{"id":356366,"date":"2026-03-25T00:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T00:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356366\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T00:13:08","slug":"us-startup-funding-slows-sharply-in-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356366\/","title":{"rendered":"US Startup Funding Slows Sharply In March"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a rollicking start in January<\/a> and February<\/a>, U.S. startup funding has slowed dramatically in March.<\/p>\n

American companies raised just around $13 billion in seed- through later- and growth-stage funding so far this month, per Crunchbase data<\/a>. Unless momentum suddenly picks up, that puts March on track to deliver just a fraction of investment tallies from either of the prior two months, as charted below.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slowdown more pronounced at late stage<\/p>\n

The slowdown is almost entirely due to fewer giant AI megarounds closing this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given that, there\u2019s a case to be made against reading too much into the topline numbers. After all, most of February\u2019s huge tally came from a single round \u2014 OpenAI<\/a>\u2019s record-setting $110 billion fundraise<\/a> \u2014 that happened to be announced on the second-to-last day of the month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A couple weeks before that, Anthropic<\/a> secured a $30 billion financing<\/a>. Also in early February, robotaxi pioneer Waymo<\/a> picked up $16 billion in fresh late-stage funding.<\/p>\n

Early- and seed-stage dealmaking in March, by comparison, is on track to come in close to the prior two months\u2019 levels, as charted below.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran War and US investor jitters\u00a0<\/p>\n

The March startup funding slowdown also coincides with the Iran War, which commenced on Feb. 28. Broad stock indexes have fallen in tandem in subsequent weeks, although Monday did bring a much-awaited partial rebound.<\/p>\n

Notably, this month\u2019s funding deceleration is mostly a U.S. phenomenon. European startup funding, by contrast, actually hit its highest point of the year in March, boosted by megarounds<\/a> for AI infrastructure unicorn Nscale<\/a> and artificial intelligence startup Advanced Machine Intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

February may be one for the record books<\/p>\n

While there are plenty of potential catalysts that could drive funding higher in coming weeks, both economic and geopolitical, it\u2019s likely February\u2019s U.S. funding tally will remain one for the record books.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clearly, a $110 billion funding round \u2014 something without close precedent in startup history \u2014 will be\u00a0 tough to top. If it does happen, it\u2019ll likely take years, not weeks or months.<\/p>\n

For now, we\u2019ll be keeping a close eye on the health of later-stage funding by more typical comps. By those measures, the March slowdown looks considerably less dire.<\/p>\n

Related Crunchbase queries:<\/p>\n

Related reading:<\/p>\n

Illustration: Dom Guzman<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
\n Crunchbase Daily. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a rollicking start in January and February, U.S. startup funding has slowed dramatically in March. American companies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[114,293,85,46,1496],"class_list":{"0":"post-356366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-unicorn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}