AI Funding Is Growing - And Bringing Entrepreneurs to San Francisco

The San Francisco Examiner published a summary of Pitchbook’s Q1 2025 Global VC First Look. A few key take away’s: 1) VC fundraising is down between 2022 ($190.2B) to 2024 ($78.1B)  2) VC’s invested $91.5B in US-based start-ups in Q1 2025 - more than twice the Q12 2024 number 3) AI start-ups received 71% of the funds and represented 33.2% of the deals and 4) two deals - OpenAI ($40B) and Anthropic ($4.5B) were more than half of that $91.5B. 

The WSJ published a chart today (see below) of AI investments by large tech companies. At the Google Cloud Next Keynote on April 9th, they reiterated their commitment to spending $75B in capital investments on AI in 2025. Overall, it looks like the investments of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta will increase from about $230-$240B in 2024 to over $320B in 2025 - if the current economic turmoil doesn’t disrupt their plans (per WSJ). 

What interests me: 

1. The investments (while one shouldn’t compare them) are comparable in size. 

2. Like the SF Examiner’s article, I too believe - based on my own analysis and observations - that a disproportionate amount of this private funding is flowing into San Francisco and the Bay Area. The talent is following.  I attend 1-2 “gen AI” founder events each week. I’ve met entrepreneurs and founders of all ages from around the United States, Canada, Australia, Jordan, Poland, the UK, Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, Brunei, and more - I ask why they are here. The answer is clear, “This is where IT is happening. This is where the money is. I want to be part of it.” 

WSJ - April 9, 2025 -