2025年三季度电子商务风险投资趋势（英）2025

EMERGING TECH RESEARCH E-CommerceVC Trends VC activity across the e-commerce ecosystem REPORT PREVIEWThe full report is available through the PitchBook Platform. Contents E-commerce landscape3 Institutional Research Group Analysis VC activity Eric BellomoSenior Research Analyst,E-Commerce and Gamingeric.bellomo@pitchbook.com E-commerce VC deal summary 18 Ben RiccioAssociate Research Analystben.riccio@pitchbook.com Data Harrison WaldockData Analyst pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com Publishing Report designed byMegan WoodardandChloe Ladwig Published on December 15, 2025 E-commercelandscape PrepurchasePurchase venuePurchase mediumPostpurchaseHorizontal platforms The complete taxonomy andcompany list can be viewedon the PitchBook Platform. VC activity E-commerce enablement startups raised $3.8 billion in Q3 2025, up 34.8% QoQ and 23.8%YoY. Conversely, deal volume fell to 117 transactions, down 9.3% QoQ and 5.6% YoY. Thisfundraising surge signals increasing investor confidence and a flight to quality in the sector. Thequarter outperformed the nine-quarter average in deal value ($3.8 billion versus $2.9 billion)but underperformed in volume (117 versus 135). As a share of aggregate VC activity, commercetech reached 3%, up from a local minimum of 1.7% in Q1 2025, but remains below the 5% peakin Q4 2022. According to theQ3 2025 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, deal flow is concentrating withinventure’s elite startups as the share of sub-$5 million deals continues to decline. Investors areprioritizing larger, high-conviction bets as deal size grows and small-deal activity weakens.E-commerce technology lacks the megadeal activity flowing into Waymo ($5.6 billion) orDatabricks ($1 billion), exposing deal counts to headwinds via weaker small-deal volume. However,highly visible platforms one degree removed from Waymo/Databricks financing levels are leaningon digital commerce as wedge use cases. These platforms include Perplexity’s Comet browser andShopify partnership and Vercel’s posture toward composable commerce. The deal stage mix inverted from Q2, with early-stage financings rising 16.6% to 31.6% of deals inQ3 and late-stage rounds falling 21% to 28.2% of rounds, slightly below the four-year average of31%. This shift highlights a renewed focus on nurturing earlier-stage innovation and deal activity aslate-stage round pace moderates. The seed-stage crunch continued, falling to 22.2% from 36.8%in Q1 2021, while growth rounds increased to 17.9% of deals, up from 9%-12% throughout 2021.This bifurcation is reverberating across venture and e-commerce software as a service (SaaS),wherein capital allocators are flocking to AI-native firms with unprecedented growth rates, while“strong but not elite” startups are squeezed out. Larger merchants have generally absorbed tariffs, modestly inhibiting e-commerce enablementinvestment, though a greater pass-through to consumers is expected in the near term. SaaSproviders may benefit from this reinvestment, but further deterioration within the already fragileconsumer outlook could slow top-line growth. Vendors focused on small and medium-sizebusinesses also face stronger headwinds via the elimination of the de minimis exemption likelypushing SaaS vendors to refocus upmarket. By segment, deal volume was balanced with purchase venue startups tallying the largestaggregate deal value ($1.2 billion). Prepurchase segments lagged at $270 million, reflecting a shifttoward conversion and fulfillment over discovery. On a trailing 12-month (TTM) basis, horizontalplatforms are pacing all segments in both value and volume with $3.3 billion across 132 deals.Investors are favoring platforms with clear horizontal applicability and scalable infrastructure.Subsegment momentum was led by analytics & customer data platforms (CDPs) ($1.3 billion,up 207.4%), fulfillment & delivery ($1.7 billion over 61 deals), and payments ($2.8 billion over 80deals). Alongside “agentic” AI enthusiasm, investors are turning to services with cross-sectorappeal, including fintech/payments, supply chain/fulfillment, and enterprise SaaS/analytics. The AI-commerce stack is coalescing with incumbents quickly leveraging their distributionadvantage, with Delta, eBay, Ralph Lauren, Walmart, and others deploying AI-driven pricing, listingautomation, and customer service powered by large language models. Similarly, Stripe, Visa,Google, Mastercard, Coinbase, and Anthropic have launched agentic protocols. Emergent risksfor startups include walled gardens coalescing around incumbents (Amazon’s Rufus will generate$10 billion in incremental sales alone) and horizontal platforms turning startups into features(Amplitude introduced answer engine optimization/generative engine optimization visibility, aroughly $100 million e-commerce category in 2025).3, 4For AI-native e-commerce enablementstartups, venture activity in Q3 clustered around customer support (Sierra, Kustomer), logistics(Augment, Keychain), app dev