXA at a $1.1B valuation.

In addition, risk transfer exchange Accelerant raised $0.7B in its IPO. The company was a 2023 and 2024 Insurtech 50 winner, placing it among the world’s most promising insurtech startups globally. 2025 is the first time since 2021 that insurtech has seen two consecutive quarters of IPO activity.

Future implication: None of the five listed acquisitions nor Accelerant completed a Series C+ round before exit, indicating that many successful insurtechs are favoring M&A or IPOs over late-stage fundraising.

MORE INSURTECH RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS

• Insurtech 50: The most promising insurtech startups of 2025
• Book of Scouting Reports: 2025’s Insurtech 50
• Book of Scouting Reports: ITC Vegas 2025
• The insurance affordability outlook: Opportunities to alleviate insurance’s affordability problem with technology
• 100 real-world applications of genAI across financial services and insurance

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

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To create the Tech IPO Pipeline, we scored companies across CBI datasets including Mosaic scores, hiring insights, revenues, exit probabilities, business relationships, and more.

Check out key highlights across the Tech IPO Pipeline below.

CBI customers: See these companies ranked by Mosaic and revenue

Combining CB Insights’ proprietary data and AI, scouting reports provide insight into each company’s:

• Funding history
• Headcount
• Key opportunities and threats
• IPO prospects
• Mosaic score

For customers, get the full book of 100+ scouting reports using the download button on the lefthand side.

MORE CB INSIGHTS RESEARCH:

• State of Venture Q3’25 Report
• Future Tech Hotshots: 2025: 45 emerging tech startups poised to make an outsized impact
• State of AI Q3’25 Report

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

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Now, our Book of Scouting Reports offers in-depth analysis on every single one of the 2025 Insurtech 50 winners, from homeowners insurance to value-added services.

Combining CB Insights’ proprietary data and AI, scouting reports provide insight into each company’s:

• Funding history
• Headcount
• Key takeaways
• Commercial Maturity score
• Mosaic score

Download the book to see all 50 scouting reports.

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

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While deals fell in Q3’25, billion-dollar rounds to AI infrastructure players continued to drive the funding surge. But the activity isn’t limited to the largest players: investors are cutting bigger checks across every stage, signaling both conviction in AI’s potential and the high costs of AI development.

Among emerging opportunities, AI agents are a key focus for VCs and enterprises alike, with agent markets leading deal and M&A activity in the quarter.

Below, we break down the top stories from this quarter’s report, including:

• AI deal activity softens, but massive rounds support continued funding boom
• Consolidation remains in full force in the AI market
• Tech market deals highlight AI agent applications, rise of GEO
• The talent premium: AI companies valued at up to ~$100M per employee

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data and charts on the evolving state of AI across geographies.

AI deal activity softens, but massive rounds support continued funding boom

Deals to private AI companies globally fell 22% quarter-over-quarter in Q3’25, but funding remained above $45B for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Taken together, these trends indicate how top-heavy the AI venture funding landscape has become. 

The average deal size in 2025 YTD is $49.3M — up 86% from 2024. In the last 4 quarters, mega-rounds ($100M+ deals) have accounted for 75%+ funding. The average since 2021 (up to Q3’24) is 53%. 

At the same time, check sizes are trending bigger at the median across every stage this year. For example, the median early-stage deal is $3.4M in 2025 YTD, up from $2.5M in 2024. 

Investors are funneling capital into fewer, larger bets on perceived AI winners, driven by the massive infrastructure costs and competitive dynamics of foundation model development.

In Q3’25, there were 6 $1B+ rounds alone. The top 3 deals went to LLM developers — Anthropic ($13B, Series F), OpenAI ($8.3B, PE), and Mistral AI ($1.5B, Series C) — reflecting the high cost of frontier model development. While OpenAI hit $12B in annualized revenue in July 2025, it’s projecting roughly $8B in cash burn this year per reports. 

Other infrastructure players like Nscale (AI data centers, $1.1B Series B) and Groq (AI inference processors, $750M, Series E) were also in the top 10. The raises are indicative of the growth and attention technologies enabling AI are receiving, with earnings call mentions of data centers hitting record levels in Q3’25 and AI training & inference chips on track for record equity deal & funding activity this year.

Consolidation remains in full force in the AI market

The AI market is a hotbed for M&A activity. 

Q3’25 marks the second highest quarter on record for AI startup M&A (172 deals), following Q2’25 (181 deals). The US continues to gain share, with startups based in the country accounting for 59% of total exits, the highest share since Q2’21. 

Three of the top 5 exits in the quarter were related to AI agents: 

• Workday acquired Sana Labs, a company focused on enterprise workflows, for $1.1B. 
• NiCE acquired customer support startup Cognigy for $955M. 
• Atlassian acquired The Browser Company, the maker of the Arc and Dia AI browsers, for $610M. 

The activity signals enterprise software incumbents are looking to buy their way into accelerating their AI roadmaps. Workday was the second most active acquirer in the quarter with 3 acquisitions (behind Salesforce, with 4 acquisitions). The HR & finance software company also picked up agent builder Flowise and AI-powered recruiting platform Paradox.

Meanwhile, Meta made its first publicly disclosed acquisitions since 2022, acquiring voice AI startups Play AI and WaveForms AI.

Other notable top exits include AI security companies Lakera (acquired by Check Point for $300M) and Prompt Security (acquired by SentinelOne for $250M-$300M). Generative AI is expanding attack surfaces, driving large cyber players to opt for M&A to more quickly integrate AI security features into existing offerings.

Both Lakera and Prompt Security were founded less than 5 years ago, far “younger” than the average time to exit of 9.7 years in the quarter, underscoring how rapidly AI security has become mission-critical.

Review the AI security startups that are ripe for acquisition next in this brief.

Tech market deals highlight AI agent applications, rise of GEO

Among the 1,500+ tech markets that CB Insights tracks, those in the chart below saw the greatest number of AI deals in Q3’25 (note: companies may appear in multiple markets).

Industrial humanoid robot developers and coding AI agents & copilots remained at the top, while LLM developers also climbed back up in the rankings from Q2’25.  

One notable rising market is generative engine optimization (GEO), which refers to tools that help brands optimize their visibility in AI search platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. This emerging category (the most nascent in the list based on CBI Commercial Maturity scores) addresses the shift toward shopping and discovery happening on top of LLM interfaces.

OpenAI’s September 2025 launch of in-platform shopping capabilities in ChatGPT underscores this trend, establishing AI platforms as new commerce channels requiring specialized optimization strategies.

Using CB Insights’ Mosaic score — which measures private company health and predicts likelihood of success — we analyzed more than 20 GEO companies, ranking them by 1-year Mosaic score growth to identify the fastest-rising vendors. 

See the GEO partners best positioned to help brands win in AI search here. 

The talent premium: AI companies valued at up to ~$100M per employee

AI companies with lean headcounts and breakthrough potential are attracting sky-high valuations.

Humanoid robotics developer Figure leads the pack in Q3’25 at $104.3M per employee on a $39B valuation, despite reporting no revenue last year (though projecting $9B by 2029). Cognition follows with $98.1M per employee, based on its $10.2B valuation. While the coding AI agent startup has $150M+ in ARR (following its acquisition of Windsurf), this indicates a lofty revenue multiple of ~68x. 

Others topping the quarter’s valuation-per-employee list span the AI model (Anthropic, Mistral AI, Decart, Harmonic), infrastructure (Baseten), and application layers (OpenEvidence,  Sierra, Irregular). 

Whether these valuations prove prescient or overextended will largely depend on whether these companies can deliver on ambitious revenue projections in the years ahead.

RELATED RESOURCES FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• State of Venture Q3’25 Report
• State of Fintech Q3’25 Report
• State of AI Q2’25 Report
• State of Digital Health Q2’25 Report
• State of Tech Exits H1’25

The post State of AI Q3’25 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

This cohort cuts through the noise to spotlight 45 companies we expect to have an outsized, lasting impact over the next 5-10 years — from AI infrastructure that powers autonomous enterprise systems to vertical AI applications in healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing that solve operational problems.

Using CB Insights’ proprietary data — including Commercial Maturity, Mosaic, patents, business relationships, and funding — we identified 45 emerging players most likely to have a strong exit in the next 5-10 years.

See every startup in the Future Tech Hotshots 2025 Expert Collection

Key takeaways

• Agent infrastructure is the new frontier. The cohort reveals a decisive bet on agentic AI, with startups like Coval (AI agent testing), Questflow (multi-agent orchestration), and Syncari (agentic master data management) building the foundational tools that enable autonomous AI to operate reliably at scale. These companies are positioned for outsized impact because they’re creating the critical layer to embed AI into workflows — just as cloud infrastructure enabled SaaS, agent infrastructure will enable the next wave of autonomous enterprise software.

• The 45 hotshots have collectively formed over 110 business relationships since 2024. LLM data preparation company LlamaIndex leads the pack (18 partnerships), having partnered with incumbents like Microsoft and Databricks, while blockchain infrastructure API startup Crossmint has forged partnerships with Visa (to enable AI-driven on-chain payments) and Moneygram (to power new stablecoin cross-border payment experience). As these startups scale over the next 5–10 years, this early validation with enterprise incumbents will become harder to displace as customers build workflows around their products.

• Industrial AI is the most promising area, with companies in this space having experienced the highest Mosaic score increase over the last 6 months. This includes GIS platform Felt (+71 points in 6 months) and humanoid developer Persona AI (+57). This momentum reflects investor and customer recognition that industrial AI creates defensible moats through domain-specific datasets that take years to build. Unlike horizontal tools, this vertical expertise can’t be easily replicated, positioning these companies as prime acquisition targets for industrial incumbents seeking AI capabilities over the next 5-10 years.

• Elite management teams cluster in enterprise infrastructure. Top Management Mosaic scores concentrate in enterprise tech, with Lineaje (962/1000; software supply chain security platform), Maven AGI (956/1000; customer service AI agents), ProRata.ai (950/1000; AI-powered search and advertising), and Harmonic (876/1000; mathematical superintelligence) all led by executives hailing from incumbents like Google, Robinhood, and Stripe. These companies signal that the most experienced founders see enterprise infrastructure — not verticalized or consumer AI — as the category where technical depth and execution create the most competitive advantage.

Methodology

We used CB Insights data to analyze hundreds of VC-backed private tech companies with Mosaic scores of 600+ and an early commercial maturity score. 

Our scoring model factors in signals like investor quality, business relationships, Mosaic scores, key people data, and patents. We excluded companies with fewer than 100 employees. Data is as of 9/29/2025.

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com. 

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CB Insights has unveiled the 2025 Insurtech 50 list of the world’s most promising insurtech startups. The winners have a success probability among the global top 3% of private companies, signaled by a median CB Insights’ Mosaic score of 734 out of 1,000 (as of 9/30/2025). This benchmark is important because broader forces — such as AI agent commercialization and extreme weather events — influence the industry’s tech and underwriting considerations.

The 2025 Insurtech 50 includes 27 insurers and intermediaries and 23 tech vendors, which have collectively raised $3.6B in funding. 60% of the winners are early-stage insurtechs, a 20-percentage point increase from last year’s list. Nearly three-quarters of the winners were not in business at the start of the decade, signaling the opportunity for new entrants to shape the industry’s innovation landscape.

Utilizing CB Insights’ Strategy Terminal, the 50 winners were selected based on several factors, including CB Insights’ data and predictive signals on deal activity, industry partnerships, investor strength, hiring momentum, and outlook indicators like Commercial Maturity and Mosaic Scores. We also reviewed Analyst Briefings submitted directly to us by startups, and leveraged Scouting Reports powered by CB Insights’ Team of Agents.

Below, we map out the 50 winners, classifying them across 16 categories based on their core offering.

Please click to enlarge.

CBI customers: Get data on the winners

Key takeaways

1. Small and mid-sized businesses fuel growth opportunities for most insurers and intermediaries. 

The winners include 13 insurtechs in the commercial category and 6 in the health and benefits category, which are primarily focused on small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Most commercial-focused insurtechs offer coverage for specific SMB segments, like a16z-backed District Cover, which serves small businesses based in cities. Proactive risk management is also a focus for some of these companies. For instance, CompScience uses computer vision technology to reduce the likelihood of workplace injuries that could lead to workers’ compensation claims.

Four of the insurtechs in the health and benefits category are ICHRA (individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement) platforms: Stretch Dollar, Thatch, Venteur, and Zorro. ICHRA is an alternative to traditional employer-selected health plans in the US, where employers instead allocate money for their employees to select their preferred qualified plan individually. These plans are particularly attractive to SMBs. Chris Ellis, Founder and CEO of Thatch, highlighted the benefits for both employees and employers with us:

“…with Thatch, a defined contribution, employees get to choose [what] works best for them. It’s easier for employees to manage [and] it’s easier for employers to administer.”

Broadly, the ICHRA platforms market has seen favorable market development over the past year, with Mosaic scores (success probabilities) for market leaders steadily increasing.

2. Many tech vendors build products for insurers seeking to deploy AI agents. 

AI agents are a widespread focus among tech vendors, which are loosely mapped across the insurance value chain — distribution, underwriting, operations, and claims. Examples of AI agent-focused companies include:

• Quandri, which offers AI agents to support insurance agency renewals.
• Sixfold, whose agents include an underwriting referral agent in October 2025.
• PenguinAi, a platform for payers (and providers) founded by the former Chief Data Officer of Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare.
• Elysian, a claims TPA with a focus on AI agent orchestration.

Workflow improvements to support decision-making are the primary focus for agentic AI deployment among the winners. Kasey Roh, US CEO of Upstage, shared the company’s near-term objective:

“Over the next 12 months, our focus is expanding [the] AI space from document extraction to workflow automation, transforming every step from intake and classification to data extraction, generation, and insight delivery through an agentic workflow.”

The focus on AI agents aligns with insurance companies’ broader appetite for the technology, with AIG Chairman and CEO Peter Zaffino repeatedly highlighting the company’s “agentic ecosystem” as an example on earnings calls. Broadly, revenue opportunities for AI agents are increasing for tech vendors, and the market momentum spans industries. For instance, professional services firms like Accenture, KPMG, and McKinsey are actively forming agentic AI partnerships. 

3. Personal lines P&C trails commercial among the winners.

Just 7 Insurtech 50 winners have a primary focus on P&C personal lines. 4 of the companies are focused on homeowners insurance:

• Delos, a California-based managing general agent with differentiated wildfire risk models.
• Eventual, whose “Premium Lock” product offers reimbursement for potential premium increases.
• Faura, which offers models to support underwriting for climate- and weather-related risks.
• Sola, which offers parametric insurance for wind and hail events.

Otherwise, Faye is focused on travel insurance while Quandri is focused on insurance agencies. Just one company — State Farm Ventures-backed InsureVision — focuses on auto.

Broadly, auto and homeowners insurance face the greatest affordability pressure across P&C lines of business, so startups with differentiated, strong solutions in these spaces — like the Insurtech 50 winners — face favorable market conditions. As an example, Matt Perlman, Partner at IA Capital Group, notes Delos’ market strength:

“Delos brings a true paradigm shift in using advanced data analytics to understand wildfire behavior, not based solely on historical occurrence but dynamically as conditions change on the ground. … Their performance in the highly dislocated California market speaks for itself, and they have gained the trust of capital markets, rating agencies, and regulators as an innovator on behalf of homeowners and businesses in California and beyond.”

The 2024 Insurtech 50: Where are they now?

In the 12 months since publication, the 2024 Insurtech 50 winners posted notable accomplishments, including:

• 15 equity funding rounds.
• $422M in equity funding (i.e., 9% of global insurtech funding).
• 26% median headcount growth, directly resulting in 1,600+ new jobs.
• 4 exits — Accelerant, Bowtie, EvolutionIQ, and Next Insurance.
• 21-point increase in median Mosaic scores.

Mosaic scores from the 2025 Insurtech 50 winners

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This summer, the accelerator that spotted OpenAI, Airbnb, and Stripe before they became household names focused its funding on the production-ready AI layer that incumbents will soon race to acquire or replicate.

For strategy teams, Y Combinator represents both a roadmap of where the venture landscape is heading and a curated list of potential acquisition targets, partners, and competitive threats. 

Using CB Insights, we mapped the 165+ companies in the Y Combinator’s 2025 Summer batch across 11 different categories. Then, we analyzed the cohort to make predictions about what this means for the future of enterprise AI. 

Please click to enlarge.

Note: Categories are not mutually exclusive. For more, see the Y Combinator Summer Batch 2025 Expert Collection here. 

Track the 165+ startups in Y Combinator’s newest cohort

Key Takeaways  

• Voice AI is expanding into regulated industries. 16 companies in the batch are building specialized voice AI systems across use cases. Beyond just consumer assistants (April, Blue), startups in this batch are producing enterprise-grade systems managing complex, regulated interactions, notably in financial services (Altur, Veritus Agent, Qualify.bot, Wayline) — where compliance barriers are highest. Meanwhile, startups like Liva AI and Panels are building voice training data, as proprietary datasets that general-purpose models can’t replicate, creating defensive moats for companies employing voice AI.

• Startups are pushing deeper into software development with specialized solutions. With 20 software development companies in this summer’s Y Combinator batch, the category represents the largest, with coding agents still showing the strongest revenue traction among all AI agent types. However, new entrants are expanding beyond the code generation that enterprises already use. For example, Stagewise (frontend agents for codebases) and Interfere (autonomous de-bugging) are moving beyond just code generation to handle the complete development lifecycle, from writing production-ready code to testing on physical hardware. 

• Y Combinator is betting on the full agent stack, signaling the technology has moved from experimentation to implementation. Nearly 50% of YC’s Summer 2025 cohort offers AI agents, with 14 of those companies focusing specifically on agent infrastructure needed for deployment — spanning agent evaluation (AgentHub), de-bugging (Fulcrum Research), and monitoring (Mohi). Meanwhile, startups like Nozomio Labs (building context augmentation layers for agents) and Imprezia (creating AI-native ad networks) are pushing beyond traditional tooling into novel applications. As agents become table stakes for enterprises, infrastructure tools will become increasingly critical for building and managing reliability and performance at scale.
• The AI infrastructure focus is shifting from capability to efficiency. Companies like Stellon Labs (tiny frontier models for edge devices), Herdora (low-latency GPU inference for voice AI), and DeepAware AI (AI data center energy optimization) signal that deployment constraints — not model performance — are now the primary barrier to AI adoption. Solutions focusing on efficiency constraints like latency, energy costs, and edge deployment are critical for commercial AI deployment.

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The surge was fueled by outsized mega-rounds to new decacorns — companies with $10B+ valuations — and the continued dominance of AI, which accounted for 51% of all funding and 22% of deals in Q3’25.

However, funding growth was far from uniform across sectors. Retail and healthcare saw quarterly declines, while fintech remained flat. The data suggests that investors are pulling back from traditional industries and doubling down on emerging technologies, especially AI.

Below, we break down the top stories from this quarter’s report, including:

• Funding surpassed $90B for the 4th consecutive quarter
• AI is on track to capture over 50% of total annual venture funding for the first time 
• Decacorns raise record funding, as quarterly tech mega-rounds reach a new high
• Humanoid robots captured the most deals for the 2nd quarter in a row
• Exits are rebounding despite companies staying private longer

Let’s dive in.

Download the full report to access comprehensive data and charts on the evolving state of venture across sectors, geographies, and more.

Top stories in Q3’25

1. Funding surpassed $90B for the 4th consecutive quarter

Venture funding exceeded $90B for the fourth consecutive quarter, reaching $95.6B in Q3’25. The year-to-date total surpassed $310B, marking the highest annual figure since 2022.

Deal count, however, fell to its lowest point since Q4’16, underscoring an ongoing trend: investors are writing bigger checks to fewer companies. This pattern has persisted for over a year.

AI maintained its stronghold on the venture market, capturing $47.8B in Q3, for 50% of total funding and 22% of deals. Both figures represent the second-highest quarterly levels on record, confirming AI as the primary driver of venture strength.

While the largest rounds of the quarter went to leading AI players, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, other standout fundraisers included:

• China Fusion Energy, which raised $1.6B to advance fusion reactor engineering and commercialization.
• DBG Health raised $1B to provide a range of healthcare services.
• PsiQuantum, a developer of photonic quantum computers, raised a $1B Series E round.

Investors are also fueling a resurgence in hard tech — particularly in aerospace, defense, and advanced computing: 

• Aerospace funding reached $14.1B through Q3’25 and is expected to reach $18.9B by year-end — surpassing its 2021 record by 20%. 
• Defense tech raised a record $13.7B, driving the emergence of a new military-startup complex. 
• Quantum computing tripled its previous annual funding record, reaching $3.7B.

The data points to a venture market in transition — one defined by larger checks, fewer deals, and a growing concentration of capital in AI and hard tech.

2. AI is on track to capture over 50% of total annual venture funding for the first time

AI companies are capturing a record share of funding and deals this year, at 51% of funding and 22% of deals. They also claimed 7 of the 10 largest rounds this quarter.

The US is proving especially dominant in AI, attracting 85% of total AI funding and 53% of deals in 2025. Four of the 7 largest rounds this quarter were based in the US: Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and Figure.

Funding to AI-enabled companies is also taking a significant share of traditional sectors:

• Retail tech declined to $5.4B, its lowest quarter since Q3’24, with AI startups raising 36% of annual funding.
• Digital health fell to $4.5B, marking its weakest quarter since Q4’24, with AI startups representing 63% of the sector so far this year.
• Fintech remained flat at $10.9B quarterly, with AI firms accounting for 23% of total fintech funding in Q3’25, its 2nd highest quarter on record.

AI is creating a clear split in the venture ecosystem, with AI startups capturing an outsized share of capital and mega-rounds, while non-AI startups face tighter funding conditions.

The rapid rise in AI valuations raises questions about long-term sustainability, as many companies are priced for winner-take-all outcomes across categories, particularly in saturated markets like coding agents & copilots, where dozens of similar startups compete as margins tighten.

The current environment reflects a flight to quality. While AI continues to drive momentum and capital concentration, the market is gradually shifting toward fundamentals — where execution and efficiency, not just promise, will determine which companies justify their valuations.

3. Decacorns raise record funding, as quarterly tech mega-rounds reach a new high

The venture landscape is moving beyond unicorns to decacorns — companies valued at $10B or more. Decacorns raised a record $94.5B through Q3’25, surpassing the previous record of $46.3B in 2024.

However, the number of decacorn deals is almost half as much as it was in 2021 when it reached $45.5B — from 60 deals to 32 this year — revealing the high funding concentration among the very largest companies — primarily leading AI startups.

AI leaders raising at decacorn valuations include developers xAI, Scale, and Perplexity, defense startups Anduril and Helsing, and fintech company Ramp.

Beyond decacorns, $100M+ mega-rounds for tech companies also hit record levels. September saw 52 tech mega-rounds in total, with 70% of capital allocated to companies focused on making AI infrastructure more affordable at scale.

Many AI infrastructure companies that raised mega-rounds in Q3’25 have already generated substantial revenue. Invisible Technologies reached $134M in 2024, Baseten reportedly grew 10x YoY, while Rebellions projected $72M in revenue. This shift separates real businesses from overvalued concepts as scrutiny intensifies.

Decacorns and mega-rounds are defining the current venture landscape. The market is bifurcating not only between AI companies and the rest, but also between decacorns and mega-round recipients vs. everyone else.

We expect the gap between well-funded companies and the rest of the venture ecosystem to continue widening as capital concentrates among market leaders who are building critical infrastructure and enterprise solutions.

4. Humanoid robots captured the most deals for the 2nd quarter in a row

AI markets dominated the most active deals in Q3’25, including AI-powered humanoids, AI software applications, and autonomous driving. 

Industrial humanoid robots captured 17 deals — more than any other market — continuing momentum from Q2’25, when it also led with 23 deals. New humanoid robot unicorns also emerged — Zhiyuan Robot and Unitree Robotics — bringing the total to 4.

Humanoid deal activity extended outside of the industrial sector in Q3. Healthcare humanoid robots secured 7 deals, ranking just outside of the top 10 markets. Figure led both the industrial and healthcare humanoid markets, raising a $1B Series C round at a $39B valuation, making it the 9th most valuable private company globally.

Investor interest in humanoid robots is driven partly by physical AI enabling new robotics capabilities, giving humanoids commercial promise that was not previously possible.

But despite deal activity and future potential, humanoids remain years away from widespread deployment. Developers still face fundamental challenges with inference, dexterity, reliability, and cost, which limit initial use cases to structured environments like factories and warehouses with a controlled and predictable set of tasks.

Autonomous driving showed particular strength among markets powered by physical AI. Both autonomous trucking systems and autonomous driving systems captured 8 deals each, ranking among the most active markets by deal count, alongside prominent AI categories such as coding AI agents, AI agent development platforms, and LLM developers.

5. Exits are rebounding despite companies staying private longer

Exits are recovering, but the numbers also reveal a fundamental shift in how long startups remain private before going public or getting acquired.

M&A and IPO activity both rebounded in Q3’25, partly driven by maturing AI startups that created more exit opportunities. M&A deals rose 8% from last quarter to 2,324 — the highest total since Q3’22. AI M&A activity remained elevated at 172 deals, contributing to the increase.

Fintech M&A contributed heavily to the rebound, rising to 249 deals — its highest level since Q1’22. Healthcare M&A also hit its strongest level since Q1’23, with 3 of the top 10 M&A transactions going to healthcare companies.

IPO activity climbed 45% from 95 to 138 — the highest quarterly total since Q3’23. AI and fintech contributed to the uptick, but software companies dominated the largest offerings. The biggest IPOs went to Figma and Klarna. The only hardware exception was China-based Best Semi, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

The Q3 exit rebound reflects improving conditions and suggests a broader recovery ahead, especially if interest rates continue to decline.

Despite increased exit activity, companies are staying private longer, with the time to exit rising from 12.2 years in 2015 to 15.9 years in 2025.

The ability to raise at decacorn valuations while staying private removes the pressure to go public for capital. Companies can now scale to a massive size, hire top talent through liquid secondary markets, and maintain founder control — all without the quarterly earnings pressure or regulatory burdens associated with going public.

Exit levels are recovering, suggesting that the market is normalizing, but the structural shift toward longer private tenures is likely to remain. The venture lifecycle is undergoing a fundamental change, with companies now possessing viable paths to scale privately that did not exist a decade ago.

If you aren’t already a client, sign up for a free trial to learn more about our platform.

RELATED RESOURCES FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• State of Venture Q2’25 Report
• State of Fintech Q3’25 Report
• State of AI Q2’25 Report
• State of Digital Health Q2’25 Report
• State of Insurtech Q2’25 Report
• State of Tech Exits H1’25

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

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Rohit Verma, President & Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company, shares executive insights on insurance affordability.

A few months ago, I sat down to review my monthly expenses and was stunned. My auto insurance premium had climbed over 30%, and my home insurance has almost doubled since the start of the pandemic. These aren’t discretionary expenditures — they’re essential protections. Friends and colleagues have shared similar stories, some even seeing insurance costs exceed their monthly mortgage payments, a shift unimaginable just a few years ago. One friend recently asked me, “Where is this going? Are we heading toward a future where insurance becomes unaffordable for the average household?”

In recent years, insurance rates have increased considerably, largely due to severe property losses from wildfires, storms, and hurricanes. Social inflation is also straining the industry. These pressures have forced carriers to raise deductibles and prices; trends reflected in property loss ratios. Necessary to maintain industry stability, these actions have also burdened policyholders, challenging affordability and accessibility, and intensifying financial strain. Crawford adjusters witness how today’s risk environment challenges insurance’s core purpose: transferring risk from insured to insurer.

Thankfully, recent reinsurance renewals suggest relief may be on the horizon, barring major catastrophes. As these dynamics unfold, we expect pricing and deductibles to ease, leading to normalization in the next 12 to 18 months. However, current premiums aren’t sustainable, and the industry must act now to support customers through this period.

This short-term relief opens a critical window to implement more sustainable solutions, like enhanced technology adoption, resilient rebuild strategies, and stronger safeguards against legal exposure and fraud. Smarter technology use, resilient rebuilding, and proactive stances against damaging practices offer meaningful progress toward stability, though none are quick fixes.

Technology is a vital lever to alleviate cost pressures and improve the insurance experience as the market normalizes. Advanced solutions, such as agentic AI, predictive analytics, and AI-powered risk insights, are already transforming insurance. These technologies streamline workflows, enable faster, more accurate estimates, and help insurers proactively manage risks.

These innovations go beyond efficiency; they reshape the customer experience. Policyholders benefit from faster claims resolution, more transparent communication, and tailored risk management. Leveraging real-time data and automation, insurers deliver responsive, personalized service, restoring trust and confidence, even amid market pressures.

This report, developed with CB Insights and Crawford & Company, offers a data-driven roadmap for addressing affordability. By analyzing tech momentum and affordability across nine P&C lines, we pinpoint where technology most effectively reduces loss costs and benefits policyholders. Findings show targeted adoption of advanced tech, especially in cyber, homeowners, and auto, delivers the greatest impact.

I encourage all of us as industry stakeholders to use this insightful report to explore investments, partnerships, and solutions. Together, we can build a more resilient insurance ecosystem — keeping coverage accessible, affordable, and customer-centric for all.

Rohit Verma
President & Chief Executive Officer
Crawford & Company

Overview

Insurance coverage is becoming increasingly unaffordable for businesses and consumers, with loss costs rising rapidly due to factors like extreme weather, labor shortages, and supply chain disruptions.

To improve affordability, insurance companies must prioritize innovative ways to deploy technology across loss prevention efforts. While technology alone is not enough to improve affordability, it offers the most tangible opportunities to lower costs.

Below, we identify top tech-driven loss prevention opportunities to improve insurance affordability across nine P&C insurance lines of business. We rank these opportunities across two axes:

• Tech momentum assesses startup ecosystem strength and tech applicability across a line of business. We measure tech momentum using CB Insights’ datasets such as deal activity, company headcount, and our proprietary Commercial Maturity — which measures a private company’s ability to compete or partner — and Mosaic scores — which measure the overall health and growth potential of private companies.
• Affordability pressure assesses the impact of loss cost increases for policyholders across a line of business. We evaluate affordability pressure by surveying Crawford & Company’s global claims experts, coupled with CB Insights’ Public Company Financials data.

Key takeaways: Opportunities with the greatest potential impact

1. Cyber leads in startup momentum, offering insurers the richest landscape of tech innovation to improve affordability.
2. Homeowners’ insurance faces the greatest affordability pressure, making it the most urgent line for loss-prevention technologies despite limited ready-made solutions.
3. Commercial and personal auto face an innovation gap, with high affordability pressure but low startup momentum — requiring insurers to carefully vet and selectively scale emerging solutions.

1. Cyber leads in startup momentum, offering insurers the richest landscape of tech innovation to improve affordability.

Cyber insurance faces only moderate affordability pressure, primarily from data breaches and hacks, compared to other lines like auto and homeowners that are more exposed to medical costs, materials shortages, and natural catastrophes (NatCats). What makes cyber unique is that leading players such as Coalition (an insurtech unicorn with $300M+ in revenue in 2024) actively embrace technology to prevent and reduce losses at scale.

Because the line is inherently tech-centered, nearly every new entrant presents a potential opportunity to lower loss costs. Risk management practices within cyber have generally reduced claims severity, as noted by Greg Smith, President, Canada at Crawford & Company:

“A larger number of smaller cyber claims are reducing severity, as is a more disciplined focus on underwriting and loss control in this space. Loss ratios for cyber lines in Canada have improved significantly in recent years because of improved underwriting and risk management.”

Between July 2022 and June 2025, cyber-focused startups completed more than 2,500 deals of at least $100K in funding, more than any other line of business analyzed. With a median CB Insights’ Mosaic score (success probability) of 615 out of 1,000, cyber startups tie general liability for the highest score across the 9 lines of business.

This surge of new entrants reflects rising enterprise concerns around AI security, which has spiked in executive commentary since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. For example, Knostic, founded in 2023 and recently doubling its headcount from 22 to 44, helps enterprises identify and mitigate large language model data leakage risks.

Looking ahead, as individuals and businesses increasingly adopt AI, advanced cyber risk detection and rapid response capabilities will become critical. Insurance companies should prioritize evaluating partnerships with cyber startups or building comparable in-house capabilities to pass affordability gains onto policyholders.

2. Homeowners’ insurance faces the greatest affordability pressure, making it the most urgent line for loss-prevention technologies despite limited ready-made solutions.

Homeowners’ insurance experienced the steepest estimated loss ratio increases among all business lines analyzed, coinciding with rate increases spurred by natural catastrophes (NatCats). Survey respondents also pointed to fraud, labor shortages, and materials shortages as amplifying factors.

Reducing loss costs within homeowners’ insurance will depend on consistent data availability for individual homes and surrounding communities, as noted by Tim Butler, Head of Contractor Connection & CRD, Australia at Crawford & Company:

“For quite a number of years, there has been consistent talk of preventative measures in the form of water pressure meters and standard home tech. Unfortunately, it appears adoption of this technology remains an uphill effort. There is, however, an increase in the use of data available, which appears to be creating more consistency around loss cost.”

While more than 1,900 startup deals touch the homeowners’ space, many of these products were not designed specifically for insurers, requiring carriers to actively identify and adapt external technologies for loss prevention.

For example, Atmosic is developing low-power Internet of Things (IoT) charging infrastructure that insurers could implement via homeowner-provided sensors. Homeowners could receive these sensors at the start of hurricane season, ensuring extended power to generate data on risks that could result in a costly claim.

Beyond sensors, insurance companies should also eye non-traditional data and risk engineering methods to improve affordability. For instance, Figure, a humanoid robotics company founded in 2022 and backed by Bezos Expeditions, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and OpenAI, is targeting household deployments. In the future, humanoid robots could proactively maintain homes, generate maintenance data, and provide insurers with differentiated insights to mitigate loss risks.

Looking ahead, affordability improvements in homeowners’ insurance will require a broad set of technologies that support both loss control and proactive risk management. NatCat events, in particular, will continue to stress the market, presenting increasingly pressing needs to reduce loss costs to the greatest extent possible.

3. Commercial and personal auto face an innovation gap, with high affordability pressure but low startup momentum — requiring insurers to carefully vet and selectively scale emerging solutions.

Commercial and personal auto rank lowest in tech momentum across all lines of business analyzed. Many of these startups are in the electric vehicle space, a sector now facing market headwinds with reduced executive attention and a pullback in dealmaking.

Despite weak innovation supply, both auto lines remain under high affordability pressure, second only to homeowners. Survey participants cited macro-economic factors such as rising materials costs and social inflation as primary contributors to worsening claim trends, with Steve Blakemore, Managing Director, U.S. Loss Adjusting at Crawford & Company, noting:

“Cost of materials and specialized repair processes to include aluminum bodies and e-vehicles have increased significantly beyond affordable deductibles.”

Technology opportunities for loss prevention exist, but they require disciplined evaluation — and need to extend beyond established telematics capabilities. For example, AtoB is a payments platform for the trucking industry with investors including Bloomberg Beta and Mastercard. The company’s revenue is projected to reach $100M by the end of 2025.

Coupled with existing data from telematics capabilities, insurance companies could utilize AtoB’s spending data to offer policyholders predictive notifications — for instance, guidance on routes to avoid areas with a higher likelihood of collisions.

Insurance companies should also identify opportunities related to autonomous vehicles, particularly after Waymo’s $5.6B Series C funding round in October 2024. Autonomous vehicle technology offers insurance companies potentially valuable data points that can inform loss prevention strategies as autonomous driving becomes more prevalent.

Looking ahead, improvements to auto insurance affordability through technology will require access to unique data sources that provide differentiated insights into driving risks. Carefully selected tech partnerships can provide insurance companies with access to this data, enabling them to offer policyholders proactive notifications that curb risky actions and prevent costly losses.

Line of business spotlights

Prioritize

Commercial property

Overview: Insurance coverage for business buildings, facilities, warehouses, and commercial real estate against property damage and operational risks.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 4th
• Tech momentum ranking — 5th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 800+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $10.8M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 563 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity — Scaling (level 4 out of 5)
• Survey respondents indicated that commercial property has significant exposure to weather-related natural catastrophes.
• Survey respondents also identified materials shortages and supply chain disruptions as highly relevant factors to commercial property.

Potential startup collaboration: Doss is an AI-enabled enterprise resource planning platform serving industries like construction, manufacturing, and supply chain. The company more than doubled its headcount between July 2024 and July 2025. An insurance company could pursue a partnership with Doss to gain data access to flag supply chain shortage risks that could otherwise lead to costly repairs and restorations.

Construction

Overview: Specialized insurance coverage for construction companies, contractors, and building projects, addressing construction-specific risks including accidents, defects, and site safety.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 5th
• Tech momentum ranking — 3rd

Data highlights:

• Pool of 1,100+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $4.0M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 562 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Construction has the third-highest tech momentum, indicating ample opportunity for innovation in the space.
• Survey participants indicated the following factors as highly relevant: weather-related natural catastrophes, labor shortages, materials shortages and supply chain disruptions.

Potential startup collaboration: AUAR builds mobile, robotics-powered micro-factories for home construction. The company partnered with industrial giant ABB in 2024 to expand operations in the United States. Given that micro-factories can reduce construction costs due to the potential need for less labor, materials, and transportation, insurance companies could offer AUAR-partnered construction companies less costly premiums.

Cyber

Overview: Insurance coverage against cybersecurity threats, data breaches, and digital risks affecting business operations and customer information.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 6th
• Tech momentum ranking — 1st

Data highlights:

• Pool of 2,500+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $6.0M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 615 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Cyber has the highest tech momentum, boosted above the others as the line is inherently tech-enabled. Cyber startups have the highest weighted-average score across deals analyzed in the report, and the largest deal count analyzed across the lines of business.

Potential startup collaboration: Lakera is a security platform for genAI applications. The startup has a CB Insights’ Mosaic score among the top 2% of companies globally, and is one of the world’s most-promising AI startups as a 2025 AI 100 winner. Insurance companies could partner with Lakera to offer the company’s tech to support policyholders’ AI agents, identifying and protecting against potential data breach attempts from malicious prompts.

Homeowners

Overview: Personal insurance coverage protects residential properties and personal belongings against property damage, natural disasters, and household risks.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 1st
• Tech momentum ranking — 7th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 1,900+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $4.2M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 562 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Homeowners’ insurance leads in affordability pressure, with analysis zeroing in on claims severity and loss ratio change (the greatest across lines analyzed) as key pain points.
• Survey respondents indicated that homeowners’ insurance has significant exposure to weather-related natural catastrophes.

Potential startup collaboration: Honey Homes is an on-demand maintenance service currently serving homeowners in California, Illinois, and Texas. Insurance companies could evaluate partnerships with Honey Homes to gain access to trending service requests in localized areas, like upticks in window replacements across older homes. Insurance companies could then derive data-driven signals from those requests to inform preventive action for potentially costly events, such as sending plywood and sandbags to homeowners in a projected hurricane path.

Vet

Commercial auto

Overview: Insurance coverage for vehicles used in business operations, including fleet management, trucking operations, and commercial transportation risks.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 3rd
• Tech momentum ranking — 9th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 500+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $7.0M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 613 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Commercial auto had the lowest tech momentum ranking due to below-average company scores and deal count.
• Materials shortages, medical costs, and social inflation are key factors in commercial auto claims.

Potential startup collaboration: Outpost offers a network of managed freight terminals, featuring a gate management platform that reviews truck data like license plates and registration numbers using computer vision technology. The company doubled its financial capacity in September 2025 to $1B. Insurance companies could pursue a partnership conversation with Outpost to gain access to gate data for risk modeling purposes.

General liability

Overview: Broad business insurance covering third-party claims for bodily injury, property damage, and operational risks arising from normal business activities.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 7th
• Tech momentum ranking — 6th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 200+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $6.6M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 615 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Survey responses indicated that general liability is experiencing increased claims severity. Social inflation and increased medical costs are key factors relevant to general liability claims.

Potential startup collaboration: Relay provides communication and location-tracking devices for frontline workers across industries, like entertainment, healthcare, and hospitality. The startup’s headcount has grown rapidly in recent years, with a projected revenue of $100M by 2027. Insurance companies could evaluate offering Relay’s product to business customers, like concert venues and restaurant operators. The tech deployment would support employee responses to potential claims-triggering risks, such as wet floors that could lead to slip and fall incidents.

Inland and ocean marine

Overview: Specialized coverage for goods in transit, commercial equipment, and property that moves between locations or operates in maritime environments.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 9th
• Tech momentum ranking — 2nd

Data highlights:

• Pool of 900+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $5.3M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 607 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Inland and ocean marine has the second-highest tech momentum, indicating strong opportunities to improve insurance affordability — despite the lowest pressure to improve affordability across all lines of business assessed.
• Survey respondents indicated the following factors as relevant: fraud, labor shortages, materials shortages and supply chain disruptions, and weather-related natural catastrophes.

Potential startup collaboration: Altana AI is a supply chain intelligence platform backed by Google Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, and — as a CB Insights 2024 Insurtech 50 winner — one of the world’s most-promising insurtech startups. The company offers products for business interruption risk and supply chain network planning. Insurance companies could explore Altana AI’s platform to gain visibility into potential supply chain risks and reroute shipments that otherwise face heightened risk for damage or loss.

Personal auto

Overview: Individual insurance coverage for personal vehicles, protecting against accidents, vehicle damage, and liability arising from personal driving.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 2nd
• Tech momentum ranking — 8th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 900+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $7.3M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 606 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Personal auto has the second-highest affordability pressure among lines of business analyzed, primarily due to loss ratio change estimates.
• Startups relevant to personal auto ranked the lowest in momentum due to a low weighted average score.
• Survey respondents indicated challenges around claims severity.

Potential startup collaboration: NoTraffic is a traffic management company that offers IoT devices to collect data at intersections and an AI platform to support traffic optimization decisions. NoTraffic is a NVIDIA partner and previously participated in the NVIDIA Inception Program. Insurance companies could evaluate partnerships with NoTraffic to support deployments that could reduce traffic accidents and lower claims costs.

Workers’ compensation

Overview: Mandatory insurance providing medical benefits and wage replacement for employees injured on the job, covering workplace accidents and occupational hazards.

Insurance Affordability Outlook placement:

• Affordability pressure ranking — 8th
• Tech momentum ranking — 4th

Data highlights:

• Pool of 100+ deals analyzed
  • Median deal size — $5.0M
  • Median current Mosaic score — 581 out of 1,000
  • Most frequently listed current Commercial Maturity Score — “Deploying” (level 3 out of 5)
• Survey participants generally viewed medical cost increases and social inflation as relevant to workers’ compensation insurance.

Potential startup collaboration: Protex AI offers a computer vision product that gives customers visibility into workplace risks (like speeding forklifts in warehouse environments) to prompt intervention by environment, health, and safety teams. DHL and Marks & Spencer are among Protex AI’s customers. Insurance companies could seek a partnership with Protex AI to offer the platform to policyholders facing elevated risks for workers’ compensation claims, like manufacturers and warehouse operators, due to workplace injuries.

Monitor

No lines of business fall within this category.

Methodology

The insurance affordability outlook provides an informational visual framework for insurance leaders to identify opportunities to improve insurance affordability for policyholders.

The opportunities encompass potential tech deployments for loss prevention and response across 9 lines of business: commercial auto, commercial property, construction, cyber, general liability, homeowners, inland and ocean marine, personal auto, and workers’ compensation.

The resulting visual plots the lines of business relative to one another across 3 categories:

1. Monitor — Lines of business with lower signals to warrant investment in tech to support insurance affordability. Insurance leaders should track developments in this space for future consideration.
2. Vet — Lines of business with moderate signals to warrant investment in tech to support insurance affordability. Insurance leaders should evaluate potential partnerships and tech deployment, pursuing the most-promising opportunities as innovation activities.
3. Prioritize — Lines of business with strong signals to warrant investment in tech to support insurance affordability. Insurance leaders should prioritize partnerships and tech deployments to operationalize.

Calculations across 2 axes — tech momentum and affordability pressure — guide plotting for each line of business.

Tech momentum

Tech momentum assesses startup ecosystem strength and tech applicability across the 9 lines of business.

This report leverages CB Insights’ AI-enabled deal search to identify 8,900+ venture-backed equity deals of at least $100K across the lines of business between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2025. Deals were identified based on keywords specific to the lines of business, and some deals were excluded from the analysis. Deals analyzed in this report are not mutually exclusive, although the aggregate total constitutes approximately 9% of venture dealmaking between Q3’22 and Q2’25.

We generate a score for each deal that reflects the company’s momentum within the marketplace. The score uses CB Insights’ data, such as deal activity, company headcount, and proprietary Commercial Maturity and Mosaic scores. We include startups from across the venture landscape, although we assign greater weight to insurtechs given their direct relevance to the insurance market. Weighted average calculation guides the final ranking of the scores and the total number of deals analyzed across each line of business.

Affordability pressure

Affordability pressure evaluates the approximate impact of loss costs on insurance affordability for policyholders across the 9 lines of business.

We leverage 2 different data sources to measure affordability pressure for each opportunity:

• Survey of claims experts — 64 Crawford & Company employees provided directional insights across 160 line of business-specific responses on global loss trends.
• Loss ratio changes among publicly-traded insurers — Loss ratio changes between 2022 and 2024 across a sample of 15 companies: AIG, Allstate, American Financial Group, Arch Capital Group, AXIS Capital, Chubb, Everest Group, GEICO, Mercury General Corporation, Old Republic Insurance Group, Progressive, Selective Insurance, The Cincinnati Insurance Companies, Travelers, and W.R. Berkley. The data points are approximate based on the business mix of each of the 15 companies, and mindful of loss ratio dynamics in recent years due to the potential (or actual) impact of rate and price increases.

The final ranking is guided by the survey outputs and loss ratio change outputs, supported by ChatCBI reasoning leveraging data from across CB Insights’ Business Graph.

Additional notes

CB Insights has provided the information contained in this report for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CB Insights. Reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information, and CB Insights makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, as to its completeness or accuracy.

Crawford & Company has not vetted, nor does it endorse, any of the companies or technologies mentioned in this report. These references are illustrative in nature and should be viewed solely as examples rather than recommendations.

The insurance affordability outlook is not an investment analysis, and should not be used to guide financial- or investment-focused decisions, including those pertaining to any insurance company operating across the analyzed lines of business. In addition, the report leverages a non-actuarial analysis and should not be used to discern financial performance (including loss ratio performance) across any lines of business analyzed.

This report is global in scope, although the analysis largely centers on the United States. Regulations and market dynamics differ across geographies, and the report does not account for every nuance across the industry.

We selected the 15 companies for the loss ratio change analysis due to comparable data reporting practices of loss ratio performance on annual reports using CB Insights’ Public Company Financials data. The report uses loss ratios as underlying loss costs are often not reported in a standardized format on annual reports. Loss ratios include loss adjustment expenses and typically spans lines of business. The changes in loss ratios were used to derive signals for lines of business subject to more affordability pressure.

The insurance affordability outlook is not absolute. The insurance industry and broader tech landscapes are subject to constant change, so future developments have the potential to impact the findings presented in this report.

About

Crawford & Company

Crawford & Company® is a leading global provider of quality claims management and outsourcing solutions with an expansive network of experts serving clients in more than 70 countries. Our unique ability to combine innovation and expertise advances our purpose to restore lives, businesses and communities across the globe. For over 80 years, clients have trusted Crawford to care for their customers as a seamless extension of their brand, keeping the focus where it belongs—on people. More information is available at www.crawco.com.

Contact: info@us.crawco.com

CB Insights

Headquartered in New York City, CB Insights is the leading provider of AI for market intelligence. The company aggregates, validates, and analyzes hard-to-find private and public company data. Its powerful AI tells users what it all means to them personally. The world’s smartest companies rely on CB Insights to focus on the right markets, stay ahead of competitors, and identify the right targets for sales, partnership, or acquisition. Visit www.cbinsights.com for more information.

Contact: researchanalyst@cbinsights.com

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We’ve used generative AI, combined with our proprietary data on these companies and their markets, to create the following scouting reports — in just one click on CB Insights.

CB Insights customers can download the book using the sidebar and track all companies using the Expert Collection.

At the conference, be sure to:

• Visit the ITC Discovery Desk powered by CB Insights to speak with a strategist and receive full SWOT analyses to help determine who to meet and why.
• Attend the unveiling of the Insurtech 50 report, featuring the world’s most promising insurtech startups, on Thursday at 11am Pacific in Oceanside Ballroom B.
• Claim your 10 days of free predictive private market intelligence now.

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In September, private companies globally raised 1,400+ early-stage rounds (noting this total will rise as more deals are published retroactively). Over 25% of startups that raised rounds are building AI-enabled products and services.

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data on early-stage activity, including top investors & deals, valuation data, and our predictive signals. Below, we highlight notable trends to watch.

Emerging trends & categories to watch

Click the links to see underlying deal activity. Categories are not mutually exclusive. 

Review the full deal dataset

AI agents

Similar to last month, companies targeting AI agent applications raised over 50 deals (out of 1,485). Key trends to note include: 

• “Smart Money” is all in on AI agents: The top 25 VCs identified by CB Insights backed 13 AI agent startups in September. This represents nearly 20% of all of the early-stage activity from these VCs in the month. Focuses include security (Akto, Fabrix Security, Terra Security) and governance, risk, and compliance (Geordie, Zania), indicating enterprise adoption and risk management are key investment priorities. 
• Customer service is one of the most established use cases but is still seeing early-stage traction: AI agents handling customer service, support tickets, and user interactions represent one of the largest early-stage agent categories in September (8+ deals). Support operations have clear unit economics, high volume repetitive tasks, and direct cost savings compared to human agents, driving continued activity here. Top companies to watch based on Mosaic scores include Doo (Mosaic: 747) and Rauda AI (Mosaic: 687). 
• Emerging voice AI sector: Voice and phone agents are attracting dedicated investment (6 deals, 11% of agent activity) as investors bet on solutions that can tackle the unique technical challenges of voice interactions (i.e., real-time latency requirements, natural speech processing, emotional intelligence, etc.). Confido Health and Prosper, for example, are focused on healthcare applications. Meanwhile, Vida and Vaani Research are building infrastructure to develop voice AI/phone agents. Review the voice AI development platforms market to compare 30+ vendors in the space.

Robotics

Companies building robots, and the systems that power them, raised over 70 deals in the month. 

Within robotics, defense & security applications led early-stage activity (17 deals, 24% of total robotics activity), reflecting geopolitical tensions driving investment in autonomous defense systems and surveillance.

Other notable traction is in foundation models and operating systems for robots, as investors bet on horizontal platforms (4 deals, 6%):

• The leading September round in this category went to DYNA, which raised a $120M Series A. The company is ranked as a “challenger” in our robot foundation model developers market. 
• Another highlight is InOrbit, which focuses on robot orchestration and was founded by Florian Pestoni and Julian Cerutti, who have experience at a range of large tech companies, including Google, Atlassian, Meta, and IBM. The founders’ strong pedigree is reflected in the company’s CB Insights Management strength score, which ranked the highest of all the companies raising early-stage deals in September.

Management strength score

CB Insights’ Management strength scores (out of 1,000) the founding and management team’s prior achievements and likelihood of achieving future success, like a high-value exit. 

Especially at the earliest stages of the startup lifecycle, the strength of the management team serves as a key signal of potential. 

AI for scientific discovery & materials development 

Three of the largest early-stage rounds of the quarter went to companies looking to accelerate scientific discovery and materials development with AI: 

• Periodic Labs ($300M Series A at $1B valuation)
• Lila Sciences ($235M Series A at $1.23B valuation)
• CuspAI ($100M Series A at $520M valuation) 

Both Periodic Labs and Lila Sciences are also building “autonomous labs” — with AI designing, conducting and iterating on experiments. All 3 companies are operating at Commercial Maturity level 2/5 (Validating), indicating they’re still testing and refining their products.

Methodology

This report includes equity early-stage financings (convertible note, angel, pre-seed, seed, Series A) to private companies in August 2025. We excluded companies that are later-stage that raised an angel round or convertible note in the month. Categorization based on company descriptions.

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

The post Early-Stage Trends Report: Smart Money is all in on AI agents, the rise of autonomous labs, and more in September appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Every big tech company and a rapidly growing private market landscape are building agent offerings targeting enterprise use cases and industries from financial services to manufacturing.

For enterprises across sectors, one question is becoming unavoidable: Which AI agent strategies will separate market leaders from those left behind?

Enterprises are under pressure to build and implement agents as these LLM-based systems change how companies operate, hire, and scale.

Across 9 reports, discover where startup innovation is pointing, promising partnership and acquisition targets, and key trends to watch based on CB Insights predictive intelligence. Download the report for free.

This 68-page report covers: 

Foreword from Manlio Carrelli, CEO of CB Insights

Outlook on AI agents

6 AI agent predictions looking into 2026

The AI agent ecosystem — Who are the startups, infrastructure providers, and emerging revenue leaders to watch?

• The AI agent market map
• The AI agent tech stack
• The AI agent revenue race

AI agents make inroads across enterprise workflows — How are agents reshaping coding, customer service, and backend operations at scale?

• Y Combinator’s 2025 Spring batch reveals the future of agentic AI
• Building the agent economy: How cloud leaders are shaping AI’s next frontier
• The summer of vibe coding is over — How reasoning models broke the economics of AI code generation

Industry applications gain momentum — Where are vertical-specific agents gaining adoption and delivering measurable ROI?

• 3 markets fueling the shift to agentic commerce
• The industrial AI agents & copilots market map
• 100 real-world applications of genAI across financial services and insurance

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We recently presented CB Insights’ data on how AI is elevating customer engagement across insurance at an InsurTech NY-hosted executive roundtable.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. It’s early days for AI-enabled customer engagement, so insurance companies have a rare opportunity to define what good looks like.
2. AI-enabled customer engagement will soon be table stakes, accelerating as partner ecosystems emerge and mature.
3. Agentic commerce offers insurance companies opportunities to capture new sales channels.

Download the 40+ slides to reveal insights like:

• Agentic commerce offers a clear opportunity to shape the future of embedded insurance, signaled by the emergence of partnerships with companies like eBay and Priceline.
• A new tech stack now powers agentic operations across industries, and insurance is no exception. AI agent oversight offers an opportunity to support compliance activities.
• AIG’s actions to develop its “agentic ecosystem” signal an imperative for business growth.

CB Insights customers can download the full presentation using the sidebar.

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In August, private companies globally raised 1,140+ early-stage rounds (noting this total will rise as more deals are published retroactively). Investors are backing startups targeting applications from AI agents to aerospace manufacturing.

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data on early-stage activity, including top investors & deals, valuation data, and our predictive signals. 

Leading industries & tech areas

Startups targeting healthcare & life science, financial services, and enterprise software led early-stage funding activity in August.

AI is ubiquitous across the landscape. Over 30% of startups that raised rounds are building AI-enabled products and services. Companies targeting AI agent applications in particular raised over 50 deals. 

Other focuses include blockchain/crypto (50+ deals) and robotics (50+ deals). FieldAI, which is developing foundation models for robots, raised a $314M Series A at a $2B valuation — the largest early-stage round of the month. 

CBI Customers: Review the full deal dataset

Emerging & frontier tech categories to watch

More niche categories (those with fewer than 20 deals in the month) show a clear focus on “hard tech” across areas like space, quantum computing, and fusion energy. 

Click the links to see underlying deal activity. Categories are not mutually exclusive. 

• Satellite technology (13 deals): The commercialization of low Earth orbit is accelerating with decreasing launch costs and miniaturization enabling new satellite constellations for communications, Earth observation, and more. SpaceX’s success has opened the door for specialized players, like earth observation platform SkyFi. 12 out of the 13 companies that raised early-stage deals in this category in August are based outside of the US in countries like China and India.
• Space services & manufacturing (9 deals): The emerging space economy is driving activity across areas like transportation & logistics from space to earth (Orbital Paradigm) and in space (Orbital Operations). Companies such as Orbital Matter and Catalyx Space are leveraging microgravity to manufacture materials, components, and pharmaceuticals in space. 
• Quantum computing & secure communications (7 deals): Startups are developing quantum hardware, software, and infrastructure to tackle complex problems and keep data safe in the era of quantum technology. Examples include superconducting processors (QuamCore), quantum-inspired software for industries like finance and logistics (QMill), and quantum-secure satellite networks (olee).
• Fusion (4 deals): The AI boom has created a $500B power infrastructure gap for data centers, triggering a race to secure nuclear technology. Fusion represents a longer-term breakthrough that could revolutionize power generation. Startups like Canada-based Fusion Fuel Cycles and Japan-based MiRESSO are focused on producing enabling materials and tech.

Top companies by Management strength score

Especially at the earliest stages of the startup lifecycle, the strength of the management team serves as a key signal of potential. 

Using CB Insights’ Management strength score — which scores the founding and management team’s prior achievements and likelihood of achieving future success, like a high-value exit — these are the top 3 startups in this month’s cohort: 

• Perle (976 out of 1,000) — Founder Ahmed Rashman was previously Head of Supply and Growth at Scale, and has experience across a range of large tech companies including Amazon and Oracle. 
• Lettuce (973) — Founder Ran Harpaz was founding CTO of Globality (valued at $1B in 2019) and former CTO at Hippo Insurance (went public in 2021). 
• Lorikeet (858) — Co-founder Steve Hind previously worked in product at Stripe for 3 years, while co-founder Jamie Hall was a software engineer at Google for nearly 7 years. 

See the rest of the top 10 by Management strength in the full report. 

Methodology

This report includes equity early-stage financings (convertible note, angel, pre-seed, seed, Series A) to private companies in August 2025. We excluded companies that are later-stage that raised an angel round or convertible note in the month. Categorization based on company descriptions.

For information on reprint rights or other inquiries, please contact reprints@cbinsights.com.

The post Early-Stage Trends Report: What every deal in August tells us about what’s next in tech appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Among the top 50 private companies globally, the US and China account for 86% of the list, while AI startups represent 40%. These companies are reshaping industries and, in some cases, surpassing their public market competitors in valuation. 

OpenAI is reportedly poised to hit a roughly $500B valuation — putting it closer to the ranks of big tech than any other startup. At the same time, the current top 50 companies’ combined valuation represents under half of Nvidia’s current market cap of $4.3T, underscoring the relative scale of public tech giants.

Using CB Insights data, we analyzed the top 50 most valuable private companies globally to identify where value creation is happening in private markets. Below are the key patterns emerging from the group.

Track all 1,200+ unicorns

Key takeaways

• The United States and China dominate the global unicorn landscape, representing 86% of the top 50 companies. The US leads with 35 companies (70%), while China contributes 8 companies (16%), showing how concentrated tech innovation and capital formation remains within these two tech regions. The remaining 6 countries — Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, Sweden and the UK — each have only 1-2 representing companies.
• AI companies represent 40% of the top 50, signaling the market’s confidence in AI as a primary driver of economic value. These companies range from the big names building foundation models like OpenAI and Anthropic to specialized players tackling applications like defense systems (Helsing, Anduril).
• Abundant private funding enables companies to delay going public while continuing to scale. Today, startups are going public an average of 16 years after being founded, 4 years later than just a decade ago. Databricks recently surpassed its public competitor Snowflake in valuation ($100B) at its recent $1B Series K round. Meanwhile, ByteDance ($300B valuation), generated more revenue than Meta in Q1’25 while staying private. With plenty of private capital available and employees able to sell shares on secondary markets, companies can grow much larger without going public.
• Secondary transactions are increasingly driving valuations, with 7 consecutive quarters of YoY growth in transaction activity among VC-backed companies. Recent secondary sales at companies like Canva (valued at $42B, up from $32B in 2024), Revolut (valued at $75B, up from $45B), and OpenAI’s upcoming $10.3B secondary sale at a rumored $500B valuation demonstrate this trend. As startups stay private for longer, secondary sales are providing both liquidity and fresh valuations. 

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To create the 2025 list, we analyzed 10 years of CB Insights’ Business Graph data, evaluating 12,000+ venture firms on portfolio outcomes (unicorns and exits), share of rounds led, portfolio quality via Mosaic Score, capital efficiency, and entry discipline. Smart Money VC portfolios offer a front-row view of where the sharpest investors are placing their bets. Use the list as an early indicator to spot emerging markets and promising founders.

Which VC firms are on the Smart Money list?

Firms are presented in alphabetical order.

1. Accel
2. Andreessen Horowitz
3. Bain Capital Ventures
4. Battery Ventures
5. Bessemer Venture Partners
6. Felicis
7. First Round Capital
8. Founders Fund
9. General Catalyst
10. Google Ventures
11. Greylock Partners
12. Index Ventures
13. Institutional Venture Partners
14. Kleiner Perkins
15. Lightspeed Venture Partners
16. Meritech Capital Partners
17. New Enterprise Associates
18. Norwest Venture Partners
19. Notable Capital
20. Redpoint Ventures
21. Salesforce Ventures
22. Sapphire Ventures
23. Sequoia Capital
24. Spark Capital
25. Thrive Capital

CBI customers: See Smart Money’s latest bets

How Smart Money VCs are outperforming the market

Our 2025 edition of Smart Money VCs:

• 6.5x more likely than the average VC to back a future unicorn
• 2.2x more exits per firm, either through M&A or IPO
• 2.3x higher share of rounds led, shaping pricing and syndicates

Smart Money syndicates amplify signal. The top pairs share dozens of portfolio companies — Sequoia & Andreessen Horowitz (43), General Catalyst & Andreessen Horowitz (42), and Sequoia & Lightspeed (36). Most widely backed across the cohort: Chainguard, Figma, and Wiz (each with 7 Smart Money backers).

Smart Money firms have also been the dominant backers of the AI wave — they backed 52% of new AI unicorns in 2023, 73% in 2024, and 77% in 2025 YTD — and that exposure is translating into outlier outcomes.

Since 2015, Smart Money VCs have backed 80 companies that exited at $10B+ — roughly 100x the $100M median exit. The largest Smart Money exits include Uber ($75.5B, 2019), Coinbase ($65.3B, 2021), and Coupang ($56.6B, 2021).

Mosaic shows where they’re headed next. Smart Money portfolios skew to higher Mosaic Scores — CB Insights’ 0–1,000 predictive rating of private-company health. The average portfolio Mosaic is 628 — about 2.6x the VC norm.

And the edge is most visible at the very top of the distribution: more than 65% of companies in the top 1% of Mosaic Scores are backed by a Smart Money VC. Top firms by average portfolio Mosaic include Meritech (759), IVP (741), and Thrive Capital (688). Standout companies in 2025 include Zepto, Bilt, Glean, Rippling, and Anthropic.

Where Smart Money is deploying now

Smart Money is still leaning into AI — especially agentic applications.

Over the last 18 months, agent-related categories led by deal count: coding agents and copilots (28 deals), agent development platforms (24), enterprise workflow agents and copilots (20), and legal agents and copilots (17). Infrastructure remained active as well, with 17 deals into LLM developers. Top recent AI deals by Mosaic include Glean (enterprise AI agents), Augment Code (coding AI agents), and ElevenLabs (voice AI).

Our M&A probability model points to cybersecurity as the most likely near‑term exit pool among Smart Money portfolios, with companies like Tenex.ai ranking highest. Activity is accelerating — highlighted by Google’s $32B acquisition of Smart Money–backed Wiz in March 2025. For acquirers, targeting Smart Money portfolio or syndicate companies can streamline diligence and post‑deal integration.

Outside the US, cybersecurity is also drawing Smart Money. Since Jan’24, Accel (84 deals), General Catalyst (64), and Lightspeed (55) are the most active by ex‑US deal count; their portfolios include companies like Tines, Cato Networks, and Torq.

Methodology

What is the CB Insights Smart Money list?

The Smart Money list is an unranked collection of the top 25 venture capital firms worldwide. We analyzed 12,000+ venture investors with 10+ unique portfolio companies using 10 years of CB Insights’ Business Graph data (2015–2025) to surface the highest performers via our Smart Money Index.

What makes a VC “smart”?

​​Comparable lists in other asset classes rank firms based on investment performance, but returns data is hard to come by in the VC world, and rates of return can be easily manipulated.

Our methodology factors:

• Portfolio outcomes — unicorn count/share and exit count/share
• Deal leadership — share of rounds led
• Portfolio quality — average CB Insights Mosaic Score
• Capital efficiency — portfolio value created per dollar raised
• Entry discipline — median stage at first check

Inputs were normalized and combined into the Smart Money Index. The top 25 became the 2025 Smart Money cohort.

What can I do with this collection?

Explore the Smart Money Expert Collection on the CB Insights platform to filter deals, build screens, and make faster decisions.

If you are a venture investor and want to submit data on your portfolio companies to allow us to better score you in the future, please reach out to researchanalyst@cbinsights.com.

RELATED RESOURCES FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• All 100 AI unicorns since ChatGPT launched
• State of Tech Exits H1’25
• The top angel investors in AI
• Are AI unicorns starting to move beyond hype?
• Book of Scouting Reports: Enterprise AI Agents

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Equity funding to drone developers has reached a record $5.5B already this year. More broadly, the drone market is projected to grow from $73.1B in 2024 to $163.6B by 2030, driven by defense spending, more permissive regulations, and AI advances that enable autonomous navigation, real-time object detection, and mission planning without human intervention.

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M&A volume stayed flat in the first half of the year, and the IPO market remained muted, though there are early signs of a potential second-half recovery. In the meantime, capital continues to flow into private tech companies at record levels, including a surge in secondary transactions. This is giving private tech companies more runway (and more reason) to delay public listings.

New exit models are also gaining traction. From large minority stakes to reverse acqui-hires, big tech companies are finding ways to access talent and technology without triggering regulatory review. These deal structures are starting to reshape how value is created, captured, and distributed across the ecosystem — for founders, investors, and employees alike.

Taken together, these trends point to a broader shift: private markets are becoming the dominant venue for value creation and capture in tech. With that comes the need for better private market investing infrastructure, including real-time data and context, turning private company intelligence into a new competitive advantage. 

Below, we break down the top stories from this first half of the year and our projections for the rest of the year, including:

• AI and $100M+ deals drive tech M&A momentum
• Signs point to tech IPO market rebound in H2’25
• Private tech markets top $2T in equity funding
• Secondaries get bigger and pricier
• New exit models emerge amidst the AI talent war

Download the full report to access comprehensive CB Insights data and charts on the evolving state of tech exits, in partnership with EquityZen.

Top stories in H1’25

1. AI and $100M+ deals drive tech M&A momentum

Tech M&A activity has remained stubbornly flat since Q4’23, stagnating at just over 2,000 transactions per quarter. We project Q3’25 to follow the same trajectory, with 2,040 deals.

Despite flat volume, this year is shaping up to be a record year in terms of M&A deal value, driven by an increase in the number of $100M+ acquisitions. These large transactions represent 4.7% of deal share so far this year, up from 3.8% from all of 2024, and a level not seen since 2021.

AI has also emerged as a bright spot, as corporations race to grab AI tech & talent.

M&A activity in AI reached record levels in Q2’25 at 192 deals, pushing AI’s share of tech M&A to 7.5% so far this year — almost double its share in 2021. Private companies have notably led some of the largest AI acquisitions in the first half of 2025, with OpenAI acquiring Io for $6.5B and Databricks spending $1B to buy Neon. 

The AI race is also pushing big tech companies to rethink their M&A strategy, after years of muted activity. 

Meta scooped up voice AI startups PlayAI and WaveForms this summer — marking its first acquisition since 2022 — in a bid to win the race to build the future of human-machine interactions. The company is betting that voice will become the dominant interface for interacting with AI.

During the company’s Q3’25 earnings call, Apple’s CEO mentioned being open to larger M&A deals to help accelerate its roadmap. This marks a significant move away from Apple’s historical focus on smaller acquisitions.  

Dive into 7 AI-related areas where we expect to see M&A activity this year, as well as high-potential acquisition targets for each, in the free report.

2. Signs point to tech IPO market rebound in H2’25

The global tech IPO market has remained muted during the first half of 2025, with 122 tech companies going public, in line with the numbers from 2024. But recent activity signals things may be picking up.

Figma successfully went public last month, in an IPO often referred to as a test of the public market’s appetite for tech companies. The company was valued at just over $16B at IPO and now boasts a market cap of $39B (as of 8/20/2025).

A few weeks later, crypto exchange platform Bullish followed a similar path, raising $1.1B in at a $5.4B valuation. The company is now trading at a 60%+ premium to its IPO price.

These recent examples have pushed several tech companies (crypto in particular) to announce they had filed to go public, reviving hopes of a tech IPO market rebound. Based on current trends, we project 84 tech IPOs for Q3 ’25 — above the 2-year quarterly average of 72.

Find 40+ blockchain companies with a high probability of going public in the next 2 years

But any rebound is likely to be modest, with private tech companies expected to remain private for longer and the role of IPOs potentially shifting to becoming a clearinghouse rather than a capital-raising mechanism, as predicted by Jared Carmel, Managing Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners:

“We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how tech companies approach public markets. The average age at IPO has increased dramatically, from under 4 years in 2000 to 12 years in 2015 and nearly 16 years today. I expect this trend to accelerate, with companies staying private for 20+ years becoming the new norm.

The aggressive IPO pops we’ve historically seen are fundamentally unfair to founders and long-term investors who actually built these companies. Over the next several years, you’re going to see VCs, private equity, and sovereign wealth funds step in to extract maximum value before these companies ever go public. When they eventually do an IPO, they’ll go public at fair market value without the pop — essentially using public markets as a clearinghouse rather than a capital-raising mechanism.

This shift is already playing out in the data. We’re seeing record levels of private funding, exceeding $2 trillion in cumulative investment, and explosive growth in secondary transactions. The real value creation and liquidity will increasingly occur in private markets, rather than public ones. With companies staying private for two decades, secondary liquidity becomes absolutely critical — employees, early investors, and founders can’t wait 20 years for an exit.”

3. Private tech markets top $2T in equity funding

Private tech companies are staying private longer and now have more capital than ever to do so. 

Over $2T in cumulative equity funding has poured into private tech markets to date, with 90% raised in just the last decade. That funding has enabled companies to keep scaling before tapping the public markets. Today, startups are going public an average of 16 years after being founded, 4 years later than just a decade ago.

Late-stage rounds have also reached new extremes, with Databricks joining the exclusive “Series K” club in July. Just 16 Series K rounds have ever been raised — half in the last 5 years — signaling the growing normalization of ultra-late-stage private fundraising.

Private market check sizes have also grown dramatically. The past 18 months alone account for the largest Seed, Series A, Series B, Series D, and Series E+ rounds on record. And more dry powder is on the way: a recent executive order in the US is opening the door for 401(k) retirement accounts to invest in private markets, potentially unlocking a new wave of capital for private tech companies.

As regulatory barriers fall and new investment vehicles emerge, private tech company investments will increasingly define institutional — and eventually retail — portfolios. 

But there’s a catch. 

Private companies operate in information shadows, beyond public view. Institutions will increasingly need real-time data and context on companies not subject to quarterly reporting, turning private company intelligence into a new competitive advantage. 

4. Secondaries get bigger and pricier

The last 7 quarters have seen YoY growth in secondary transaction activity among VC-backed companies, with no signs of slowing down. As tech companies stay private longer and valuations continue to climb, secondaries are playing a growing role in providing liquidity.

In August 2025, OpenAI reportedly launched a tender offer at a $500B valuation, a sharp jump from its last reported $300B. The offer gives current and former employees a chance to cash out while attracting new capital from institutional buyers. Canva followed a similar playbook, recently conducting a secondary sale at $42B. That’s $10B higher than its October 2024 valuation, which was also set during a prior secondary transaction.

These moves are helping long-time employees and early investors realize returns, while giving latecomers a shot at high-growth companies.

Investor demand is heating up too. According to EquityZen, average discounts in secondary markets have compressed to just 13% below last-round valuations — the lowest level observed between Q1’23 and Q2’25. That pricing shift reflects growing competition and perceived upside, even in companies potentially years from IPO.

While large players like SpaceX, Ripple, and OpenAI continue to dominate transaction volume, interest is expanding to smaller unicorns and breakout startups. In Q2’25, 7 of EquityZen’s top 10 secondary movers had Mosaic scores over 800 and valuations north of $1B, including names like Axiom Space, Brex, and Skild AI.

Explore 500+ private tech companies with strong secondary potential

As secondary markets mature, they’re reshaping liquidity expectations — and giving investors new ways to get exposure to private tech winners without waiting for the IPO window to reopen.

5. New exit models emerge amidst the AI talent war

The intensifying race for AI talent is driving a new wave of unconventional exits in the tech ecosystem, bypassing traditional M&A while still delivering strategic value to acquirers. 

Tight regulation has pushed big tech companies to shift away from full takeovers and toward deal structures that offer access to technology and, more importantly, talent, without triggering antitrust alarms.

Large minority stakes have emerged as one such mechanism. In Q2’25, Meta invested $14.8B for a 49% stake in Scale, marking the largest private funding round of the quarter. As part of the deal, Meta hired Scale’s CEO and founder, Alexandr Wang. At their current pace, big tech companies are on track to complete 14 corporate minority deals in 2025.

Reverse acqui-hires  — where acquirers buy the team (fully or partially) and license the technology — are also gaining momentum. These hybrid transactions often include lucrative licensing fees that serve as a partial liquidity event for investors.

Notable examples include:

• Google hiring key personnel from Windsurf to join its DeepMind division, including CEO Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen 
• Amazon hiring key members of Adept
• Microsoft bringing in employees from Inflection AI

These transactions let acquirers cherry-pick talent and assets without facing regulatory hurdles or needing to buy out entire cap tables.

But it’s not just big tech adapting;  major LLM developers are adopting similar tactics. OpenAI and Anthropic have collectively made 3 acqui-hires so far in 2025 — Context.ai, Crossing Minds, and Humanloop.

These nontraditional exits may complicate fundraising and hiring for AI startups, as investors and employees weigh the risk of being bypassed in partial team acquisitions. In response, both groups may begin negotiating protective terms to ensure they aren’t left behind.

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AI companies drove the surge, accounting for half of all mega-rounds. Many are building foundation models tailored to complex real-world use cases like robotics and healthcare.

Using CB Insights’ Business Graph, our monthly Book of Scouting Reports offers an in-depth analysis of every private tech company that has raised a funding round of $100M or more, to spotlight where capital is concentrating, which startups are gaining momentum, and who’s shaping the next wave of market disruption.

Download the book to see all 50 scouting reports.

Key takeaways from July’s mega-rounds include: 

• Clinical AI moves from development to scaling, with both Aidoc (a clinical AI foundation model developer) and Ambience (an AI medical scribe) having raised mega-rounds last month to build upon their early success and scale across more health systems. Last month also saw OpenEvidence and Tala Health raise $100M+ rounds to bring agentic AI solutions to clinicians, with the latter joining the fast-growing AI unicorn list. 
• Investors keep betting big on the next wave of the AI boom, physical AI. Recent commercial breakthroughs in the autonomous vehicle space and heightened interest in the humanoid space are driving capital toward physical AI infrastructure. This includes robotics foundation models (Genesis AI, TARS), and hardware platforms for embodied AI model training (Galaxea AI). China-based Meituan led both the $100M Series A extension in Galaxea AI and the $125M Seed round in TARS, as it doubles down on physical AI investments.
• AI newcomers are openly taking on tech giants. Half of last month’s mega-rounds went to AI companies, which accounted for 7 of the 13 new unicorns minted during that time. Some of these companies are directly targeting incumbents such as Reka AI which positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to OpenAI or Anthropic, and Perplexity which targets Google‘s core search business with its new browser product. 
• Fintech is minting a new class of financial services challengers.  Fintech companies accounted for more mega-round deals than any other vertical in July, including 2 of the top 4 largest rounds. Ramp’s valuation jumped from $16B to $22.5B in mere weeks, while Bilt more than tripled in value, from $3.3B to $10.8B. Beyond fundraising, fintech leaders are pursuing aggressive expansion strategies. iCapital raised $820M last month to accelerate its acquisition strategy focused on seizing the private markets opportunity. 

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The post No summer break for AI: July 2025 hits 50 mega-rounds and 7 new unicorns appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement (ICHRA)-focused deals nudged L&H deal count upward, in part driving the highest deal share among US-based insurtechs since Q3’17.

Below, we break down the key takeaways from this quarter’s report, including:

• Quarterly insurtech deal count dips below 100 again
• Funding to P&C insurtechs plummets from Q2’21 peak
• $100M+ mega-round deals lead to a surge in L&H insurtech funding
• ICHRA startups capture nearly 20% of insurtech funding
• US-based startups raise 3 in 5 global insurtech deals

Download the full report to access comprehensive data and charts on the evolving state of insurtech.

Quarterly insurtech deal count dips below 100 again

Insurtech deal count fell 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), from 100 deals in Q1’25 to 91 in Q2’25. This decrease mirrors the broader venture environment, which also saw QoQ deal count decline by the same percentage.

Insurtech funding fell 21% QoQ, from $1.4B in Q1’25 to $1.1B in Q2’25 — also in line with the broader venture environment (-24% QoQ). However, unlike the rest of venture, insurtech has not experienced an AI-driven funding boom in recent quarters. The median venture deal size reached a new high of $3.5M in 2025 YTD, largely due to AI, while the median insurtech deal size has fallen by 19% to $4.2M over the same period.

Explore the top 20 AI agent startups by revenue

Future implication: Given investors’ appetite for billion-dollar deals, insurance incumbents should prepare for potential disruption if an AI-focused insurtech secures major funding.

Funding to P&C insurtech falls 89% from Q2’21 peak 

P&C insurtech funding plummeted from $1.2B in Q1’25 to $0.4B in Q2’25, falling well below the quarterly average of $0.8B over the past 2 years. As a result, P&C insurtech funding reached an 8-year low for the quarter (Q3’17 was the last quarter with less P&C insurtech funding).

The decline in P&C insurtech funding comes as no P&C insurtechs raised a Series D+ deal in Q2’25. Comparatively, 3 P&C insurtechs raised $100M+ mega-rounds across Series D+ deals in Q1’25.

P&C insurtech deal count also declined, falling from 72 in Q1’25 to 57 in Q2’25. Just 5 startups raised over half of the quarter’s P&C insurtech funding:

• Ledgebrook, a professional liability MGA ($65M Series C)
• Marshmallow, an auto insurer ($45M Series B)
• Steadily, a landlord insurer ($30M Series C)
• Orus, a small business insurance broker ($29M Series B)
• Reserv, a third-party administrator ($25M Series B)

Even so, the P&C insurtech space did see its first IPO since Q2’24: Florida-based home insurer Slide Insurance completed its IPO at a $2.1B valuation.

Check out Ledgebrook, Reserv, and more 2024 Insurtech 50 winners

Future implication: Despite the broader P&C funding decline, 3 of the top 5 P&C insurtech deals by funding amount in Q2’25 went to startups focused on small and midsize businesses (SMBs) — signaling that targeted growth opportunities within this segment remain attractive to investors.

$100M+ mega-round deals lead to a surge in L&H insurtech funding

L&H insurtech funding surged from $0.2B in Q1’25 to $0.7B in Q2’25, well above the quarterly average of $0.4B over the past 2 years.

Eight of the quarter’s top 11 deals went to L&H insurtechs, including both of the quarter’s $100M+ mega-round deals:

• Gravie, a late-stage benefits platform ($144M Series G, and later amended to $150M in a filing on July 9)
• Bestow, a former insurer that has since pivoted to become a software provider ($120M Series D)

L&H insurtechs raised 32 deals in Q2’25, an increase from 28 in the quarter prior. Unlike P&C insurtech, the median L&H insurtech deal size ($6.0M) is up in 2025 YTD.

69% of L&H insurtech deals went to US-based companies, the highest amount since Q3’15, underscored by a focus on health benefits across the US market.

In addition, L&H insurtech saw its first unicorn since Q2’22 and its first IPO since Q3’22:

• Chapter, a Medicare navigation platform, became the quarter’s only new insurtech unicorn after raising its $75M Series D round at a $1.5B valuation.
• Xiaoyusan Insurance, a broker focused on diversified life and health products, went public.

CBI customers: Use our agents to uncover insights for Chapter

Future implication: As nearly half of the quarter’s top deals by funding amount went to health and benefits-focused startups, insurers should prioritize expanding employer-focused sales channels for the upcoming open-enrollment season.

ICHRA startups capture nearly 20% of insurtech funding

The US federal government established ICHRA plans in 2019, spurring commercial traction in recent years. Notably, an ICHRA platforms market has since emerged, with 5 startups raising $234M in equity funding across 5 deals in Q2’25:

• Gravie ($144M, with participation from Atlantic Vantage Point)
• Thatch ($40M, with participation from ADP Ventures and SemperVirens Venture Capital)
• Venteur ($20M, led by American Family Ventures)
• Zorro ($20M)
• zizzl health ($10M)

An ICHRA is an alternative to traditional employer-selected health plans in the US, where employers instead allocate money for their employees to select their preferred qualified plan individually. ICHRA startups facilitate these payments, providing a central platform for benefits managers to administer their company’s ICHRA program.

The ICHRA platforms market is seeing favorable traction, evidenced by widespread increases in Mosaic score — measuring the overall health and growth potential of private companies — among companies assessed.

Most of these companies — Thatch, Gravie, Venteur, Remodel Health, Take Command Health, Zorro, StretchDollar, and BenefitBay — have Mosaic scores in the top 5% of all private companies tracked by CB Insights.

CBI Customers: Check out leaders in our ICHRA platforms market

Future implication: Health insurers have the potential to increase enrollment by enhancing distribution channels to engage individuals employed by SMBs using ICHRAs.

US-based startups raise 3 in 5 global insurtech deals

60% of Q2’25 insurtech deals went to US-based startups — an 8-year high. Q3’17 was the last quarter to see a larger deal share among US-based startups (61%).

The increase was attributable to slight deal share increases across both L&H and P&C insurtech (from 68% to 69% and from 53% to 56%, respectively).

Within the US, Silicon Valley and the New York City metro areas led in Q2’25 insurtech deals — 11 and 9, respectively.

Europe-based startups raised 21% of Q2’25 insurtech deals: 6 of those deals went to France-based startups, and 5 went to UK-based startups.

Check out the top 50 venture investors in France

Future implication: US insurtech deal share has increased each quarter since Q3’24, so companies should evaluate growth opportunities in global markets with less insurtech presence (i.e., less competition).

MORE INSURTECH RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS

• 100 real-world applications of genAI across financial services and insurance
• Insurance’s new frontier: 3 innovation imperatives for 2025 and beyond
• Our 6 predictions for the insurance space in 2025

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