2025 Venture Capital Report

August 15, 2025

Publication

Note From the Editors

This year’s Venture Capital Report offers a detailed review of the US venture capital market, including a breakdown of venture financing activity by state, and analyzes key trends shaping the year ahead. We examine the recent uptick in VC funding “mega-rounds” and discuss the FTC’s efforts to standardize non-compete laws across the country and what this means for new and emerging companies. We also track recent trends in convertible note and SAFE terms, venture financing terms, and VC-backed company M&A deal terms.

Please stay in touch with us by following the WilmerHale Launch blog and subscribing to our mailing lists, which will keep you up to date on the latest developments involving emerging companies, startups and venture capital. You can also access this year’s M&A Report and IPO Report for a deep dive into those areas.

Thanks for reading.

— Eric P. Hanson, Partner and Vice Chair, Corporate Practice
— C.S. Avery Reaves, Partner

While venture capital activity remains well below its most recent peak in 2021 and 2022, the market rebounded by many measures in 2024, with the fourth quarter of the year seeing the highest quarterly amount of capital invested since the first quarter of 2022.

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US Market Review and Outlook

The number of reported venture capital financings decreased by less than 2% from 2023 to 2024, and the decline is likely to be largely erased once all 2024 deals have been reported. Total reported financing proceeds increased 31%, from $163.6 billion in 2023 to $214.3 billion in 2024, the third-highest annual proceeds figure on record, behind only 2021 and 2022.

Post-Mortem on the FTC’s Blocked Non-Compete Rule
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By Andrew Stauber

Excerpt: In August 2024, a Texas federal court struck down a broad Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that would have banned the vast majority of employee non-competition agreements. While this means that employers do not need to contend with a ban on their ability to impose non-competes, they are back to reckoning with a legal landscape featuring a patchwork of varied and nuanced state laws.

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The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of VC “Mega-Rounds”
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Excerpt: Over time, there have been huge shifts in the amount of financing required to start and scale businesses. Advances such as cloud computing and open-source software have enabled technology startups to commence and grow their operations with less funding than historically required. At the same time, newly formed life sciences companies and AI-driven companies have not been so fortunate and can remain capital-intensive enterprises.

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