In a strong continuation of early 2025’s startup surge, the week of February 16–22 saw a concentrated flow of venture capital into AI and enterprise software ventures across the United States. This trend underscores a growing investor consensus that scalable, efficient enterprise technology—especially when supercharged by artificial intelligence—offers the most resilient path to long-term returns. The week’s major funding rounds reflect both sectoral depth and geographic diversity, with key deals coming out of tech hubs including San Francisco, New York, and Austin.
According to data compiled by Intellizence, AI remained one of the top-performing verticals, accounting for more than $1.86 billion in new capital across 103 separate deals. This places AI behind only software-as-a-service (SaaS) and energy as the most capitalized sectors of February 2025. The sheer volume and value of these deals highlight how deeply integrated AI has become in enterprise infrastructure, as companies seek to embed intelligence into everything from IT management and legal workflows to healthcare diagnostics and industrial automation.
One of the most prominent deals came from NinjaOne, a San Francisco-based provider of cloud-native IT endpoint management software. The firm announced a $500 million Series C extension that brought its post-money valuation to $5 billion. The company’s rapid rise reflects the urgent demand for IT automation tools as companies scale remote operations and grapple with complex device and network management challenges. With businesses increasingly dependent on endpoint visibility and zero-trust security frameworks, NinjaOne’s platform is emerging as a core component of modern IT architecture.
The week also spotlighted Austin’s growing reputation as a rising U.S. venture capital hub. Three of the 15 largest funding rounds nationally were sourced from Austin-based firms, including both NinjaOne and defense-tech innovator Saronic. This concentration of capital is drawing fresh attention to Texas as a serious player in deep-tech and enterprise innovation, bolstered by a strong engineering talent base, affordable operations, and increasing interest from coastal investors.
Across the AI spectrum, three firms stood out for their scale and specificity. Together AI, a company building decentralized training and inference infrastructure for large language models (LLMs), raised $305 million. The startup enables researchers and businesses to train foundation models efficiently without relying on centralized compute monopolies—a response to rising concerns over the energy, cost, and accessibility of large-scale AI systems.
Harvey, a generative AI platform focused on legal services, closed a $300 million funding round to expand its product offerings for law firms, in-house legal departments, and compliance teams. Its tools use LLMs to draft contracts, summarize case law, and automate legal research—cutting costs and improving turnaround times for routine legal tasks. With the legal industry under pressure to digitize and standardize processes, Harvey’s model of domain-specific AI is attracting interest from major firms and corporate clients alike.
Abridge, based in Pittsburgh, raised $250 million to further scale its AI-powered medical documentation platform. Designed to assist physicians by transcribing and structuring patient visits in real time, Abridge has already begun rolling out its solution across health systems, reducing clerical workloads and improving electronic health record (EHR) accuracy. The startup’s momentum reflects broader interest in clinical AI tools that can improve provider efficiency while enhancing patient care.
The broader funding environment remains robust. Investors are prioritizing startups with tangible enterprise traction, scalable platforms, and the ability to either reduce costs or open up new business models. In contrast to previous funding cycles driven by growth-at-all-costs strategies, the 2025 investment climate favors business fundamentals, cross-sector applicability, and defensible technical moats.
This recalibration is not a retreat from innovation but a sign of market maturity. As more enterprises seek to integrate AI into their core operations, capital is gravitating toward enablers of that transformation—whether through automation, infrastructure, analytics, or compliance. As a result, AI is no longer viewed as a standalone vertical, but as an integrated capability running across nearly every corner of enterprise software.
The week’s data also shows growing support for hybrid tech models that fuse software, hardware, and artificial intelligence. Startups applying AI in industrial and defense contexts—such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and supply chain resilience—are attracting increasing attention, reflecting a convergence of enterprise efficiency, strategic infrastructure, and national priorities.
Looking ahead, analysts expect AI-driven enterprise software to remain a dominant theme throughout 2025. With businesses facing a squeeze on labor costs and rising complexity across IT, legal, and healthcare sectors, platforms offering operational leverage through intelligent automation are likely to see continued investor demand.
