Although technically the first quarter ended just two weeks ago, in market time it feels exponentially longer.
In recent days, we’ve seen a tariff-induced market meltdown, a partial bounce-back, and a startup exit pipeline that went from heating up to effectively stalled. As a result, our fresh quarterly data on the most-active investors already seems to have a retro vibe.
It was an optimistic vibe, while it lasted. Global startup investment hit its highest level in years, driven by AI enthusiasm.
The busiest venture backers also upped their game. Among the 14 most-active post-seed investors, a majority backed more deals in Q1 of 2025 than they did a year ago, as charted below.
For the just-ended quarter, Y Combinator had the No. 1 ranking among post-seed investors. At first glance, this seems a bit surprising as it’s best known as a seed-stage accelerator.
However, Y Combinator has been putting more capital of late into follow-on rounds for promising accelerator participants. That includes stakes in large deals this past quarter, such as surveillance provider Flock Safety’s $275 million Series F and rocket developer Stoke Space’s $260 million Series C.
The other front-runners on our most-active venture investor list, meanwhile, are among the “usual suspects” — deep-pocketed, cross-stage investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.
More money invested, too
Lead investors also got serious about spending in Q1. This is evidenced by our list of investors who led or co-led rounds valued at at more than $500 million, charted below.
Of course, there’s one name that’s miles in the lead for spendiest investor: SoftBank. Its $40 billion investment in OpenAI (of which $10 billion will come from a syndicate of co-investors) ranks as the largest venture investment of all time.
Even though SoftBank didn’t need other big deals to cinch the top spot, it completed some anyway. Large Q1 rounds led by SoftBank Vision Fund include QuEra Computing’s $230 million financing, Terabase Energy’s $130 million Series C, and Cybereason’s $120 million Series H.
Lightspeed ranked as the second-spendiest lead investor in Q1, leading or co-leading rounds collectively valued at $4.25 billion. Most of that total came from a $3.5 billion March financing for Anthropic.
Most-active lead investors
Silicon Valley-based Lightspeed was also the most-active lead venture investor by round counts in the first quarter, leading or co-leading nine post-seed deals.
For a sense of who else was busy leading deals, below we charted out the 16 most-active investors by this metric.
There was a three-way tie for the next most-active lead investor, with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Accel each leading or co-leading eight rounds in Q1.
Busiest seed dealmakers
Reported seed funding totals weakened sequentially and year over year in Q1. However, the most-active seed investors remained pretty busy, as evidenced in the chart below ranking the most-prolific dealmakers for the quarter.
As usual, Y Combinator came out on top, with 209 reported seed and pre-seed rounds. Next up was Antler, a seed and early-stage investor with a presence in more than 20 countries that backed at least 34 global rounds.
Q2 is off to an unusual start
With the first quarter behind us, usually it seems appropriate to offer some prognostications about what prior months’ activity foreshadows for the weeks to come.
This time around, however, it seems like Q1 lessons probably don’t apply. Given the dramatic, mostly negative gyrations on public markets, the stalled IPO market, and added costs and complexities around international trade, startup investors will be contemplating new rounds with an altered mindset.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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