2025年三季度新兴技术指标（英）2025

EMERGING TECH RESEARCH Emerging TechIndicator Top VC firms are betting big on AI and industrial tech Contents Key takeaways Institutional Research Group Analysis Ben RiccioAssociate Research Analystben.riccio@pitchbook.com Data AI13 Matthew NacionalesSenior Data Analyst pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com Fintech22 Publishing Healthtech & wellness25 Report designed byAdriana Hansen Published on December 1, 2025 Other notable activity31 Venture activity summary32 Key takeaways •Early-stage rounds grow as transaction counts fall:ETI funding (pre-seed, seed, and early-stage deals involving the top 15 VC firms) reached $6.1 billion across 215 deals in Q3. Whiledeal count dropped 22.5% on a TTM basis, total capital deployed remained stable. As a result, •AI remains on top:AI remained the leading ETI vertical for the seventh consecutive quarter,attracting $2.2 billion across 52 deals. Additionally, 72 deals went to AI applications in other •A competitive early-stage environment favors top investors:With investment consolidating in •Geopolitical tailwinds drive record investment in industrial tech:Industrial tech exploded fewer, larger deals, top investors are playing an outsized role in early-stage investing. As thesefirms typically have expanded access to competitive, large-scale financings, ETI investment is to a record $782.4 million and 17 deals in the quarter. With expanding defense budgets and astrong focus on domestic production in the US, top investors are prioritizing a historically minor Introduction The Emerging Tech Indicator (ETI) provides a quarterly review of pre-seed, seed, and early-stageinvestment activity involving a limited subset of the world’s most successful VC firms that account In the third quarter of 2025, we tracked 215 pre-seed, seed, and early-stage VC deals that involvedthe top 15 VC firms (relative to 5,516 total pre-seed, seed, and early-stage VC deals). These firms are determined each quarter based on the success of their investments over time in terms of both Disclaimer: Data from the ETI report represents a snapshot of venture activity at a certain pointin time. Historical datasets are continuously being adjusted to incorporate new information Deal activity In Q3, ETI deal activity totaled $6.1 billion across 215 deals. Deal counts remain flat QoQ, whiletotal investment increased 3.2% when excluding the combined $4 billion in seed rounds for SafeSuperintelligence and Thinking Machines Lab in Q2. Top investors continued to close far fewerseed and early-stage deals than in prior years, with Q3’s total representing a 31.6% decline from This trend reflects a broader shift in the role of venture’s largest investors in the early-stageinvesting environment. As valuations and deal sizes grow, early-stage investing has become morecompetitive and expensive. Large, multistage investors that can afford these increased valuationsand access the most competitive deals are playing an outsized role. YTD, ETI rounds accounted DEAL ACTIVITY In Q3, we tracked 215 ETI deals across 27 technology verticals. AI accounted for 52 deals,representing $2.2 billion in total invested—36.1% of the quarter’s total. Including 72 additional Sectors where AI offers the most market-ready applications are seeing the greatest activity, suchas enterprise software as a service (SaaS) (22 deals), fintech (20 deals), and healthtech (17 deals). Areas of investment AREAS OF INVESTMENT ETI deal segment spotlights AI For the seventh consecutive quarter, AI was the top vertical by both deal count and value, attracting$2.2 billion across 52 deals. As the technology proliferates across industries, an additional 72 dealsand $1.5 billion went to vertical-specific AI applications verticals, such as voice agents in healthcareor AI-automated cybersecurity platforms, underscoring the ongoing shift of early-stage AI investing The top AI deal in Q3 went to Periodic Labs, which raised a $300 million seed round led bya16z and DST Global at a $1.3 billion valuation. The company is building AI systems in materialsscience, developing models and autonomous laboratories to create a closed-loop system where AI agents can generate their own training data and iterate on hypotheses. In another notable deal AI Notable themes of AI investment included: •“Vibe coding” platforms and AI development tools:Led by Lovable’s $200 million Series A ata $1.8 billion valuation, AI code-generation platforms attracted significant ETI investment in Q3.Other notable deals in the space included CodeRabbit, Factory.ai, and Macroscope. Investor •AI infrastructure layer:Platforms facilitating the development and deployment of custom AI models and agents also saw an uptick in ETI activity. Modular raised $250 million at a $1.6 billionvaluation for its AI inference and development platform allowing users to optimize and runover 500 generative AI (GenAI) models. giga.ai, a platform for building specialized, multimodal •