April 2, 2026

When a $2 Billion Seed Round Is Normal: Real Funding Data from 1,190 Startups

By Fast AI Startup Jobs

TL;DR

We verified the funding data of 1,190 startups currently hiring on our platform, and the traditional stage labels barely hold any meaning. We logged $2B seed rounds, $900M Series A rounds, and 40% of all early-stage funding going to $100M+ deals. Set against industry benchmarks from Carta and Crunchbase, our data describes a market where a handful of AI-adjacent megadeals are pulling the averages out of shape.

Median funding by stage

We maintain verified funding data for 1,190 companies, all actively hiring, spanning Pre-Seed through Series G+. The medians fall out like this:

Stage	Companies	Median Round Size	Median Total Raised	Industry Benchmark*
Pre-Seed	21	$0.6M	$1.5M	~$0.7M (Carta)
Seed	191	$6.1M	$7.5M	$3.1-4.0M (Carta/Pitchwise)
Series A	443	$20M	$28.1M	$12-15M (Crunchbase)
Series B	201	$50M	$85.4M	$38-40M (Pitchwise)
Series C	109	$100M	$200M	~$80M (Pitchwise)
Series D	49	$130M	$375M	$96.5M (Pitchwise)
Series E	20	$260M	$759M	—
Series F	7	$300M	$958M	—

*Industry benchmarks from Carta State of Private Markets 2025, Crunchbase H1 2024, Pitchwise 2026

Our numbers run systematically higher because the sample is biased toward AI and high-growth tech companies, which are the ones doing most of the hiring. Pitchwise puts AI/ML seed rounds at a 1.3x premium over the broader market, and Carta pegs AI Series A valuations at 1.7x the overall median. That skew is the point. If you are job-hunting at startups, these are the companies you would actually work at.

The mega-seed phenomenon

The clearest signal in the data is that "Seed" no longer means what you think it means.

Seed rounds over $100M in our database

Company	Seed Amount	Date	Founder Background
Thinking Machines Lab	$2,000M	2025-06	Mira Murati (ex-OpenAI CTO)
AMI Labs	$1,030M	2026-03	Yann LeCun (ex-Meta Chief AI Scientist)
Humans&	$480M	2026-01	Ex-Anthropic, xAI, Google researchers
Unconventional AI	$475M	2025-12	Naveen Rao (ex-Databricks AI, sold Mosaic ML for $1.3B)
Periodic Labs	$300M	2025-09	—
Genesis AI	$105M	2025-07	—

At these sizes, "Seed" is just shorthand for "first round." It tells you nothing about size, maturity, or whether there is a product yet.

Crunchbase put Thinking Machines Lab's $2B seed in context:

"It's not even close. The next-largest U.S. seed financings have all been in the $200 million to $450 million range."

Investor Ashish Saboo called it:

"Expensive FOMO... beyond pre-revenue. It's pre-everything. Pure bet on human capital."

Series A and the hundred-million-dollar club

Our data shows 17 companies that raised $100M+ Series A rounds:

Company	Series A Amount	Date	Sector
Pacific Fusion	$900M	2024-10	Nuclear Fusion
Tempo	$500M	2025-10	Blockchain/Payments
Lila Sciences	$350M	2025-10	AI/Biotech
Ricursive Intelligence	$300M	2026-01	AI Chip Design
Liquid AI	$250M	2024-12	AI Infrastructure
Fundamental	$225M	2026-02	AI/Data Analytics
Upscale AI	$200M	2026-01	AI Infrastructure

Pacific Fusion's $900M Series A used a milestone-based structure where funds unlock as the company hits targets, a model borrowed from biotech. Critics flagged the catch:

"As soon as a milestone is missed (which is almost inevitable when working on challenging science and engineering), that will force revaluations and renegotiations. Therefore, any money beyond what is unlocked is not actually guaranteed."

Ricursive Intelligence went from $35M Seed to $300M Series A in just 2 months, reaching a $4B valuation four months after founding.

Half the money, one percent of the companies

The number that anchors all of 2025 venture capital:

"50% of all the venture capital raised in 2025 went to 1% of the companies." (Crunchbase Predicts 2026)

In Q1 2026 the concentration got tighter still. Crunchbase reported:

"Investors poured $300 billion into 6,000 startups globally in the quarter... AI shattered records, with $242 billion — 80% of total global venture funding — going to companies in the sector."

"Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded were closed in Q1 2026, with OpenAI ($122B), Anthropic ($30B), xAI ($20B) and Waymo ($16B) collectively raising $188 billion, or 65% of global venture investment in the quarter."

Our employee-count data shows what that concentration looks like on the ground:

Stage	Most Common Employee Bucket	Second Most Common
Seed	11-50 (60%)	1-10 (39%)
Series A	11-50 (67%)	51-200 (25%)
Series B	51-200 (60%)	11-50 (27%)
Series C	51-200 (43%)	201-500 (39%)
Series D	201-500 (43%)	51-200 (31%)

A typical Seed company is still a 15-person team, even with $475M in the bank.

The AI distortion field

Kruze Consulting, citing PitchBook data, tracks how fast the share has moved:

"AI/ML deals captured 65.6% of all VC deal value in 2025 ($222B out of $339B), up from 47.2% in 2024 and just 10% in 2015."

Crunchbase's year-end analysis found:

"In AI, 58% of funding was in megarounds of $500 million or more."

"The two largest foundation companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, alone captured 14% of global venture investment this year."

For startups outside AI, the Series A crunch is real. Axios reported:

"Only 15.5% of companies that raised seed funding in Q1 2023 had secured a Series A by Q1 2025."

"46% of all seed transactions in Q1 2025 were bridge rounds." That's the highest proportion Carta has ever recorded.

What the stage labels actually mean now

Pulling our data together with the external research, here is how the labels read in 2026:

Label	What It Used To Mean	What It Means Now
Pre-Seed	Friends & family, $50K-$500K	Still mostly small, $0.6M median
Seed	First institutional check, $1-3M	First round of any size ($0.25M to $2B)
Series A	Product-market fit, $5-15M	Second round of any size ($0.25M to $900M)
Series B	Scale, $20-40M	Third round, roughly $50M median
Series C+	Growth/pre-IPO	Actual growth stage, $100M+

Crunchbase's Joanna Glasner summed up the shift:

"The stereotype of a round at this stage — a small, risky bet on an unproven founder — may need some updating."

What this means for job seekers

If you are weighing startup offers, the funding number is a poor guide on its own. A $500M "Seed" company might have 10 employees and no product, while a $15M Series A company might have 100 employees and $10M ARR. Across our database, employee count tracks company maturity far more reliably than the funding round label, so read that first.

The steadiest bet is usually a Series B-C company with 51-200 or more employees, where product-market fit is already proven and there is capital to grow on. Treat heavily funded early-stage companies with more caution: a big first round is not a guarantee. Inflection AI raised $1.3B and was effectively acqui-hired by Microsoft inside a year, taking most of its equity upside with it.

For your own timing, that gap between funding stage and maturity is where the leverage sits. A mega-seed startup with no product gives you almost no signal on runway or how long your options take to mean anything, so weight cash compensation over equity and ask how many months the round actually funds. A later-stage company with hundreds of employees is the one where a strong offer and a real equity package are worth holding out for.

This analysis is based on FastAI Jobs' verified database of 1,190 actively-hiring companies as of April 2, 2026. Browse companies by funding stage at fastaijobs.com/companies.

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