“Much of the market continues to find it difficult to raise venture capital funding. Non-AI companies have accounted for just 35% of deal value through Q3 2025, while representing more than 60% of completed deals.” – Pitchbook
PitchBook’s data through Q3 2025 reveals a stark disparity in venture capital (VC) funding, where non-AI companies captured just 35% of total deal value despite comprising over 60% of deals, underscoring investor preference for AI-driven opportunities amid market caution.1,4,5
Context of the Quote
This statistic, sourced from PitchBook’s Q3 2025 Venture Monitor (in collaboration with the National Venture Capital Association), highlights the “flight to quality” trend dominating VC dealmaking. Through the first nine months of 2025, overall deal counts reached 3,990 in Q1 alone (up 11% quarter-over-quarter), with total value hitting $91.5 billion—a post-2022 high driven largely by AI sectors.4,5 However, smaller and earlier-stage non-AI startups received only 36% of total value, the decade’s lowest share, as investors prioritized larger, AI-focused rounds amid uncertainties like tariffs, market volatility, and subdued consumer sentiment.3,4 Fundraising for VC funds also plummeted, with Q1 2025 seeing just 87 vehicles close at $10 billion—the lowest activity in over a decade—and dry powder nearing $300 billion but deploying slowly.4 Exit activity hinted at recovery ($56 billion in Q1 from 385 deals) but faltered due to paused IPOs (e.g., Klarna, StubHub) and reliance on outliers like Coreweave’s IPO, which accounted for nearly 40% of value.4 PitchBook’s H1 2025 VC Tech Survey of 32 investors confirmed this shift: 52% see AI disrupting fintech (up from 32% in H2 2024), with healthcare, enterprise tech, and cybersecurity following suit, while VC outlooks soured (only 38% expect rising funding, down from 58%).1 The quote encapsulates a market where volume persists but value concentrates in AI, leaving non-AI firms struggling for capital in a selective environment.
Backstory on PitchBook
PitchBook, founded in 2007 by John Gabbert in Seattle, emerged as a leading data provider for private capital markets from humble origins as a simple Excel-based tool for tracking VC and private equity deals. Acquired by Morningstar in 2016 for $225 million, it has grown into an authoritative platform aggregating data on over 3 million companies, 1.5 million funds, and millions of deals worldwide, powering reports like the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.3,4,5 Its Q3 2025 analysis draws from proprietary datasets as of late 2025, offering granular insights into deal counts, values, sector breakdowns, and fundraising—essential for investors navigating post-2022 VC normalization. PitchBook’s influence stems from its real-time tracking and predictive modeling, cited across industry reports for benchmarking trends like AI dominance and liquidity pressures.1,2,4
Leading Theorists on VC Market Dynamics and AI Concentration
The quote aligns with foundational theories on VC cycles, power laws, and technological disruption. Key thinkers include:
- Bill Janeway (author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, 2012): A veteran VC at Warburg Pincus, Janeway theorized VC as a “three-legged stool” of government R&D, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and financial engineering. He predicted funding concentration in breakthrough tech like AI during downturns, as investors seek “moonshots” amid capital scarcity—mirroring 2025’s non-AI value drought.1,4
- Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal, Founders Fund; Zero to One, 2014): Thiel’s “definite optimism” framework argues VCs favor monopolistic, tech-dominant firms (e.g., AI) over competitive commoditized ones, enforcing power-law distributions where 80-90% of returns come from 1-2% of deals. This explains non-AI firms’ deal volume without value, as Thiel warns against “indefinite optimism” in crowded sectors.4
- Andy Kessler (author of Venture Capital Deals, 1986; Wall Street Journal columnist): Kessler formalized the VC “spray and pray” model evolving into selective bets during liquidity crunches, predicting AI-like waves would eclipse legacy sectors—evident in 2025’s fintech AI disruption forecasts.1
- Scott Kupor (a16z managing partner; Secrets of Sand Hill Road, 2019): Kupor analyzes LP-VC dynamics, noting how dry powder buildup (nearing $300B in 2025) leads to extended fund timelines and AI favoritism, as LPs demand outsized returns amid low distributions.1,2,4
- Diane Mulcahy (former Providence Equity; The New World of Entrepreneurship, 2013): Mulcahy critiqued VC overfunding bubbles, advocating “patient capital” for non-hyped sectors; her warnings resonate in 2025’s fundraising cliff and non-AI funding gaps.4
These theorists collectively frame 2025’s trends as a power-law amplification of AI amid cyclical caution, building on historical VC patterns from the dot-com bust to post-2008 recovery.
References
2. https://www.sganalytics.com/blog/us-venture-capital-outlook-2025/
3. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/services/audit-assurance/articles/trends-in-venture-capital.html
4. https://www.junipersquare.com/blog/vc-q1-2025
5. https://nvca.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Q3-2025-PitchBook-NVCA-Venture-Monitor.pdf
