Eye On AI: Massive OpenAI Deal Masks AI’s Slow Quarter

The big news in the world of venture and artificial intelligence obviously has been OpenAI's massive $40 billion investment led by SoftBank, a big-money deal has folks talking, but a deeper look at the funding numbers for AI in Q1 seem to show a slight pullback from investors.

Apr 3, 2025 - 12:32

Eye On AI: Massive OpenAI Deal Masks AI’s Slow Quarter

This column is a look back at the week that was in AI. Read the previous one here.

The big news in the world of venture and artificial intelligence obviously has been OpenAI‘s massive $40 billion investment led by SoftBank.

That big-money deal has folks talking, but a deeper look at the funding numbers for AI in Q1 seem to show a slight pullback from investors, in both the private and public markets, as more questions arise concerning how much large enterprises will continue (or start in some cases) throwing at AI tools.

Private market

As our first-quarter 2025 global venture funding report illustrates, AI funding was again at an all-time high — just as it was in Q4 2024.

After hitting nearly $44 billion in Q4, total venture funding to AI startups was almost $60 billion in the first quarter of this year. While that seems impressive — and it is, to a certain extent — it’s hard to ignore the fact that two-thirds of that amount is directly related to one company and its massive raise led by SoftBank.

If we put that to the side, AI startups in Q1 raised less than half of what was doled out in Q4 last year, getting about $19.6 billion, per Crunchbase data. The biggest deal — aside from OpenAI’s — of the quarter saw Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude, raise a $3.5 billion funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that valued it at $61.5 billion.

There were many massive deals for AI startups in Q4, including Databricks’ $10 billion round, OpenAI’s long-awaited raise of $6.6 billion, and xAI’s $6 billion in a funding round. In fact, there were 11 rounds of $500 million or more, while Q1 saw just five.

If one takes that $19.6 billion total, it would be the lowest for a quarter since AI startups raised only $13.9 billion in Q1 2024.

Deal flow for AI startups also dipped in Q1 of this year, with only 1,226 deals announced — marking a roughly 25% drop from Q1 last year and more than 150 rounds fewer than Q4.

Public market

But it’s not just about the private market and venture capital. The poster-child for AI on the public market, Nvidia, had a bad quarter in the stock market in Q1, with shares dropping more than 20%, while semiconductor company AMD’s shares shaved off nearly 15%.

Shares of Oracle, a big player in the U.S.’ new AI endeavor, The Stargate Project, dropped more than 15% for the quarter. The Nasdaq Composite Index — a good general indicator of how tech stocks are faring — was down about 10% for the quarter.

Of course, the big news on the public market was CoreWeave’s IPO, but the big event barely made any waves as the stock remained relatively flat after premiering (even after the offering significantly shrank in size).

Cautious investing

CoreWeave’s IPO — which had been looked at as a bellwether for the expected thawing of the IPO market — may be the best illustration of investors starting to take a hard look at what’s going on in a heated market.

As the IPO approached, there seemed to be more questions and concerns being voiced about how quickly AI adoption will happen for many large companies and how much they are willing to allocate to data center spend. There is also worry that with so many data centers being built, supply could outstrip demand and lower prices.

Of course, Q2 may be an entirely different story in both the private and public markets, and the OpenAI round did, in fact, happen, so that investment can’t just be discounted.

However, there is also a chance investors are starting to look more closely at AI and where the market for spend on the technology is actually going.

That would be something different.

Related Crunchbase Pro query:

Rounds Raised By Startups Using AI