The stereotypical seed-funded company may be a scrappy startup with a shoestring budget. But in the age of AI, that’s not where investors are concentrating their bets.
Instead, recent months have served as a busy period for big commitments to seed-stage companies that are short on operating history and long on ambition.
To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to cull a list of the largest seed rounds of the past six months 1. Globally, at least 12 companies within these parameters pulled in rounds of $100 million or more.
Physical AI is leading theme
A majority of top seed funding recipients operate at the intersection of AI and the physical world.
This includes the largest recent fundraiser, Paris-based Advanced Machine Intelligence, which raised $1.03 billion in a March seed round backed by a long list of prominent venture firms, individual investors and strategic backers. The startup is developing AI models that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data and make predictions.
Unconventional AI, meanwhile, is operating at the intersection of AI and energy. The San Francisco company secured a $475 million seed round in December to develop energy-efficient silicon circuits that demonstrate similar non-linear dynamics to biological neurons.
Also up there is Periodic Labs, which is applying AI to science and experimentation, with goals including automating materials design in areas like semiconductor manufacturing, transportation and power grid engineering. The San Francisco company raised $300 million six months ago.
China-based startups have also recently landed large seed rounds tied to physical AI. This includes Lingchu Intelligence, developer of an AI platform for robotic device development that simulates physical world environments, and Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, a developer of AI robotic technology.
Humans and AI
AI startups haven’t forgotten about humans either.
One example is Merge Labs, a startup co-founded by Sam Altman that raised $252 million in an OpenAI-led financing earlier this year. The San Francisco company is focused on applying AI advancements to brain-computer interfaces,
Humans&, the second-largest seed recipient, is a bit harder to categorize. The Silicon Valley startup, which raised $480 million in January, is focused on foundational models “centering around people and their relationships with each other.”
A new era for seed
In addition to spotlighting investors’ growing enthusiasm for AI, the latest batch of jumbo seed round recipients also demonstrate changing dynamics around how capital is allocated at the earliest stage of company formation.
The general trend points to fewer deals and larger average seed round sizes. While the majority of seed-stage deal counts still occur for rounds $5 million and under, that percentage has trended down over time.
Meanwhile, larger and outlier seed rounds of $10 million and above have climbed from 2% of deals in 2018 to 9% over that time. Seed rounds of over $100 million — once exceedingly rare — are also more commonplace, with 27 such deals announced globally since the beginning of 2025, per Crunchbase data.
Of course, it’s too soon to say if such large checks written at such a nascent startup stage will prove worth it in hindsight. For now, it’s certainly at least a boon to the seed-stage companies at the receiving end, which have the rare opportunity to iterate highly ambitious missions without the added burden of having to do it all on a shoestring budget.
Related Crunchbase query:
Related reading:
- Seed Funding Hasn’t Stalled, But It’s Skewing Larger And Is More Competitive Than Ever, Crunchbase Data Shows
- Turing Winner LeCun’s New ‘World Model’ AI Lab Raises $1B In Europe’s Largest Seed Round Ever
- Humans& Raises Huge $480M Seed Round At $4.48B Valuation For ‘Human-Centric AI Lab’
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Includes companies founded in 2023 or later.↩
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