Global venture funding to fintech startups climbed in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows.
Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $51.8 billion for the year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a fairly significant – 27% – increase from 2024’s total of $40.8 billion raised.
Unsurprisingly, the numbers are still much lower than the peak of $141.6 billion raised in 2021 and the $90.2 billion raised in 2022. But they are trending upward at least, unlike in 2024, when they fell below 2023 levels.
And, for the first time in recent years 2025 funding totals came in above pre-pandemic sums, which were $50.8 billion in 2020 and $49.3 billion in 2019.
Deal flow, however, was down — signaling fewer, but larger rounds. The year saw 3,457 deals consummated, a 23% decline from the more than 4,486 completed in 2024.
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Large deals
The fact that the sector experienced an increase in funding despite a lower deal count indicates that the first half of 2025 saw a number of large rounds. Interestingly, several of the largest deals involved blockchain or crypto companies and prediction marketplaces.
Other sizeable deals that occurred during the year include U.K. payments platform Rapyd’s $500 million haul in mid-March; HR and payroll startup Rippling’s $450 million Series G in May; and expense management platform Ramp’s $500 million Series E-2 at a $22.5 billion valuation in late July and $300 million raise at a $32 billion valuation in November.
‘Chasing the AI-hype cycle’
All the VCs we spoke with said they believe 2021 and 2022 were outlier periods for venture funding. The record funding during those years were driven by “the Covid-19 rebound and ultra-low interest rates,” said Raph Osnoss, managing director at General Atlantic, who is based in New York and focuses on investments in the firm’s financial services sector, including financial technology.
“After a reset, a more constructive overall market in 2025 has driven renewed investor appetite, albeit with investor selectivity around scale and quality in a world with continued uncertainty,” he wrote in an email interview.
VCs appear to be just fine with funding not returning to those elevated levels.
Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Jake Gibson put it this way: 2021 and early 2022 were not healthy markets for the tech or startup industry as a whole. Fintech got a disproportionate amount of capital because of the COVID “everything is going digital” craze.
“Too much money was chasing too few great founders,” he said. “There would be four to five companies building the same thing, with business models that shouldn’t have been funded in the first place, and in many cases none of them were successful because none of them got to scale.”
‘Flight to quality’
Returning to the pace and exuberance of 2021, isn’t necessarily desirable or sustainable, according to Norwest Venture Partners VP Jordan Leites, who believes fintech is seeing a continued flight to quality with capital increasingly concentrating on companies with differentiated ideas, clear execution and “bona fide traction.”
Meanwhile, it has become meaningfully harder for others to raise.
“That dynamic helps explain why total funding dollars are up even as deal volume is down,” he told Crunchbase News. “I think the level of activity we saw in 2025 is healthy. At the earliest stages … the pipeline remains very strong, particularly across AI and stablecoins. Those areas have real structural tailwinds.”
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026.
Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.
Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.
Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.
Glossary of funding terms
Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.
Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.
Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.
Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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