VC fundraising for AI software companies
AI software has absorbed the largest concentration of venture capital of any sector in recent years, with funding skewed toward foundation labs and a long tail at the application layer. The underwriting question has shifted from raw growth to gross margin after compute, retention beyond the first contract and defensibility against incumbents shipping native AI features.
Investors active in AI software span generalist multi-stage funds running explicit AI theses, dedicated AI-focused specialists writing seed and Series A cheques, growth funds backing application-layer leaders, and the corporate venture arms tied to the hyperscalers and model providers - including M12, GV and Nvidia's NVentures. Flow has direct relationships across that investor base and knows which partners are currently writing and which have stepped back.
Flow has experience running VC fundraising processes for AI software companies across horizontal copilots, vertical AI applications, agent platforms and AI-native SaaS. Our extensive investor network spans early-stage seed funds, growth-stage investors, and strategic and corporate VC arms.
"AI software" KPIs VC investors look at
The metrics venture investors benchmark before pricing a round - in diligence, at the IC table, on the term sheet.
ARR
Net revenue retention
Gross margin after compute
Inference cost per query
Compute spend as % of revenue
Tokens consumed per active user
Pilot-to-production conversion
Logo retention
CAC payback
Magic number
Cohort gross margin
Active seats / users
AI software valuations in May 2026
Public AI software comps trade at 5.3x EV/Revenue. Median revenue multiple across AI software VC rounds was 23x in the last 12 months.
5.3x
Median EV/Revenue as of May 2026 for public AI software companies
72x
Palantir is the highest valued public AI software company based on EV/Revenue (excluding outliers)
4.8x
Median EV/Revenue across AI software M&A deals in the last 12 months
23x
Median EV/Revenue across AI software VC rounds in the last 12 months
Key recent AI software VC rounds
$122B Undisclosed stage raised by OpenAI was the largest AI software VC round completed in the last six months.
See all AI software VC rounds| Logo | HQ | Description | Investors | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Feb-26 | OpenAI |  | OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and deployment company that develops large language models, including the GPT series, and consumer-facing products such as ChatGPT. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, the organization transitioned to a capped-profit structure in 2019 to attract the capital needed for large-scale AI development. The company offers API access to its models for enterprise and developer use, alongside image generation through DALL-E and code-assistance tools. Headquartered in San Francisco, OpenAI has become one of the most prominent players in the generative AI space, backed by a multibillion-dollar investments from Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank and many more. | Altimeter CapitalAndreessen Horowitz+10 | $122B | $852B | Undisclosed stage | |
Apr-26 | Anthropic | | Anthropic is an AI safety company developing large language models and researching methods to make artificial intelligence more reliable and steerable. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including Dario and Daniela Amodei. The company's flagship product is Claude, a family of AI assistants deployed across consumer applications and enterprise APIs. Research priorities center on constitutional AI, mechanistic interpretability, and alignment techniques. Major investors include Google, Spark Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. | Vikram Makhija | $40B | $350B | Strategic investment | |
Feb-26 | Anthropic | | Anthropic is an AI safety company developing large language models and researching methods to make artificial intelligence more reliable and steerable. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including Dario and Daniela Amodei. The company's flagship product is Claude, a family of AI assistants deployed across consumer applications and enterprise APIs. Research priorities center on constitutional AI, mechanistic interpretability, and alignment techniques. Major investors include Google, Spark Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. | AMP PBCCoatue+11 | $30B | $380B | Series G | |
Apr-26 | Anthropic | | Anthropic is an AI safety company developing large language models and researching methods to make artificial intelligence more reliable and steerable. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including Dario and Daniela Amodei. The company's flagship product is Claude, a family of AI assistants deployed across consumer applications and enterprise APIs. Research priorities center on constitutional AI, mechanistic interpretability, and alignment techniques. Major investors include Google, Spark Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. | Amazon | $25B | $350B | Strategic investment | |
Jan-26 | xAI | | xAI is a San Francisco-headquartered artificial intelligence company building large language models for scientific reasoning. Founded in 2023 by Elon Musk, it released Grok-1.5 with vision capabilities trained on Colossus supercluster. xAI advances multimodal AI for physics simulations and frontier research. | Baron CapitalCisco Investments+7 | $20B | $230B | Series E | |
Apr-26 | P | Project Prometheus | | Project Prometheus is an artificial intelligence company developing AI systems for the physical economy, with applications across engineering and manufacturing in sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and computing. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London and Zurich, the company is co-led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, a chemist and physicist formerly of Google X and co-founder of Verily. Unlike large language models that learn primarily from digital text, Prometheus focuses on AI that learns from real-world experimentation and physical trial and error, aiming to optimize design, production, and performance in industrial settings. The company launched with $6.2 billion in initial funding and subsequently closed a $10 billion round at a valuation of approximately $38 billion, with participation from investors including JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock. Its team has grown to over 120 employees, drawing talent from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta, and the company acquired agentic AI startup General Agents in 2025. | ARCH Venture PartnersDST Global+2 | $10B | $38B | Undisclosed stage |
May-26 | Isomorphic Labs |  | Isomorphic Labs is a London-headquartered biotechnology company applying artificial intelligence to drug discovery since 2021. A subsidiary of Alphabet, it develops AI models analyzing protein structures and biological pathways to identify novel therapeutics. Isomorphic Labs partners with companies like Eli Lilly on multi-year collaborations for multiple drug targets. | AlphabetCapitalG+5 | $2.1B | - | Series B | |
May-26 | Moonshot AI |  | Moonshot AI is a Beijing-headquartered artificial intelligence company developing large language models like Kimi, a chatbot rivaling GPT-4 with 200K token context. Founded in 2023 by ex-Google researchers from Gemini and Bard teams, it processes Chinese-English queries via proprietary MoE architecture. Moonshot AI serves enterprise clients in search, content generation, and multimodal tasks across Asia. | China MobileCPE Yuanfeng+2 | $2.0B | $20B | Undisclosed stage | |
May-26 | A | Anthropic Applied AI (JV) | | Anthropic Applied AI JV places applied AI engineers inside companies to redesign workflows and integrate Claude models into essential processes. This joint venture delivers hands-on engineering support that exceeds basic software licenses. | AnthropicApollo Global Management+7 | $1.5B | - | Undisclosed stage |
Jan-26 | Skild AI | | Skild AI is a San Francisco-headquartered startup building foundation models for robotics that enable spatial intelligence and adaptive manipulation in unstructured environments. The company trains multimodal AI on real-world data from humanoid robots to handle tasks like grasping and navigation without task-specific programming. Skild AI raised funding from investors including Benchmark and focuses on warehouse automation and manufacturing applications. | 1789 CapitalAlpha Square Group+10 | $1.4B | $14B | Series C | |
Apr-26 | Ineffable Intelligence | | Ineffable Intelligence builds machine learning systems that learn via reinforcement learning through interaction and experience in simulated or real environments. These systems form a superlearner capable of autonomous knowledge generation, adaptation, and problem-solving across domains. | DST GlobalVikram Makhija+10 | $1.1B | $5.1B | Seed | |
Feb-26 | World Labs | | World Labs is a Palo Alto-based AI developer founded in 2024 by Fei-Fei Li that builds Large World Models for 3D perception and interaction. The platform processes visual data in virtual and physical environments, enabling AI agents to navigate spaces like robotics simulations or augmented reality overlays. Core technologies support generation of dynamic scenes and object manipulation, with applications in autonomous driving and game development through partnerships with Stanford researchers. | AMDAndreessen Horowitz+5 | $1.0B | $5.0B | Undisclosed stage | |
Dec-25 | OpenAI | | OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and deployment company that develops large language models, including the GPT series, and consumer-facing products such as ChatGPT. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, the organization transitioned to a capped-profit structure in 2019 to attract the capital needed for large-scale AI development. The company offers API access to its models for enterprise and developer use, alongside image generation through DALL-E and code-assistance tools. Headquartered in San Francisco, OpenAI has become one of the most prominent players in the generative AI space, backed by a multibillion-dollar investments from Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank and many more. | Disney | $1.0B | - | Strategic investment | |
Jan-26 | StepStar | | StepStar is a Beijing-headquartered AI company developing large language models and foundational AI technologies under the StepFun brand. Launched in 2023 by former Baidu executives, it released the Step-1 series of models in late 2024, rivaling capabilities of GPT-4 in Chinese language processing and multimodal tasks. The firm focuses on efficient training infrastructure using clusters of thousands of H100 GPUs and partners with domestic chipmakers for hardware optimization. StepStar targets enterprise applications in e-commerce, healthcare, and content generation across China. | 5Y CapitalChina Life Private Equity Investment+9 | $719M | - | Series B | |
May-26 | Recursive Superintelligence | | Recursive Superintelligence is an AI research firm building systems that autonomously improve via recursive self-learning. Its frameworks automate the AI development lifecycle, including experiment design, model training, evaluation, and optimization in feedback loops. The technology reduces manual engineering for scalable applications in research, enterprise deployment, and data-driven settings. | NVIDIAGV+1 | $650M | $4.7B | Series A |
VC investors active in AI software
Y Combinator is the most active VC investor across AI software, having invested in 562 startups in the last three years.
See all AI software VCs| Logo | HQ | Description | Key portfolio | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Y Combinator | | Y Combinator is a San Francisco-headquartered startup accelerator that funds and mentors early-stage technology companies across sectors like software, biotechnology, and fintech. Since its inception in 2005, it has propelled alumni including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe through intensive three-month programs featuring Demo Days and investor networks. | Blank BioFlick.artCinder Technologies+2 | 562 | Pre-seed | |
Antler |  | Antler is a Singapore-headquartered global venture capital firm founded in 2017 that invests in early-stage tech companies. It operates day-zero programs in 27 cities, backing 1,000+ startups with $100 million deployed annually across AI, fintech, and sustainability. Portfolio includes unicorns like Hold One and Tiqets, with a network of 3,000 mentors and 700+ investors for follow-ons. | Jurisphere.aiManifestAIsphere+2 | 174 | Pre-seed | |
Techstars | | Techstars is a Boulder-headquartered global network founded in 2006 that operates over 50 accelerators annually across 15 countries. It invests $120,000 in exchange for 6 percent equity in 500 startups yearly, spanning AI, sustainability, and healthcare. The firm manages a venture fund deploying capital into alumni companies and runs corporate partnerships with brands like Amazon and Barclays for innovation pilots. Techstars portfolio exceeds 3,500 companies valued over $15 billion collectively. | ManifestIntuosSmart Bricks+2 | 144 | Pre-seed | |
Andreessen Horowitz | | Andreessen Horowitz is a Menlo Park-headquartered venture capital firm founded in 2009 that targets seed through late-stage investments in software infrastructure, consumer internet, enterprise applications, fintech, cryptocurrency, and biohealthcare. The firm has backed Airbnb, Coinbase, GitHub, Lyft, and Stripe, maintaining offices in San Francisco and Santa Clara. | AtechGRAITreeline+2 | 95 | Series A | |
Pioneer Fund | | Pioneer Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that invests exclusively in Y Combinator batches. The fund deploys capital into early-stage startups from accelerator programs, with portfolio companies including DoorDash, Airbnb, and Stripe alumni. It manages over $100 million across multiple funds focused on software, fintech, and consumer tech sectors. | Flick.artAutosanaMCP Use+2 | 88 | Pre-seed | |
General Catalyst | | General Catalyst invests in early-stage to growth companies across healthcare, fintech, enterprise software, and consumer sectors from offices in Cambridge, San Francisco, and New York. The firm manages over $25 billion in assets, backing unicorns like Airbnb, Stripe, and Canva. It supports applied AI initiatives through dedicated funds and provides operational expertise via its Resilience platform. | Nace.AIAidocThe Interaction Company of California+2 | 87 | Seed | |
Lightspeed Venture Partners | | Lightspeed Venture Partners is a Menlo Park-headquartered venture capital firm investing in seed through growth stages across enterprise software, consumer tech, and fintech sectors. The firm has funded companies like Snapchat, MuleSoft acquired by Salesforce for 6.5 billion dollars, and Rubrik. Lightspeed Venture Partners manages over 18 billion dollars across global funds, with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Israel, and India. Its enterprise portfolio features ThoughtSpot and Thoughtworks. | Ineffable IntelligenceCoralPortkey AI+2 | 86 | Series A | |
Alumni Ventures | | Alumni Ventures is a Manchester, New Hampshire-headquartered venture capital firm managing diversified portfolios for 10,000 accredited investors. Operations run 50 funds targeting seed through Series B stages in AI, biotech, and climate tech. Sourcing draws from 1,000 university alumni networks with co-investments alongside Sequoia and a16z across 1,400 portfolio firms. | PressBoxStandard KernelDitto AI+2 | 81 | Seed | |
Sequoia Capital | | Sequoia Capital is a venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with operations in the United States, China, India, and Southeast Asia. Founded in 1972, it invests in seed through growth-stage companies across sectors like consumer internet, enterprise software, healthcare, and semiconductors. The firm has backed transformative businesses including Apple, Google, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Stripe, NVIDIA, and DoorDash, achieving landmark returns from initial public offerings and acquisitions. Sequoia Capital maintains separate funds for U.S., China, and India ecosystems, supporting founders in building enduring technology leaders. | Standard IntelligenceRogoIneffable Intelligence+2 | 78 | Seed | |
Khosla Ventures | | Khosla Ventures is a Menlo Park-headquartered venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies across AI, climate technologies, digital health, and enterprise software. Founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, it has backed over 1,000 startups including DoorDash, Square, and Impossible Foods, managing more than $15 billion in assets committed. | RogoGRAIFactory+2 | 62 | Seed |
Founders and investors we've worked with
We've supported winning builders across AI software and beyond.
Sentryc
We led the capital raising process for Sentryc, a Berlin-based AI-driven brand protection and IP software provider, on its growth round led by Seventure Partners.
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Orka
We advised Elysian Fields on its investment into Orka, a Reykjavik-based portfolio of online consumer lending platforms, supporting deal structuring and growth-capital deployment in the Icelandic fintech market.
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GoTrendier
We advised GoTrendier, the leading second-hand fashion marketplace in LatAm (Mexico and Colombia), on its $14m Series B fundraise led by IDB.
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Ziik
We acted as fundraising advisor to Ziik, a Copenhagen-based all-in-one social intranet and internal communication SaaS platform, on its growth funding round.
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Krita
We advised Swiss investor Elysian Fields on its growth investment into Krita, the leading factoring platform in the Icelandic market.
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