State of the Global Startup Economy
The global startup ecosystem is being reshaped by the rise of Artificial Intelligence, the growing influence of geopolitics, and a marked expansion in the role of the state. While this year’s ranking shows less disruption than last year’s, these forces are driving a shift away from the more globally-distributed innovation landscape of the last decade, toward one that is increasingly concentrated, strategic, and politically-mediated.
Artificial Intelligence is the central driver. It is no longer meaningful to treat AI as a discrete sector; it now functions as a general-purpose technology affecting nearly all areas of economic activity, including startup sectors and sub-sectors.
Its impact, however, is uneven. At the technological frontier, activity is highly concentrated in a small number of ecosystems, particularly in the United States and China. This concentration is reflected in capital flows, with North America increasing its share of global funding, reversing the trend toward wider geographic distribution. As a result, the Ecosystem Value (EV) of Silicon Valley has now reached over $3 trillion – nearly 3x the value of the next largest ecosystem – and the EV of North America has accelerated away from the rest of the world, increasing 51% since GSER 2025, compared with a global increase of 33%.
Geopolitical developments are reinforcing these patterns. Conflict and strategic competition are reshaping capital allocation, talent mobility, and sectoral priorities. Capital and talent are gravitating toward politically-stable regions, while investor interest is shifting toward Defense, Energy, and other strategic domains. These dynamics are actively rewiring global innovation ecosystems.
At the same time, the role of the state is expanding. Governments are increasingly acting not only as regulators but also as investors, customers, and ecosystem architects, particularly in sectors which are strategically important and capital intensive, such as AI infrastructure, Semiconductors, Defense, and Quantum Technologies.
Against this backdrop, global startup funding is showing measured recovery following the post-2021 downturn. Early-stage funding has stabilized and begun to increase in value in many ecosystems, while late-stage funding has rebounded dramatically, driven in part by large AI-related rounds. Exit activity has also shown strong growth, though recovery is uneven, being driven by stronger AI in North America and parts of Asia, while Europe is more patchy.
The result is a more divergent global landscape. The ecosystems that are pulling ahead are those able to mobilize capital at scale, integrate Frontier Technologies, and align public and private actors around strategic priorities. Others face a growing risk of experiencing the disruptive effects of technological change without capturing its economic benefits.
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Global Funding Trends
After two years of contraction, global startup funding stabilized and began to grow in 2025. The recovery is visible across both early- and late-stage funding, though with different dynamics.
Series A Funding
Globally, 2025 Series A funding rose a modest 2% over 2024 to reach $46.5 billion, and now stands 13% above pre-pandemic levels of $41 billion in both 2019 and 2020. However, the true recovery has now started with a rise of 28% from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 due to a sharp increase (+45%) in average deal size from the prior quarter – driven by large rounds to AI-Native startups – compensating for a 12% reduction in deal count.
The Series A funding picture varies significantly by region:
- North America’s Series A funding remained essentially flat in 2025 but is up sharply (+22%) in Q1 2026 versus the quarterly average for 2025.
- Asia’s Series A funding is up 4%, and the number of Series A deals also increased — the only region with growth in deal counts. However, Q1 2026 funding is down 13% compared to 2025’s quarterly average.
- MENA saw standout Series A funding growth (+24%) between 2024 and 2025, driven by government support in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. However, the first quarter of 2026 has been somewhat disappointing, with less than half of what would be expected if the 2025 performance continued.
- Europe showed good Series A funding growth (10%) from 2024 to 2025. This growth accelerated into 2026, with Q1 2026 showing 56% higher Series A than the quarterly average for 2025.
- Oceania saw a slight increase of 4% from 2024 to 2025, while Q1 2026 is down 19% versus the quarterly average for 2025.
- Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa continued to see declines in Series A funding from 2024 to 2025 – -30% and -36%, respectively. Projections for 2026 based on the first quarter suggest that sub-Saharan Africa may be flat in 2026 while Latin America may continue to go down.
Seed Funding – Time-Adjusted Analysis
Assuming the standard median one-year lag in seed rounds reaching global funding databases, the current 2025 seed funding of $32 billion globally will likely end up between $55 billion to $65 billion, representing a growth rate of 100% to 130% versus 2024 ($27 billion).
This growth is due to a new phenomenon related to AI-Native startup ecosystems. In the last two years, large VC funds have been directing more and more capital — in the form of seed checks above $20 million and even $50 million — toward the most promising AI-Native startups to lock them in early and boost their growth. This is the main reason why, unlike in the past, seed funding is growing rapidly while Series A funding is flat.
This is especially true in North America and Asia, with adjusted seed funding levels pointing to growth rates of 100% to 150% from 2024 to 2025. This effect is seen to a lesser degree in Europe, with a forecasted growth rate between 50% and 90%, and in other regions – sub-Saharan Africa, MENA, Latin America, and Oceania – with growth rates estimated between 10% and 55%.
Late-Stage Funding
Late-stage funding (LSF) presents a clearer recovery. From 2024 to 2025, total global LSF investment increased by roughly 17% to around $210 billion, while deal volume was flat. The total for 2025 exceeded pre-pandemic levels. As with early-stage funding (ESF), increasing value on flat numbers of rounds points to increasing average deal sizes, but the effect is more pronounced. The rebound has been driven in significant part by large rounds in AI-related companies, particularly in North America. In the chart below, the majority of Q1 2026 LSF is attributed to Anthropic ($30 billion) and OpenAI ($120 billion).
This has reinforced geographic concentration. North America saw a 21% increase in total investment value and now accounts for 64% of the global share of LSF – up from 56% in 2021; signs from Q1 2026 indicate that this will continue to accelerate. Asia takes the second-largest global share (around 17%). Europe is a close third at 16%, with LSF up 7%, though its deal volume continues its multi-year decline, falling nearly 5% over 2024. Oceania, Latin America and MENA all saw strong increases in LSF of 46%, 39% and 22% respectively in 2025.
Exits
Exits improved significantly in 2025 and the start of 2026. We wrote last year that there were positive signs of recovery, and this has indeed further materialized, with exit volumes reaching new highs and total exit value increasing 164% year-on-year to nearly $800 billion.
While the 2025 value was below the extraordinary 2021 peak of nearly $1.9 trillion, it is significantly higher than the pre-pandemic levels, with the last quarter of 2025 seeing particular acceleration. (Note that the chart below does not include the $1.25 trillion merger of SpaceX and X.ai, which took place in February 2026. We do not consider this a true exit because it is not an acquisition made at arm’s length.)
That said, regional disparities are again persistent. By far the most exits were in North America, which saw 41% of all exits and 49% of global exit value. Europe, having overtaken North America for a brief period, returned to second place for exit volume, with 37% of global share – but only 11% of total exit value, highlighting the fact that firms in Europe are still exiting at significantly lower valuation than those in the U.S.
In contrast, Asia saw just 12% of global exits but 30% of global exit value, buoyed by large IPOs such as Moore Threads (a Chinese Semiconductor design firm specializing in chips for AI, which floated for $1.13 billion in December 2025) and Groww (an Indian Fintech platform which floated for just under $750 million in November 2025). Exit counts were up in every region, though with Europe showing the lowest growth (7%). Exit value increased in every region except Oceania.
The chart below shows the distributions of exit deal sizes (of all types) by region, showing the bottom quartile, median, and top quartile. Not only are median exit sizes substantially higher in North America than elsewhere, but the top quartile exit in Europe is in fact slightly below the median value for North America:
Exits over $50 million rose in the past year, with a modest 4% increase in count but a substantial 112% increase in value. The growth in the value of large exits was particularly strong in Asia, with a 207% increase from 2023-2025. The first quarter of 2026 has been particularly exciting globally, with public markets seeing around six times the value of large exits in one quarter than in the whole of 2024. This increase in larger exits is particularly significant, as these events are critical to recycling capital and experience within ecosystems.
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Latin America had near-record exits in Q1 2026, which skews the 2026 full-year projection. Overall projections based on Q1 2026 suggest that the exits over $50 million are likely to be fairly flat in Asia, North America and Europe, while being up by about 20% in MENA and increasing very sharply in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America – their first quarter exits being larger than for the whole-year 2025.
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In terms of exit types, Mergers & Acquisitions remain by far the most frequent form of exit, comprising over 80% of all exits. However, these are less common for higher-value exits, and thus account for less than half the total value. IPOs saw a global 22% increase in 2025 (vs. 2024), while remaining at roughly half the total number seen in 2021 (429 vs. 794).
Taken together, these trends point to a recovery that is real but uneven. Capital is returning, but it is doing so selectively and with increasing geographic concentration.
The Rise and Concentration of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is not simply another high-growth sector within the startup economy. It is the primary force shaping how tech companies are built and where value accrues. Last year, we introduced the AI-Native Cluster factor to our Top 40 ranking methodology, a composite metric measuring how conducive an ecosystem is to AI startup growth. We’ve expanded that factor further this year, raising its ranking weight from 5% to 10% and introducing it to the Top 100 Emerging Ecosystems ranking.
AI is clearly outpacing the growth of all other sub-sectors (whether verticals or horizontals) in the post-pandemic period. Total funding for AI-Native startups – which we define as those that have AI at the core of their product, market, or business model and which would not exist without AI – grew 218% from 2021 to 2025. Over the same period, tech funding in general shrank by 36%. Moreover, comparing the growth in Ecosystem Value since our GSER 2021 report, the value of non-AI tech has increased by 101%, while the value of AI-Native firms has increased a huge 969%.
AI Native: Series A Funding
Series A funding into AI-Native companies increased 17% from 2024 to 2025, reaching $15 billion (compared with the rest of tech, which shrank by 4% globally over the same period). The total number of deals was also up by 10%, year over year. The difference in growth rates illustrates that Series A round sizes for AI-Native firms are increasing.
Overall, AI-Native startups are raising capital faster than non-AI firms, with seed rounds being closed 10 months after formation (median) versus 24 months for the rest of tech. Series A rounds are being closed 30 months after formation, versus 46 months for the rest of tech. In terms of deal sizes, while the median for AI-Native startups is only 10% higher than for the rest of tech, the mean deal sizes are two to five times larger, driven by large rounds secured by AI-Native startups.
Europe now generates as many startups as the U.S. and begins to live up to its innovation potential. Nevertheless, we are sobered by the massive imbalances in the AI economy, where hyperscalers can invest hundreds of billions in infrastructure and compute. If Europe is to stay relevant, it’s going to have to dramatically increase its own potential for investing. The good news is that capital is here; the bad news is that little of it gets invested in our startups or scaleups. Fixing that will determine our success or failure.
Breaking AI down into sub-categories, the majority of AI-related ESF is captured by agentic startups and other business models built using third-party models (which we call Category “B” for AI-Native Business Models as opposed to AI-Native Model startups, or “M” in the chart below). Compared to Model startups, AI-Native startups in type B accounted for 45x more startup creation, 9x more seed deals, and 5x more Series A deals. Series A funding for B-type AI-Native startups has grown 58% a year over the last two years, meaning there is a proliferation of such startups being funded by investors.
In contrast, the segment of foundational models (Category “M0”) has seen a contraction of 50% per year, a sign that this is becoming a mature space where the few dominant players are already well known, and there is little space for new entrants.
Specialized models relating to Digital and Deep Tech sectors (which we call Categories M1 and M2, respectively), along with Infrastructure firms (Category “I,” which includes both AI hardware and other support-enabling AI workflows, without providing AI themselves) have seen relative stability in the number of new entrants each year.
AI Native: Late-Stage Funding
Late-stage funding paints a slightly different picture. Late-stage funding more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, reaching a total of $108 billion – over half of all late-stage funding globally. Round numbers were also up 15%, but the fact that value increased much faster than volume is indicative of the fact that AI deal sizes are still increasing far beyond other tech. Average late-stage deal size rose from $90 million in 2024 to in excess of $160 million in 2025 – compared with an average late-stage deal size for other tech of just $29 million.
In terms of sub-sectors, LSF differs from ESF. The majority of LSF is going toward core model developers (Category M in our taxonomy); this segment received over 70% of all global LSF and grew faster than all others (133% year-over-year).
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The largest late-stage funding rounds are concentrated in these frontier firms, where both capital requirements and perceived upside are greatest. This segment saw by far the largest round sizes, roughly 10x larger than other segments, with $79 billion across just 100 deals. While such large rounds contribute to rumblings of an irrational ‘AI bubble,’ our view is that this indicates either that investors consider that ‘winner takes all’ dynamics will dominate and/or that speed-to-market is seen as especially critical, and firms need to be resourced for aggressive expansion.
Agentic startups (Category B in our taxonomy) saw LSF increase 76% from 2024 to 2025 to reach nearly $20 billion total and average deal sizes of $55 million. As with the early-stages, this segment accounts for the majority of deals. AI infrastructure startups (Category I) saw a more modest LSF growth of 37% year-over-year and average late-stage rounds of $84 million.
Speed of Funding
The speed of funding is itself an important feature of the current landscape. AI startups are not only raising larger rounds, but doing so more quickly, particularly at early stages. In many ecosystems, seed rounds in AI are being raised in approximately half the time as for other tech. This creates advantages for ecosystems with dense investor networks and the ability to make rapid decisions. Ecosystems in which investors cannot move quickly or deploy large amounts of capital are increasingly disadvantaged.
Geography of AI
AI activity is highly concentrated in a small number of ecosystems with access to specialized talent and deep capital pools. Funding of AI-Native firms largely explains the increasing global concentration mentioned above: for early-stages, around 73% of all funding into AI-Native firms was received by North American startups; for late-stages, North America received a mammoth 86% of all global funding into AI-Native firms. As mentioned, the largest AI-Native rounds are going to core model developers, who are primarily located in Silicon Valley and Beijing; in this category, median Series A rounds are around 4x the size of other tech startups.
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After Silicon Valley and New York, Beijing received the third largest total funding into AI-Native firms. This was driven in large part by the Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund, a state-backed venture capital fund established in late 2023 with around $1.4 billion, explicitly to accelerate Beijing’s AI ecosystem.
Importantly, AI-Native exits are also happening, with volume and value both jumping significantly in 2025: the value of large exits of AI-Native firms increased over 500% to $243 billion (from just $40 billion in 2024). The bulk of the exit value (and the vast majority of the exit numbers) was seen in Silicon Valley, with Beijing second. This matters because such large exits enable investors to recycle their capital into the next generation of startups, thus extending the lead of these ecosystems.
The result is a feedback loop. Ecosystems that lead in AI attract more capital and talent, which in turn strengthens their position. In some ways this concentration is unsurprising: research shows that disruptive technologies often start highly geographically concentrated. But it should concern other ecosystem builders that AI is creating technological unemployment across numerous sectors and ecosystems, while the pioneering locations are building advantages in high-skill employment which will last several decades.
Brazil has competitive AI startups, experienced founders, and a domestic market large enough to grow for years without crossing a single border. That is exactly the trap. What we see in ecosystems like Florianópolis and São Paulo is that AI adoption is not the bottleneck. Ambition is. The local market is big enough to be an excuse, and that is the real challenge to overcome.
Ecosystems that do not adapt will see the downsides of disruption and technological unemployment without the upsides of new startup creation – not to mention missed opportunities for productivity enhancement of established industry and more efficient public service delivery.
Strategic Sectors and the Expanding Role of the State
The concentration trends described in the previous section do not arise from market forces alone. Geopolitical developments are actively reshaping where capital flows, which sectors attract investor attention, and how governments position themselves in relation to their own startup ecosystems. These forces reinforce, and in some respects accelerate, the divergence already driven by AI.
DefenseTech
Conflict does not simply suppress startup activity — it rewires it. Capital and talent migrate toward politically stable regions. Investor and market interest shifts away from consumer and retail applications toward Defense, Energy, and other sectors perceived as strategically important. And in some cases, technological development accelerates, as operational demand creates new requirements and new urgency.
The war in Ukraine has had a particularly visible effect on European investor priorities. DefenseTech — a sector Startup Genome is tracking as a discrete category for the first time this year — saw approximately 60% growth in Series A value and around 15% growth in deal counts over the past year, making it the fastest-growing sector outside AI. Previous ESG-related constraints on Defense investment, which had been a notable feature of European venture capital, now appear out of step with geopolitical realities.
The conflict in the Middle East is reinforcing these trends, adding a sharper focus on supply chains and sovereign control over critical infrastructure. Events in early 2026 suggest this reorientation is likely to continue.
Adjacent Strategic Sectors
Advanced Manufacturing, Robotics, and Quantum Technologies are also attracting increased strategic interest, sharing characteristics that tend to draw government and patient capital: long development timelines, high capital intensity, and close links to national capability.
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Energy and Cleantech present a more nuanced picture. Following a dramatic halving of investment between 2022 and 2024 — driven by reduced regulatory pressure, notably in the United States, and the declining salience of climate change on political agendas — the sector saw a further fall in deals and value of Series A in 2025.
We believe that, alongside technological advances, the true innovation in the years ahead will come from the effective organization and integration of our ecosystem’s actors. Brazil has a significant opportunity to establish itself as a leading global player in Cleantech and Bioeconomy startups. Realizing this potential will require coordinated action among national stakeholders and close alignment with international best practices in startup ecosystem development.
However, disruptions to Middle Eastern energy supply are now creating a new rationale for Cleantech investment: energy security and resilience, rather than decarbonization. The motivating politics are different, but the investible technologies largely overlap. A reversal of the Cleantech investment trend in the coming year appears likely.
Energy is the foundation of everything — competitiveness, sovereignty, security. Europe is at an inflection point: the decisions we make now on clean energy deployment and homegrown technology will determine whether we lead the next industrial era or cede it.
Fintech also warrants a note. After several lean years for exits, 2025 brought a wave of long-awaited Fintech IPOs — Chime, Circle, Klarna, and eToro among them — alongside billion-dollar funding rounds for Stripe and Revolut. Many of these IPOs priced at valuations substantially below previous peaks, indicating a broad market normalization rather than a return to 2021 conditions. Fintech's recovery reflects renewed confidence in durable business models, but it is not a structural shift of the kind visible in Defense.
The State as Investor, Customer, and Ecosystem Architect
As the strategic importance of key technologies has grown, so too has the direct involvement of the state. This is most visible in sectors characterized by high capital intensity, long timelines, and national security relevance, such as AI infrastructure, Semiconductors, Defense, and Quantum.
The growing shift in the angel investment ecosystem on the continent reflects a structural shift in the investment landscape, where angel investment is increasingly playing a critical role in driving business growth, job creation, and economic resilience beyond traditional financial support. In 2025, angel groups deployed over $4.4 million, while 65% of angel-backed startups secured follow-on funding. Meanwhile, Catalytic Africa x timbuktoo Matching Fund is expanding access to capital by reducing investment risk and directing funding toward underserved markets and high-impact sectors, including Climate, Agriculture, and Health.
State involvement is taking several forms. Governments are investing directly through sovereign funds and co-investment vehicles like the proposed EU Sovereign Tech Fund for cybersecurity and critical open-source software, the U.K.’s multi-billion Quantum program, and the NATO Innovation Fund, a multi-sovereign vehicle investing directly into strategic technologies. They are also creating demand through procurement programs and mission-oriented contracts. They are shaping the regulatory and institutional environment in which technologies are developed and deployed. The concept of “sovereign AI” – national control over infrastructure, models, data, and compute – is fast gaining traction due to concerns over data integrity, geopolitical alignment, and Defense applications.
However, this expanded role introduces new complexities. Policymakers must balance strategic objectives with economic efficiency, ensuring that public interventions harness private capital and expertise rather than crowding it out. This requires clear regulatory frameworks, credible signals of future demand, and close alignment with private investors – while avoiding the common risks of politicization and capital misallocation.
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At present, many ecosystems are failing to get this balance right. In AI, many are falling behind in their development of AI-Native startups by over-investing in compute infrastructure — which will not directly accelerate AI-Native startup creation, and may have a very short lifetime — while under-investing in AI-Native startup support, the core engine of job creation and GDP growth. This is the wrong strategy.
Corporate–Startup Collaboration
A related challenge — and one where state catalysis is particularly valuable — is corporate-startup collaboration. In AI, many high-value applications require access to proprietary data held by large organizations; startups have the technical capability but lack the access, while corporates hold the data but struggle to exploit it rapidly. In Defense, startups need routes into procurement systems and operational test environments that they cannot obtain independently.
Established primes and accelerators — Starburst, NSTXL, DASA, and NATO DIANA among them — can help bridge this gap, but the deeper barriers are institutional: data-sharing liability, procurement timelines, and the transaction costs of building trust across organizations with very different operating rhythms. Policymakers who address these frictions directly — through data governance frameworks, procurement reform, and co-investment in pilot projects — create conditions for collaboration that markets alone will not reliably produce.
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Implications for Ecosystem Leaders
The global startup economy is becoming more uneven, and the gap between leading and lagging ecosystems is widening. Success increasingly depends on a combination of factors that reinforce one another, including the ability to deploy capital at scale and speed; access to Frontier Technologies and the infrastructure that supports them; dense networks connecting startups, investors, corporates, and the state; and policy frameworks that enable, rather than constrain, rapid experimentation and growth.
The next phase of startup growth will be shaped by ecosystems that bring together talent, capital, and the partnerships founders need to turn ambition into impact. As AI lowers barriers to building and scaling companies, founders will increasingly gravitate toward environments that offer access to the people, resources, and opportunities needed to grow. Abu Dhabi's progress reflects the value of long-term vision and a sustained commitment to founder success in creating these environments.
Ecosystems that lack these characteristics risk falling into an unfavorable position: exposed to the disruptive effects of AI and geopolitical change, but without capturing the associated gains in productivity, employment, and value creation.
A common policy mistake is to focus too heavily on infrastructure — particularly in areas such as compute — without corresponding support for startup formation and growth. While infrastructure is necessary, it is not sufficient. The primary engine of economic impact remains the creation and scaling of companies.
Europe has all the ingredients to become a global leader in technology innovation: world-class talent, ambitious founders and a growing generation of breakthrough companies. But potential alone is not enough. We still need deeper capital markets, faster scaling conditions and far greater ambition if we want European startups and scaleups to compete globally - particularly in the AI era.
The recovery in global startup activity in 2025 marks the beginning of a new phase rather than a return to previous conditions. The underlying structure of the ecosystem is changing, shaped by the interaction of technological, geopolitical, and institutional forces.
Artificial Intelligence sits at the center of this transformation, amplifying differences between ecosystems while creating new opportunities for those able to respond effectively. The challenge for ecosystem leaders is not simply to participate in this shift, but to position their economies to capture its long-term benefits.