Business Funding Statistics: VC, SBA Loans, Crowdfunding, and More

US businesses raised capital from a remarkable range of sources in 2025. At one end of the spectrum, OpenAI closed a single $40 billion round, which was the largest private venture investment in history. At the other end, hundreds of thousands of small business owners scraped together personal savings, opened a line of credit, or launched a Kickstarter to bring an idea to life. The gap between those two realities is the story of business funding in America today.

This research pulls together the most important data points on how US businesses get funding, from venture capital and SBA loans to crowdfunding and venture debt.

Key Business Funding Statistics

• Global venture funding reached $425 billion in 2025 across more than 24,000 private companies, up 30% year over year from $328 billion in 2024.
• US VC deal value totaled $339.4 billion in 2025, the second-highest total behind only 2021.
• Half of the 2025 US VC deal value was invested in just 0.05% of completed deals
• AI companies captured 65.4% of US VC deal value in 2025 and 39.4% of deal count.
• US VC-backed female-founded companies raised a record $73.6 billion in 2025, capturing an unprecedented 27.7% of total US venture deal value.
• Black-founded US startups received just 0.4% of total venture funding in 2024.
• The SBA guaranteed 84,400 small business loans worth $44.8 billion in fiscal year 2025, the most capital ever delivered through the program.
• 60% of small employer firms applied for financing in the 12 months leading up to fall 2025.

The Overall Business Funding Landscape

36.2 million small businesses are operating in the United States, according to the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Small Business Profile. They account for almost 46% of private sector employment and created roughly 9 out of every 10 net new jobs between March 2023 and March 2024. Many of them rely on some form of outside capital at some point.

The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, published in March 2026 and based on responses from 6,525 small employer firms, gives us the clearest picture of how typical small businesses access financing today.

• 86% of small employer firms use financing on a regular basis, with credit cards and loans the most common products.
• 60% of firms applied for financing in the 12 months leading up to the survey.
• The most common reasons firms sought financing were to meet operating expenses (56%) or to pursue an expansion or new opportunity (46%).
• 42% of applicants received the full amount of financing they sought, 36% received some or most, and 22% received none.
• 31% of small employer firms had no outstanding debt in 2025, up from 21% in 2020 and now back to pre-pandemic levels.
• Of firms with debt, 59% used a personal guarantee to secure their debt, while 51% used business assets.

Venture Capital Statistics

Most of the headlines are related to venture capital, and 2025 was the biggest year for VC since the 2021 peak. Global VC funding reached $425 billion across more than 24,000 private companies, up 30% year over year from $328 billion in 2024, according to Crunchbase. That made 2025 the third-highest venture financing year on record, trailing only 2021 and 2022. (Crunchbase News)

The US captured most of that growth. Around $274 billion in startup capital went to US-based companies in 2025, representing 64% of global startup funding. That number is up from 56% in 2024 and well above the 47% to 48% share the US held from 2019 to 2023. (Crunchbase News)

The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor for Q4 2025, the authoritative quarterly report on US venture activity, reports the total slightly differently using its own methodology. It found that $339.4 billion was deployed across 16,709 deals in the US in 2025, second only to 2021’s $358.2 billion. (National Venture Capital Association)

AI Dominates Everything

It’s almost impossible to talk about 2025 venture capital without talking about AI. Per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• AI represented 65.4% of US VC deal value and 39.4% of deal count in 2025, up 16.3% year over year in deal value.
• AI and ML companies attracted a record $222.1 billion in VC funding in 2025.
• Globally, venture funding for AI reached $211 billion in 2025, up 85% year over year from $114 billion in 2024.
• 11 US VC rounds in Q4 2025 alone reached or exceeded $1 billion, and the eight largest deals of the quarter were all AI-related.

The biggest names in AI accounted for a stunning share of all venture capital. OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Project Prometheus, and xAI each raised more than $5 billion in 2025. These five companies alone raised $84 billion, or 20% of venture capital funding in 2025. (Crunchbase News)

OpenAI’s $40 billion SoftBank-backed round in March 2025 was the largest venture investment ever recorded. Anthropic followed with a $13 billion Series F at a $183 billion valuation in September, and Scale AI took $14.3 billion from Meta in June. (Crunchbase News)

Median Deal Sizes by Stage

The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor‘s median deal sizes show:

• Pre-seed: $0.5M median
• Seed: $3.8M median
• Series A: $15M median
• Series B: $33.8M median
• Series C: $54M median
• Series D+: $100M median

Median Pre-Money Valuations by Stage

Median pre-money valuations in 2025, per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• Pre-seed: $8.3M
• Seed: $16M
• Series A: $49M
• Series B: $145M
• Series C: $316.3M
• Series D+: $856.5M

Capital Concentration at the Top

The headline funding numbers can be deceptive. Half of the 2025 US VC deal value was invested in just 0.05% of completed deals. Crunchbase data shows similar concentration globally: close to 60% of invested capital went to 629 companies that raised rounds of $100 million or more, and more than a third of global funding went to 68 companies that raised rounds of $500 million or more. (National Venture Capital Association and Crunchbase News).

Unicorns and the Private Market

Private valuations have climbed to staggering levels. The aggregate value of US unicorns now stands at $4.3 trillion, per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Globally, the Crunchbase Unicorn Board approached $7.5 trillion in value at the close of 2025, a more than $2 trillion increase compared to the close of 2024. (PitchBook and Crunchbase News)

A few more notable figures on the state of the private market in 2025:

• There are more than 60,000 private VC-backed companies in the US. (PitchBook)
• 41% of unicorns have not raised since at least 2022. (National Venture Capital Association)
• Roughly 40% of private unicorns are more than 10 years old (National Venture Capital Association)

VC Fundraising Hit a Decade Low

While dealmaking surged, the supply side of venture capital had one of its worst years in a decade. According to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• US VC firms raised $66.1 billion across 537 funds in 2025. This was the lowest total since 2018 and just 30% of the 2021 high in fund count.
• Just 92 first-time VC funds closed in 2025, raising a combined $6.6 billion.
• US VC dry powder sits at $299.3 billion.
• Net cash flows to LPs have been almost $200 billion in the negative since the market slowdown began in 2022.

The fundraising contraction is also leading to concentration among the largest firms. $500 million-plus funds have accounted for just 6.7% of closed funds over the past four years but now represent 52.3% of available dry powder. Andreessen Horowitz’s $15 billion close in early January 2026 represented more than 18% of all new commitments to VC funds since January 2025. National Venture Capital AssociationPitchBook

SBA Loans and Small Business Lending

While VC gets the headlines, SBA-backed loans do far more of the heavy lifting for everyday American businesses. Fiscal year 2025 was a record-setter for the program.

According to the SBA:

• The agency guaranteed 84,400 7(a) and 504 small business loans worth $44.8 billion in FY2025, the most capital ever delivered.
• This included 77,600 7(a) loans for $37 billion and 6,750 504 loans for $7.8 billion.
• On average, the SBA guaranteed 1,600 small business loans per week worth over $860 million.
• Among loans approved after January 2025, more than 3,500 went to small manufacturers for $2.6 billion, and 8,900 loans went to small business startups for $5.6 billion.

Small Business Borrowing Patterns

The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey gives a more detailed picture of where small businesses actually go for credit:

• 38% of firms applied for a loan, line of credit, or merchant cash advance in the 12 months leading up to the survey, nearly unchanged from 2024.
• Applicants most often sought financing at large banks, followed by online lenders and small banks.
• The share of applicants seeking financing at online fintech lenders has climbed steadily, from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey.
• Applicants who sought financing at small banks were more likely to be fully approved (57%) than those at other lenders.

Exits: IPOs and M&A

The exit market improved meaningfully in 2025, though it remained far short of pre-2022 norms. According to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• US VC exit value totaled $297.6 billion across an estimated 1,635 exits in 2025, the fourth-highest decade total.
• VC-backed IPO volumes reached $16.8 billion in 2025, in line with pre-pandemic averages and up roughly 110% from the prior year.
• Just 48 IPOs occurred in 2025, similar to the levels of other post-pandemic years.
• 17 unicorns went public in 2025.

M&A also picked up steam. Acquisitions generated $140.7 billion across 1,029 transactions in 2025. The single biggest exit was Wiz being acquired by Google in the largest M&A deal for a venture-backed company ever, a reported $32 billion transaction. (National Venture Capital Association, Crunchbase News)

Notably, startups themselves are becoming bigger buyers. VC-backed companies accounted for 38.4% of the acquisition count and 22.3% of the acquisition value in 2025. OpenAI alone made several major acquisitions, including $6.5 billion, $1.7 billion, and $1.1 billion acquisitions. (National Venture Capital Association)

Business Funding for Female Entrepreneurs

Funding to female-founded companies hit a record in 2025, but the headline number tells only part of the story. According to PitchBook’s 2025 US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report:

• US VC-backed female-founded companies raised a record $73.6 billion in 2025, capturing an unprecedented 27.7% of total US venture deal value.
• That share was up significantly from 19.9% in 2024 and roughly 15% a decade earlier. (Refresh Miami)
• More than $30 billion of the 2025 total came from just two raises: Scale AI and Anthropic.
• AI startups absorbed about two-thirds of all VC dollars invested in female-founded companies.

But the picture changes considerably when you look at all-female founding teams specifically (the numbers above include companies with male co-founders). Per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• All-female teams raised only $3.9 billion in 2025 across 770 deals.
• That’s just 1.1% of the total US VC deal value.
• All-female team deal count fell from 884 in 2024 and a 2021 peak of 1,234.
• 78.8% of first-time financings still go to all-male teams.

Business Funding for Black Entrepreneurs

The numbers for Black-founded startups are even more concerning. According to Crunchbase data:

• Around $730 million, or 0.4% of all US venture funding, went to startups with a Black founder or co-founder in 2024, the lowest share in years and down more than two-thirds from just three years earlier.
• Funding to Black founders peaked at $4.9 billion in 2021, the record year for overall venture capital.

As Crunchbase has noted, dollars invested in Black-founded startups have fluctuated between roughly 0.4% and 1.3% as a proportion of US funding for years.

Crowdfunding Statistics

Crowdfunding remains a much smaller piece of the funding puzzle than VC or SBA loans, but serves a meaningful role for early-stage creators and businesses that don’t fit the venture mold.

Reward-Based Crowdfunding

Kickstarter, the largest reward-based crowdfunding platform, had its biggest year ever in 2024, according to its annual Creative Download report:

• $706 million was pledged to successfully funded projects in 2024 across 35,512 projects launched.
• Since launching in 2009, Kickstarter has hosted more than 654,000 crowdfunding campaigns with more than $8.5 billion pledged from more than 23 million backers.
• The average pledge per backer in 2024 was $116.32, a 5% increase year over year. (Animation Magazine)

Games dominated as the largest category. $270 million was pledged to Games projects on Kickstarter in 2024, with tabletop projects accounting for 83% of all Games pledges. The highest-funded Games project in Kickstarter history, Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere RPG, raised more than $15.1 million from 55,106 backers. (Kickstarter)

Equity Crowdfunding (Regulation Crowdfunding)

Securities-based crowdfunding under Regulation Crowdfunding, which lets companies raise up to $5 million annually from non-accredited investors, has scaled steadily since its 2016 launch. According to the SEC’s 2025 analysis:

• Between May 2016 and December 2024, there were more than 8,400 offerings initiated by more than 7,100 issuers under Regulation Crowdfunding.
• In the aggregate, the maximum amount sought across all Reg CF offerings was approximately $8.4 billion.
• More than 3,800 offerings reported proceeds, totaling approximately $1.3 billion through the end of 2024.

Reg CF activity actually pulled back in 2024 from 2023 highs. Per industry data tracker Kingscrowd, companies utilizing Reg CF raised a total of $343.6 million in 2024, an 18% decrease compared to the $423 million raised in 2023. Equity-based offerings accounted for $303.4 million (88%) of investment volume, while debt-based offerings made up $40.2 million (12%). (Kingscrowd)

Reg CF has also become a more accessible path for underrepresented founders. 34% of all new companies launching Reg CF raises in 2024 had at least one woman founder, an annual high. Companies with women founders raised 26% of total Reg CF capital, a much higher share than the 1.9% that women-only teams received from traditional venture capital that year. (Kingscrowd)

Regulation A+

For larger raises, companies can use Regulation A+, which allows up to $75 million annually. Since amendments to the rules took effect in 2015, Reg A issuers have raised just over $9.4 billion across 817 offerings through the end of 2024. (Caldwell)

Venture Debt

Beyond equity, venture-backed companies are increasingly turning to debt to extend their runway. Per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor:

• Venture debt deal value in 2025 reached $62.4 billion across 943 loans.
• Tech companies accounted for the bulk of it, at $55.6 billion across 812 loans.
• Healthcare venture debt totaled $6.7 billion across 174 loans.
• The median late-stage venture debt deal size hit $8.2 million in 2025, a decade high.

Business Survival and What Funding Actually Buys

It’s worth ending with a reminder of what these funding decisions are really about. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, analyzed by Founder Reports:

• 20.4% of businesses fail within their first year of operation
• 49.8% fail within five years
• 65.3% fail within ten years

Business survival rates vary dramatically by industry. Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting had the highest 10-year survival rate, followed by utilities and manufacturing. The lowest survival rate was in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction, followed by information and professional, scientific, and technical services.

The funding ecosystem captured in this data, from $40 billion AI megadeals down to a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign, exists to give as many of those businesses as possible the runway to make it past those first few critical years. The gap between who’s getting that runway and who isn’t has rarely been wider.